Anatomy of a moveset design process

One of the aspects I’ve seen people struggling with often is “how do I design a moveset for my character in my fighting game?”. This might feel a little bit surprising: All of us creatives have tons of colorful characters ready to punch the living heck out of each other in the virtual world, but sometimes we stumble on the process of actually giving them life. Most of the questions I’ve received during the years can be summarized as: <ul> <li>What should I focus on?</li> <li>How should I fill the gaps in the moveset?</li> <li>How do I make it feel cohesive?</li> <li>How do I make it thematically appropriate?</li> </ul> There is no silver bullet and no real golden path to do achieve this: Every game is its own story and a moveset designed for e.g. BlazBlue won’t really work in a more grounded game like Tekken. However, what I can offer is a small summary of how I personally approach it. I hope this might help you finding your way! <h1>Stick to a theme</h1> My first step in designing a moveset has always been “finding the character’s theme”. Simply put, try to describe your character in one, single sentence. This sentence is their essence, the core of the character, is often based on their visual appearance (but not always) and defines how they will play. <a href="https://andrea-jens.medium.com/anatomy-of-a-moveset-design-process-4b2961a6f18e">Website</a>