Although the story does not factor heavily into the game, the character concepts were created based on the ship designs. The team would begin with paper illustrations, followed by logical abilities for those ships, and a character concept that suited the ship's look-and-feel. The first ship sketches were based on popular science fiction, such as SpaceWars! or Battlestar Galactica, and slowly evolved into original designs as they discussed why the ships were fighting each other. Paul Reiche III describes their character creation process, "I know it probably sounds weird, but when I design a game like this, I make drawings of the characters and stare at them. I hold little conversations with them. 'What do you guys do?' And they tell me." By the end of this process, they wrote a short summary for each alien, describing their story and personality.