The iconography is one of the most essential aspects of any quality game, whether you play casino games, console FPS games, or even tabletop RPGs. The symbols within the game provide guidance, a kind of in-game language that helps you navigate the fictional world, uncover clues, and claim rewards.
Symbols are even more important when you play real money casino games because each symbol has its own value, and in games like slots, the right combination can reward you handsomely. To explore the most popular game types that include iconography, the types of icons you will encounter, and how the icons set the tone, dive in.
Popular Games that Include Iconography
There is no game without iconography. This system is included in everything from board games to first-person shooter games on consoles, and, of course, online casino games. Even so, we turned our attention to the three most popular game types that include iconography and symbolism.
Casino Games
There is nothing quite like placing a real money bet on your favorite casino game and watching the slot symbols or card symbols come together to land you a massive payout. While there are thousands of different casino games with themes varying from the Wild West to space travel, there are some common threads concerning their symbols.
The most commonly used slot symbols are precious gems, like diamonds and rubies, fruits, like cherries and peaches, and numbers like 7s. On the other hand, real money casino card games include all the typical card symbols like diamonds, hearts, spades, and clubs.
Board Games
Board games are the ultimate social gaming experience, regardless of your skill level or even the type of board game you are playing. The classic board games may be Monopoly, Scrabble, Sorry, and Guess Who? but, the board game landscape is constantly developing, with D&D adventure games, and board games inspired by video games, like Baldur’s Gate.
Each board game has its own set of rules that you can learn when you start playing it, but the iconography is what makes them so interesting. Whether the symbols are more basic, like a circle, triangle, square, and diamond, or more complex, like fire, ice, earth, and wind, they create the adventure rules for you.
Console Games
Console games have been popular amongst gamers since the 1980s, in large part thanks to the intriguing and immersive symbolism that they utilize in their game design. People, regardless of their experience playing video games, can identify on sight symbols like the mushroom from Mario Bros, the Assassin’s Creed symbol, or the Tekken player icons.
Once you get into the groove of playing console games, you will start recognizing certain symbols and icons across different games and franchises. For example, the + symbol usually represents a healing feature, while the lightning bolt symbol represents a boost in power.
Types of Icons in Games
While the visual icons are the ones we all associate with symbolism in games, they are far from the only ones. In fact, the auditory and narrative game icons are just as important to the quality of your gaming experience as the visual ones. To figure out what the difference is, keep reading.
Visual
The visual game icons are the most self-explanatory game icons– they are the symbols that you encounter on the game map and within the game itself. They help you differentiate between the different rewards, boosts, bonuses, and potential dangers in casino games, console games, and board games alike.
The visual symbols are easy to spot and identify, and they typically have colors that contrast with the background of the game, so you can differentiate between them easily. They are the in-game symbols that give a face to all of the concepts, like healing, taking damage, hitting a payline, and getting a bonus.
Auditory
Auditory symbols within a game are much more subtle than visual ones, because they appear only as specific sounds. As they are symbols, they aren’t a part of the game soundtrack, which means they pop up in specific situations and last only a second or two. These symbols are usually louder or sharper noises that stand out from the background music.
You can expect to hear them when you hit a winning combination of symbols, get a high-paying hand of cards, or even when you fail a level.
Narrative
Narrative symbols are the rarest of all three, and they typically aren’t included in casino games. Narrative symbols appear as a part of the storyline in games like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones, where you have to uncover a mystery or solve a case. They are included in in-game letters, books, and TV screens to make the game more immersive.
Key Takeaways
The iconography used in games helps you understand the rules of the game while making the entire experience more immersive for you. Though the symbols used can vary from one game to the next, the basics on which they are built stay the same, making them easy to understand.