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Money design

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 10:35
mcneipl
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I am a bit of a lurker here, but I have a question for folks regarding the design of money in games.

It seems there are three ways to differentiate currencies: color, size and numbers.

My question is this. When creating token based money (circle cut outs) is it ok to just use size and numbers but not colors. I need 4 size tokens (1, 5, 10, 100). But I don't want to try and color them different. Is size, combined with the text on the coin sufficient for players to quickly identify which coin is of a specific value?

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 12:07
#1
gpetersen
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What stage is your game? If

What stage is your game? If it's a prototype, I wouldn't worry too much about colours. But for a finished game, you should have as many distinguishing features as possible. Players should be able to look at a big pile of coins and easily pick out the 1s from the 5s and the 10s.

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 12:54
#2
Rick L
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For paper money, colors would

For paper money, colors would be helpful, since you usually don't have different sizes for bills. But coin tokens would only be colored to represent whichever metal they're made of, like copper, silver, & gold. If your coins are all denominations of gold, then it makes sense to have them all the same color, and use both size and numbers to distinguish. You're not going to have "blue" gold and "green" gold right?

Was there some other reason you wanted them to be the same color?

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 14:02
#3
mcneipl
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colors

So I originally had bronze, silver and gold. Though they are actually representing dollars (not some fantasy type game money). So $1 was bronze etc. But I need to add $5 and I was like what color would it be? And this all got me thinking, why is $1 bronze? It doesn't make sense but it does provide an additional que for the player (which I like of course).

As you said, once I add a fourth value what color do I add and does it really add value at that point. After all bronze and gold are very similar.

To answer the other question. I moving out of prototype form and designing the real deal (no more poker chips).

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 14:27
#4
FrankM
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mcneipl wrote:So I originally

mcneipl wrote:
So I originally had bronze, silver and gold. Though they are actually representing dollars (not some fantasy type game money). So $1 was bronze etc. But I need to add $5 and I was like what color would it be? And this all got me thinking, why is $1 bronze? It doesn't make sense but it does provide an additional que for the player (which I like of course).

As you said, once I add a fourth value what color do I add and does it really add value at that point. After all bronze and gold are very similar.

To answer the other question. I moving out of prototype form and designing the real deal (no more poker chips).

If these are dollars, it might as well be slips of paper. But if there is a theme reason not to go that route (Old West or something), you could vary the shapes of the game coins by having pictures of realistic coins with distinct outlines.

1 is a coin
5 is a small stack of coins (cylinder)
10 is an orderly pile (three 3s and one on top)
100 is a jumbled pile of smaller coins (roughly pyramid-shaped)

The closest image I could find to that 10 idea is the right side of http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/stacks-of-goldwrapped-chocolate-coin...

The US does issue official bullion coins in those denominations. The $1 is silver, the $5 and $10 are gold, and the $100 is platinum. Figuring out what would be appropriate at a given point of history would require a bit of research.

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Tue, 03/21/2017 - 19:17
#5
mcneipl
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Excellent feedback, thank you

Excellent feedback, thank you for taking the time to reply.

My game is set in modern times and players are essentially building a factory to produce goods. I prefer tokens or chips over paper due to the ease of shuffling them around. Each turn players make several sales an purchases and must collect and spend money. Chips are just WAY simpler and faster to use. So even if it isn't as thematic it is much more functional and less frustrating.

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