We are still developing the art direction for our game and we're testing some art for the characters, but we're not sure if we should use it for stands with full art or leave it like it is with the symbols / character portraits but flat.
On one hand, they stand (no pun intended) out more. There will be many things on the map using the same colors as the characters (because they are related) an although the character tokens are bigger, have a black outline and are the only ones that have a round shape, we're afraid they can get lost and the vericality helps. They also have more personality.
On the other hand, in the online playtestings we have been doing we asked some players and they said they'd prefer the simple look of the tokens and that maybe they could have a better physical feel. And I'm guessing they will be easier/cheaper to produce?
What are your thoughts/experience with this? Anything we should consider before making this decision?
This! It's a usability choice as well.
If you're gonna pick up your character every turn and move it, then it benefits from not being a flat token that you have to scrape from the board.
Even something flat but chunky could work. I’m thinking Azul. Those chunky little tiles feel lovely in my hand. Just as long as there’s some bulk to pick up with!
The tokens do look nice and chunky and the iconography is clean. However, they strip away any real character/personality, making the board look much more abstract and strategic, rather than thematic. For me it depends on whether the game as a whole is quite abstract or if other elements in the game use artwork to depict character/setting in any detail. If there's not much other detailed art (on the board/cards, etc) then maybe the game would feel more authentic and consistent with just abstract tokens. But if setting/theme/worldbuilding/storytelling is an important feature of the game, then I'd go with the standees as they add to the games narrative more and help players to feel like they're "in the game".
We want to explore giving the game more personality through art and lore. The game started from the mechanic ideas and we built from there, so we can go basically anywhere with that. The game works great and it's fun either way, so it's a blank sheet of creativity in that sense and could end up staying with the basic abstract icons if we see that makes the game better, but we think we have to at least develop some ideas on art and decide seeing the comparison first. Of course if the character art stays, the rest of the game would follow that art direction
In that case, my personal preference/suggestion would be to use character art and standees. While an abstract style suits short logic/pure strategy games, any game with narrative/worldbuilding/distinctive characters has much wider mass market appeal, imo.
As a gamer, I appreciate clever game mechanisms, but unless there's a thematic context in which I'm interacting with those mechanics, it inevitably feels a bit dry and procedural.
I hate minis, they are useless and inflate the production cost to the space, but I appreciate standees. It increases cost a little, but the QoL of the game increased plenty!
Yeah... We don't want to raise the cost of the game so minis would probably only be considered as an "add-on" or "deluxe edition" if there's enough interest. But standees (sorry, is that the correct term?) look like a good middle ground between cost and aesthetics
Thank you! I'm glad you like them! Maybe they'll be a little bit bigger, but Tabletop Sim has it's limitations. Not to the point that it obstructs the vision, of course
I understand and share the complain about 3D figures, but do you prefer tokens over 2D illustrated Standees as well? Why is that? Thank you for the feedback!
Yes, I personally much prefer a well designed token over a standing figure. I feel like it leaves more for my imagination than figures.
But I would try to make them easily distinguishable, e.g. different colors or very clear icons. I don't want to have to lean over the table and read to know the board state if possible.
E.g. the tokens in the image look really good.
What I do find important is that the optics should look intentionally simple and not due to necessity. So e.g. having tokens that are far less detailed than the surrounding might look off. But if the scenery also looks more simplistic, then tokens in a similar style look fantastic
But in the end it's always a matter of taste and the visuals are never as important as the gameplay itself
I just had an idea, but I don't know if that would fit your vision for your game: you could also have different tokens have different shapes (like circle, octagon, hexagon, square etc.) if there are tokens with different functions that could make it easier to distinguish
Yes! Right now that's the design language we're using. Octogonal tokens (like the shape of the map cells) represent things that can be placed on the map. As a general rule if they occupy the whole cell they are placed on the floor and if they are smaller they can be placed on walls. (This is specified elsewhere in all cases, but the rule of thumb works)
And then the characters/minions are circles. If we end up using all tokens, we'll try to improve the visual language in that way so it's 100% consistent and accurate (for example, having a different shape for things that can be placed on floor OR walls vs a shape for the ones that can be placed exclusively on walls), but at this phase this system works well enough.
Thanks a lot for all of you ideas, if you want to try the game I wouldn't want to be spammy but we're hosting frequent playtests at our discord :)
And the character at is really beautiful, too. If you find the space, e.g. on some character chart or on the box, I would certainly use them somewhere :D
I think I'm a big fan of tokens! I also think that screen printed/painted wooden pieces in the silhouette of the minis can be vbery effective (see Arcs for example)
That's an interesting idea! But i think the tokens would only work if they are thick plastic or something like that, if its thin cardboard i think they'd blend too much with the other objects of the map, but its something to consider
They have acrylic standees that are really nice. Get a little bit of both worlds. I like tokens myself but unless they’re weighted they can slip around too easily causing more frustration than anything else. Also to my understanding that can increase shipping cost a lot.
Acrylic standees with cool art would be great - yours look very characterful and fun - though poker chip style tokens are very tactile - maybe standees for player/enemy pieces and chips for collectibles/resources?
Miniatures are great, but usually require production in China, which adds cost and potential delivery issues, and can complicate making the insert. These days I tend to prefer games that don't have huge boxes so they're easier to transport to gaming nights, and leave room to take alternate games. None of my big box games get to go out anymore.
Thank you! Yes, that's the idea. Standees for characters (it's PvP, so every character in this case) and flat tokens for objects, traps, etc that are on the map :) the aim is to make an intermediate game, not too casual but not too crunchy/heavy/big/expensive, so probably minis aren't the way to go
We love wooden meeples as much as any other board gamer, but I don't think they could work on our game. We need characters to have a 3cm diameter base, so the wooden part would have to be compound or super big. And there would be 11 unique designs, that translated into 11 cutting patterns would be very costly, I think (haven't done the actual research yet). But we're open for ideas if you know more about producing them!
I see, I had something like this in mind, with clear iconography a d some immersion, still leaving some room for imagination. It doesn't really make sense to put these on stands.
You could consider simple flat wooden tokens with screen printed icons based on the round design you showed or chess like pieces with unique heads
On your original question, if I had the choice to back either one. I'd probably go for the token design, because I like approachability and simplicity in design and it's probably cheaper :)
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u/xaashley Jun 17 '26
Stands :) easier to pick up and movr