Towerfall is adding an Anita Sarkeesian skin
"We're very excited to immortalise Anita in a small way."
Feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian is getting her own character model in local-multiplayer spectacular Towerfall: Ascension, developer Matt Makes Games has announced.
As part of its upcoming Dark World expansion, developer Matt Thorson is adding 10 new archers. One of these, the Blue Archer, is "loosely based on feminist games critic Anita Sarkeesian," the developer wrote on the game's official blog.
"Anita's work has been an inspiration to the TowerFall team," Thorson stated. "Her 'Tropes vs Women in Games' video series gave us a valuable new lens through which to assess our character designs. TowerFall is about bringing people together, so it's vitally important that the cast of playable characters makes everyone feel invited to join in. Simply put, this wouldn't have occurred to me if not for Anita, and feedback from players has reinforced how important it really is. We're very excited to immortalise Anita in a small way, as the alternate Last of the Order."
The Sarkeesian-based Blue Archer won't be the only new character, however. There will also be a green archer named Vigilante Mask. This new character is actually a protégé of the original Green Archer. Her story is that she's a child who wants to be taken seriously, so she wears a mask.
An alternate pink-clothed character is the Assassin Prince, a man whose father's city was overthrown. In the ensuing uprising, he was left blinded by insurgent forces.
Finally, there's a new orange archer, the Loyal Kingsguard. Emerging from a portal to the Dark World, this is the evil doppelgänger of the previous Orange Archer. Thorton noted this character's design was inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's protagonist Alucard.
For the initiated, Towerfall's lore is very supplementary to its design. All characters in the minimalist platformer play identically, so the skins are just a fun personal preference.
The Dark World expansion is slated for a release in "early 2015," and it will add new stages, characters, power-ups, variants, game modes and more.
In other Sarkeesian news, the famous feminist critic and leading force behind the Tropes vs Women in Games videos will be starting up a couple of new series in 2015. As revealed in the Feminist Frequency's annual report, one series will examine the "representations of men and masculinity in video games" while the other will be "presenting examples of positive female characters in video games."