Tokyo × Stockholm, how we designed the characters
April 25, 2026
by PlagiotOS · Head of Development
The four starter characters in Superstar Legacy (Luna, Echo, Blaze, Riot) look the way they look on purpose. People keep asking the same question. Are they Japanese? Korean? European? what is this. The answer is yes.
The brief was “wrong on both sides”
When we started the character design, our reference board was ridiculous. Tokyo street fashion zines, mid-2000s Stockholm minimalism, K-pop stage looks, indie sleaze, vaporwave, oversized 90s windbreakers, a single screenshot of an Akira poster nobody could find again.
We kept asking ourselves which lane we were in. Eventually we just stopped picking. Our characters live somewhere between Harajuku on a Saturday and Södermalm on a Sunday. They look slightly Asian, slightly Western, slightly somewhere else entirely. Music doesn't have a passport anymore. The characters shouldn't either.
Each starter is a sound, not a costume
The four artists you can pick from in onboarding aren't skins. They're moods. Each one has a starter genre, a different palette, and a different vibe in their voice (including the audio voice).
- Luna. Euphoric, indie pop. Sunday-pop chemistry-set energy. The character your mom would also like.
- Echo. Dreamy, ambient. The bus-window-at-night one. Songs that put you to sleep on purpose.
- Blaze. Melancholy, lo-fi. Piano keys and rainy days. The one we made first and almost named “sad boy” before growing up.
- Riot. Aggressive, punk producer. The one who blows the speakers at 1am. Loud is the point.
You don't get locked in. You can take Luna's starter and write punk on it. The character is the door, not the cage.
Why the visual mix matters
Pop music is the most globally remixed thing humans make. K-pop steals from Atlanta. Atlanta steals from London. London steals from Lagos. Lagos steals from Tokyo. By the time a sound makes it to a teenager's For You page, it's passed through six cultures and a TikTok algorithm.
Drawing characters that look like one specific place would have made the game smaller than the music it's about. So we drew the middle.
What's next
We're working on more characters for after launch, including a couple that lean further into specific cultural aesthetics so the mix gets richer, not flatter. If that's the kind of work you do, come say hi. We love collaborators.
PlagiotOS