Characterizing a mute character

Something I’ve given a lot of thought over is how to characterize one of the characters in my visual novel. Tristyn Lirit is a cheeky 11 year old boy that was rendered mute when he was very young during the Fire of Collapse. Since he has no dialogue options, portraying him relies heavily on visuals, whether it be variations in his character sprite or action animations coded into Ren’py.

For example, in one of the scenes I worked on this week, the children are asked to give feedback on a new cake that the owner of the Morella Bakery cooked up. While Adelise gives a food-critique esque response, Callia compliments it with her mouth full, and Noleta simply asks for her favorite food — pasta. All of these responses are spoken dialogue, which Tristyn cannot engage in. As a result, I took special care in giving him a nice sprite that succinctly expresses how he feels about the cake.