Momo was the first character that I had concepted from scratch. The images above were the final concepts. Below I will discuss how this character came to fruition.
Early documentation I did on the first concept which would lead into the pitch of Momo. The idea of Momo being a a pirate oriented character came from a request of the art team wanting to fill visual holes of the roster. I recently had came off the tail end of playing Dragon Quest Treasures which had some great pirate characters in it. The pirate character "Admiral Mogsworth" really resonated with the art team leading to the first artistic iteration and Momo being a "Powder Monkey". Using the excitement of the art team as a spring board I got to concepting the gameplay design of a small, cute, and explosive pirate themed character.
Early concept of Momo by the art team.
A nautical monkey that uses barrels as the primary choice of weapon.
examples above of documentation style, visual references, and VFX sheets I worked with artists on.
When working on design documentation the three notes that need to be hit are communicating to Design, Art, and VFX teams what their next steps are. Using short descriptions of abilities and visual references allowed me to easily communicate my vision to respective departments.
Pitching to design leads to make sure that the hero gameplay is aligned with the overall gameplay vision.
Aligning with art team that the hero is within the bounds of their concepts and "makes sense" with art direction.
Creating easy to follow visuals for animators and VFX teams to cut down on guess work and to aid art/design with implementation.
While this method of design documentation worked very well. The reality is that documentation can only really do so much when it comes to the realities of implementation. A hero or element of game design can work well on paper but once implemented that's when the real journey begins.
Creating a projectile based character in a hero shooter with high mobility created some obstacles to navigate. Originally Momo had a bouncing projectile that was supposed to increase in power based off distance. This long ranged "poke" style of gameplay had to be readjusted to a more "burst assassin" type of gameplay.
Why?
The faster a games baseline mobility becomes the harder it is to hit projectiles. The bouncing bomb that Momo initially had was changed to a burst bomb because players really could not hit other players who moved faster than it.
However, I wanted to maintain the identity of Momo being easy to access.
This lead me to having Momo be a hero who had half his kit be easy to hit and "safe" while the other half put him in danger but with great rewards....
Momo gained a dive bomb that had a reset on takedown passive. While it was easy to do "just fine" with Momo if you played at range the more aggressive playstyle grew a favorable for more skilled play testers.
If a Momo player could dive and secure a kill their reward would be to get out safely. Mess up that process and Momo would be a fragile character stuck in the fray.
This change in character identity really added a level of depth that made him a more popular choice with seasoned players.
The sequence with Momos abilities would play out as:
Auto Attacks with 3 hit passive - To whittle down foes and the passive allowed him to take objectives easier
Large Bomb - For poke and finishing enemies at range
AoE Root - To be used in conjuncture with dive bomb ability
Ultimate that would lock the form of Momo but would do massive AoE damage
The usual combo would be
Auto Attack - Proc 3 hit passive + Large Bomb - Queue AoE Root - Dive Bomb - Ult to finish off opponents
This sequence would require the player to think fast and added a popular learning curve to the character.
Momo being used by one of the competitive play testers in a tournament setting.