In March we released the demo for Shoutai: Possession, called Shoutai: Chaos Theory. 

In it, the main character is a boy named Chou, who must recover his precious treasure from the terrifyng monter who has stolen it from him. While Chou is the hero in this tale, he is not the main protagonist of the full game that were are working on.

The promo artwork was this:

This picture was the main character of the game, Elara. She was written as a very uppity lolita who is forced to travel around the forest. We wrote a chunk of the script with this in mind. 

However, upon working we just realized it felt like we were trying to cram a piece into a puzzle that didn't fit. Her design was nice and all, but it felt like we were falling into a trope. Your typical "Alice in Wonderland" type character  in a crazy world, and in the end we just didn't want that. However, since the game does take place in Japan, we wanted something that was uniquely Japanese. Fashion was a big aspect of it.

While brainstorming we decided that a Gyaru character would be interesting. She'd be fashionable and roughing it in the woods would be foreign to her.  She would have a bright color scheme and it allowed us to play more on the cellphone aspects of the game, as she is a social media celebrity. Also, we had fallen in love with Chou and wanted him to play a bigger part in the main game.

So, after designing, we finally came up with a new character and named her Ishiko (and, came up with a new promo picture!)

The change in her name was due to the fact that we didnt knw why we were giving her a non-Japanese name. Was she a foreigner? No. So it was a moot point and a silly name. We gave her a Japanese name instead (even if now she does look more Europen, hahah). This design felt  alot stronger than our old one, and a little less cluttered. We were glad to implement it for the game. The script is getting a rewrite too, to fit her more expressive personality.

What do you think of Ishiko? Let us know in the comments below!