Before creating the concepts for/writing my characters I decided to carry out some research into character writing, as my current experience in writing characters is pretty bare.
 

“After you’ve fleshed out your character, giving them a personality and place in your story, it’s time to map out their arc as it relates to your story. Remember that before this, you should have mapped out the general arc of your story—not your character’s, but the story’s.” (E.M. Welsh, 2019)

 

After reading this, I went back to my character profile templates and thought about the personality of my characters. I then tried to assign my characters varying personalities, or at least personality traits, to try and make them a bit more unique. As well as this, I thought about where in the story /game they would be introduced and how which was something I hadn't thought about in depth before this point.

“Most of all, make sure that if your world allows for exploration, that you make it easy for the player-character to return to the main plot afterwards. This is often done by omitting deadlines and making the journey feel more self-motivated instead driven by external forces, but how you do it is up to you.” (E.M. Welsh, 2019)

We’re planning for our game to have separate levels in the form of islands, but these islands take more of an open world genre approach. However, all that’s currently planned for is the main plot, meaning while exploring the player is carrying out the main plot. However, if a side plot is to be implemented (such as side quests on specific islands), then a quest log with the use of objective markers could be a good (to allow the player to distinguish between the main and side story. Additionally, the main driving point of the main story/plot line is that to progress to the next island, the player is required to collect the main objective on the previous island (this being to solve a puzzle and collect a map fragment).

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“How many characters you fill your world will with may vary depending on the story, but you’ll want to start adding in new characters, like NPCs and side characters that are in your “party” to help further build out your character.” (E.M. Welsh, 2019)

To make the first two levels of our game more achievable, our group decided to include few NPCs in the levels that we will be creating. This works somewhat well with our concept, as the game starts with the first island being attacked/invaded, so fewer NPCs being apparent would make sense (to a certain extent), and then the second island is uninhabited (apart from the sidekick, who is introduced at the start of that level).
However, on the other levels that I will be writing (but will not be created for the game), I plan to include some other characters that would be on the islands (some being more important to the progression of the story, and other not). However, for the most part, these characters will be the NPC crew members, and a few NPCs unique to each island that can be interacted for information, but don’t need to be to progress the story (Like in Mario Odyssey, 2017 where there are a number of characters, but many are there to fill the world, rather than to progress the story).