The character evolution in Shop Crush

At the beginning, the game had a different tone and was more of an ironic/comic game. Therefore, we wanted the characters to be cartoonish and caricatured. They were supposed to reflect the game mechanics they represented.

This is the first iteration of the game. Character was simple and didn't have any backgroundord shading.

The Second Iteration

I was doing a redesign of the game the other day. The goal was to improve the readability of the game rules, so I changed the appearance of the character, too. Since the character background became wide, I painted them a background myself, with what I had at my disposal.

The second iteration of the game design. Characters are now wider and more readable. This appearance allowed for characters' emotions and speech bubbles, too.

The Big Leap

However, during playtests across different conventions, I still saw strong interest among players in the character personas themselves, rather than in stats or gameplay c