Before they were the big-eyed, cherubic spirit companions that fueled a love affair with Kena: Bridge of Spirits, the game's Rot were a homogenous mass of nebulous blobs, an antagonistic force of nature free from identity or charm.

It was during the early prototyping for the game that the Rot as we know it was born.

"In our early prototypes, we had experimented with a more homogenous, ambiguous force of nature," said Hunter Schmidt, developer Ember Lab's animation director. "There was no personality to it. But while prototyping, we were trying to get this force of nature to kind of behave as a wave, and throughout our experimentation, we found that they would break up into these little blobs."

Mike Grier, the studio's chief creative officer, and co-founder, was struck with an idea: What if they gave the blobs a bit of individuality? What if they were characters?

So the team went to Wanchana "Vic" Intrasombat, who did much of the game's original character designs, and asked him to try his hand at turning the amorphous blobs into loveable characters.
"Mike has a great eye for art direction like this, and we just collected a lot of references," Schmidt said. "You can see a lot of inspiration coming from the Studio Ghibli films, the Miyazaki films like Totoro, Spirited Away, even Princess Mononoke.

"You can recognize a lot of the kind of quaint, mystical charm inspired from those movies."

There is also, Schmidt added, that there is also some influence from Pixar.

"Mike, Josh (Grier), we're all big Disney lovers and grew up with those movies," Schmidt said. "The style of the characters is very Pixar, but the choice of the setting, the themes, and story-telling style is more Ghibli."

Already adorable, the Rot designs were given an extra dash of cute with the addition of hats, something that was inspired not by traditional game design but rather a prank.

Back in 2019, Julian Vermeulen, the England-based lead environment and level artist on the game, thought it would be funny to sneak into a build of the game and give every Rot a hat.

"It was a cowboy hat, and he just silently submitted it," Schmidt said. "We were all coming into work the next day, and you could tell who saw the hats when you heard the laughter, which kind of gradually swept through the studio. Everyone was cracking up and taking screen grabs."

About six months later, the team remembered those silly hats and started talking in earnest about adding them into the game.

"We didn't get there right away," he said
Initially, the team designed ten hats, but that grew to 25 designs, and now it's closer to 50.

It's important to note that the hats don't cost any real-world money or buff your Rot in any way. But, Schmidt said, it does make the game better.

"I think putting the hats on your Rot will actually make combat more fun," he said. "It's just so funny seeing these dressed-up, tricked-out Rot just wailing on these poor little enemies."

Kena: Bridge of Spirits has players taking on control of Kena, a young spirit guide, who uses her abilities to help the dead move from the physical to the spiritual world. The game explores themes of letting go, change, and loss.

It was these themes, and little more, that the team initially sent to character designer Intrasombat to come up with the visual look of the game.
During gameplay, Kena finds and collects the Rot, which are the cow-eyed spirit companions of the game. The more you find, the more powerful Kena's magic becomes.

Over the course of the title, Schmidt said, players can collect as many as 100 of the little blobs. And each of them can be given their own little hat.

Hats can be unlocked a few different ways throughout the game. Usually, they're unlocked through discovery. So, like finding a hidden area with a chest. Some, though, are unlocked through progression. Once a hat is unlocked, players can use the game's currency to buy the hats and pop them onto a Rot at one of the hat carts found throughout the game.

Each Rot can wear whatever hat you have unlocked, purchased at a cart, and plopped onto their little heads.

Again, the hats do nothing more than add a bit more charm to an already charming character but done en mass; the effect can be amazing.

"It's hilarious," Schmidt said, "it's absolutely hilarious."

Initially, those hats were being designed by the character designer, who started with more natural designs, but then others started coming up with their own ideas. Now there are hats that look like flowers, or leaves, mushroom caps, animals, a frog, even a fishing bucket hat. Josh Grier's son, a huge fan of paleontology, even inspired a dinosaur hat.
Pre-purchase the game, and you can even claim some fancy celebration hats, which include paper party hats for your Rot, and a delicious-looking cake you can plop on one of their heads.

While the driving force behind the hats was cosmetic, they do touch a bit on the deeper symbolism found in the game.

"The Rot certainly behave as a group and may be hard to tell apart, and yet when you pay attention you can find there are different personalities among them,” Schmidt said. “A theme we kept in mind from the very beginning is this conflict between individuality and interconnectedness. The Rot have always played into that."