Good hello!
As many of you already know, my game Kor has 3 player sprite options - the bottom row in this post's image - offering different skin tones, basically. But they all have the same look otherwise. The game is also designed so that no one ever genders the player - all pronouns used are gender neutral (Chumpling, Duckaroo, etc.), because I wanted anyone to be able to connect with the player character.
HOWEVER!
Even though I never assign a gender to the player anywhere in the game, most people assume that it's male because of the short hair. And as such, I've gotten several requests from women to add in a more feminine sprite, and for a long time I resisted because I worried that it would make the gender of the player character too black and white, even if I don't change anything about NPCs never assigning gender to the character (you can pick either look, and still consider your character whatever you want).
So... I designed an alternative sprite. And though I'm not looking forward to all the work of updating promo stuff to include the other sprite, I've gotten very positive feedback from women I've shared it with. And, at the end of the day, I am of the opinion that more customization options are good.
But before I go through all the effort of adding the update, I wanted to come and ask the gender diverse userbase of Hexbear what you all think about this!
As a dude with long hair I think it's cool. I never really think about hair length as having any inherent gendered implication.
Why not then have the long hair as the only option? It's not like guys can't have long hair too.
That would've been the play if I didn't already release the game with this sprite in place. If I do it now, I'd be taking something away, and that feels bad.
I guess there really isn't much alternatives then. Considering that you don't want to mess with the sprites silhouette, I think what you have shown is good enough.
Can you make one with like huge Medusa snaky hair covering the head-fins?
Probably not without changing the silhouette of the sprite! Which I'm trying to avoid because it'll mess with other elements of the game. Otherwise I'd be tempted to go a little nuts with character customization.
i'd definitely pick one from the top row personally, so fwiw i say yes good work!
A/B-ing with my finger over each row, it's possible that the narrow strip on top of the heads seemed like shaved or closely buzzed haircuts. That could be why the sprites were being gendered...
Anyway, I don't have any experience with your project until now but I do like the new versions. Congrats and kudos for listening to your audience!
Oh yeah, I can absolutely see why the sprite is getting identified as male. It's a failure on my behalf for not making sure the sprite was more neutral. I did do an edit very deep into development, right before releasing, but at that point I was so tired of working on it that I didn't want to go back and edit all the things I'd have to change for it. I'm a little rejuvenated now though, so I can handle it!
Thank you!
