Smasher's Avatar

In Smasher, you look like this:

Is this low-effort character design? If you hired a character designer, and they came back to you with a red square, what would you think?

But it's not lazyness. I'm happy to put more time into the avatar.^* The trouble is: I like the red square.

Let's explore this a little bit. We'll start on the functional side of things.

In Smasher, you move with a 4-way thrust-based movement^†:

I like the symmetry of the exhaust-emitting borders (which matches the symmetry of the controls). And I like that they are the full width of your avatar.

After getting used to moving in Smasher, it becomes natural to slide along walls:

Wall boundaries in Smasher are always axis-aligned, just like your avatar's boundaries. And so we get nice, symmetrical contact areas for sliding, which are again the full width of your avatar.

That's the gist of the ludic, functional aspects of your avatar. The game is very axis-aligned and has a lot of symmetry; it benefits from an avatar with those same qualities.

Now let's look at the avatar from a narrative point of view (but notice that, just like in game design, I started with the ludic side first).

Here's the narrative premise of Smasher:

You are the smasher experiment. They created you as the most powerful tool, not expecting you to have free will. If you escape your lab, the whole world will try to destroy you.

When you play Smasher, you're the smasher experiment. The "free will" we talked about earlier is your free will. I don't put words in your mouth—the smasher never talks in the game. The smasher expresses itself only through its movement, which is under your full control: You are the smasher.

And yet, despite all this freewill, you will find that circumstances propel you, with gravity-like force, towards smasher's singular destiny.

This endgame is unknown to both you and your creators, as are the consequences of you coming into contact with the various elements of their world.

And so we have this unknown but massive power to visually represent. I don't want to give it eyes, or make it mechanical. Something closer to Kubrick's monolith seems more appropriate.

Let's try a square of fire:

Behold! The raw power of teeming red sacred geometry is equally alienating to us all. But, being so abstract, it also acts as a blank slate for you in particular to inhabit.

Those are some of the reasons I like the fire square. Here's one more final, fitting reason: In a world where elaborate visual character designs are the rule, Smasher's avatar is forbidden.

^* And I do plan to spend more time playing with the avatar's procedural texture.

^† Dont worry—by combining thrusters you effectively get 8-way movement.

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Smasher's Engine

Contents: Smasher Devlog