Google collaborated with Japanese animation studio Studio 4°C to make the game, because they wanted its artwork and character designs to be done by Japanese artists. The studio started by researching folk tales and designing characters to appeal to audiences of all ages. While the main game was inspired by 16-bit JRPGs, the seven sports minigames Google proposed were inspired by other game genres including shooting gallery, rhythm, and skateboarding games. To connect the champions to each sport, Studio 4°C settled on using historical and mythological figures who used items that complimented the sports. Google originally proposed a fox as the game's protagonist, but Studio 4°C rejected this due to the fox's reputation as a trickster archetype in Japanese culture, and they opted to design a cat named Lucky as a heroic figure instead. Lucky was made a female calico cat both to break away from depictions of women as "scary characters" in Japanese folklore, and because of the traditional prominence of calico cats in the country through items like Maneki-neko ("Beckoning cat") figurines.