SLARPG behind the scenes: Unused palette swaps!

A look at the unused ideas I tried out for SLARPG's palette swap gags!

(This post will spoil a joke in Act II of SLARPG, if you care.)

I already have a couple other writing-related posts ready to go, but I figured I'd mix things up first with something more visual, and also sillier. So here's a look at the unused ideas I tried out for the palette swap gags! And yes, every single one of them is a reference to a character from something else.

MELODY

Melody went through two iterations!

1. Krystal (Star Fox). While there are many orange foxes out there to choose from, I figured making Melody blue would be a much more eye-catching change. But since Krystal is just blue, it kinda just looks like... well, like I just made Melody blue. This will be a running theme with the scrapped palettes.

2. Whisper the Wolf (IDW Sonic). I had the realization that Melody didn't have to reference another fox, so I stretched it and made her a different canid who's very near and dear to my heart: Whisper! She's also a quiet, emotionally scarred introvert, so hey, it fit perfectly, even if many players won't recognize the reference and might, say, think she's Homer Simpson. (The white around her eyes would have made her more recognizable, but I avoided adding new details to stick strictly to the palette swap concept.)

In a way, this is also kind of a nod back to Whisper's designer, Evan Stanley. She gave me a teeny tiny cameo in the Sonic comics, and now those comics have a nod in SLARPG. Full circle! This is also the IDW Sonic reference I mentioned slipping into the game on Thanks Ken Penders back in 2021.

Other ideas I didn't try out included: the Fennekin line, Tails, and my first ever fursona from middle/high scool (who was just a brown fox).

ALLISON

Allison was the one I had the most ideas for by a wide margin.

1. Bunnie Rabbot (Sonic SatAM). An extremely predictable reference for me, especially considering Bunnie may very well be the reason why Allison is a bunny! Before I settled on a Sonic comic reference for Melody, I tried this with Allison. I tried her more muted SatAM palette first because it also allowed me to recolor her hair. This was abandoned because I assumed most people would just look at it and think "chocolate bunny."

2. Bunnie Rabbot (Archie Sonic). Yeah I just kinda thought it looked like shit

3. Josuke Higashikata (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure). Moving away from rabbit characters briefly, I tried out a character with a similar hairstyle. Unfortunately I didn't think it was particularly recognizable, especially since JoJo characters famously do not stick to a single color scheme.

4. Cinderace (Pokémon). Easily the most instantly recognizable option, particularly because Allison and Cinderace look damn near identical. Of course, the flip side of this is that it would lead people who didn't know I created Allison in 2015 to think that I might have based her design off of Cinderace, which I did not. I didn't want to be fighting off those allegations my entire life, so it was canned. (Also it kind of makes her look like some kind of... weird clown? Perhaps a kabuki performer? IDK)

5. Sulong form Carrot (One Piece). One Piece is a big creative influence on me, and this was the era when we still thought Carrot was going to be a Straw Hat. I went with Carrot's powered up Sulong form instead of her default color scheme because, again, it meant not leaving Allison's hair the same color. However, I figured people who didn't get the reference would ask "Why did Allison just turn into a ghost?"

6. Amethyst (Steven Universe). Running out of ideas for rabbits with distinct color schemes, I instead started considering characters with personalities similar to Allison's. But this is another one of those palette swaps where it just kind of looks like I made her a color.

7. Were-bunny Enid (O.K. KO: Let's Be Heroes!). After the Amethyst palette, I had a brain blast and remembered a different purple-haired Cartoon Network character who had literally turned into a rabbit one time*: Enid! She even has a similar build and fights with a lot of kicks! It's perfect. And so that's what I went with. Ironically, though... the purple color scheme made a lot of people think it might be an Amethyst reference anyway lmao

Other ideas I didn't try out included: Bugs Bunny, an actual chocolate bunny, Undyne, and Marceline.

CLAIRE

1. Vriska (Vriska). I literally did not try out any other color palettes for Claire. I had the idea for this Homestuck jumpscare after realizing that Claire had several of the character traits of the archetypal Vriska and knew it was impossible to top that.

Other ideas I didn't try out included: the Laughing Cow, Marisa Kirisame, Miltank, Sucy Manbavaran, Terra Branford, and Vivi Ornitier.

JODIE

While Allison went through the most variations, I actually had the hardest time with Jodie. You see, most tigers in fiction... are already orange. Some of them are white, sure, but then how do you reference one specific white tiger without it becoming just White Tiger Jodie?

1. Lion (Steven Universe). I settled on this until pretty late in development. Unable to think of a good tiger to reference, I went with a lion instead. Yet again, it just kind of looks like I made her a color instead of referencing a specific character, but I hoped that the red cloak matching Steven's shirt might help a little. I was never happy with it, though, especially because it meant that half of the palette swaps were references to 2010s Cartoon Network shows, and I wanted more variety.

There was another that I'd briefly tried out and would eventually go back to, though:

2. Battle Cat (He-Man). One of the few famous tigers to have an instantly recognizable color scheme. I had this idea specifically because of the absolutely hysterical bit from the documentary series The Toys That Made Us about the creation of Battle Cat, which I posted to Twitter once and somehow it became my second most shared tweet ever. (To be fair: it is an extremely good clip.)

Other ideas I didn't try out included: Bianca and Bangle (Animal Crossing), Garfield, Undyne (again), Incineroar, and Tigatron.

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* Technically Enid is actually a were-bunny wearing a human costume for the entire rest of the series after this episode