CHARACTERS are beings that you control and play with in the game. Characters are depicted as individual beings - even if you could have several characters of the same type.
Common characteristics:
Don’t die permanently
Are purchased/hired individually
Can be upgraded
Have attributes and/or abilities
Examples:
Traditional RPG Characters (e.g.heroes in Heroes Charge)
Different starting Character classes you can choose from (e.g. main characters in Order & Chaos Online)
Different cars/vehicles in driving/car games (e.g. cars in CSR Racing 2)
Different collectible "monsters" that you control and develop (e.g. monsters in Puzzle & Dragons)
Hero units in strategy games (e.g. HanSolo in Star Wars Commander or Barbarian King in Clash of Clans)
Character cards in card-based games (e.g. Giant in Clash Royale)
NOTE
A single entity in a game can be classified as only one of the following: CHARACTER, UNIT, or BUILDING! For example, UNITS are not CHARACTERS, as UNITS can die permanently and can be trained/created from e.g. barracks in large numbers over and over again, if you just have enough resources.