The new troop profession icons (Part 1)

Arborlands has a large element of labor placement. The basic labor-providing unit in the game is the troop – a grouping of several arborins who can perform tasks. Which tasks the troops carry out and where is up to you, the player!

Because troops have specific professions that play different, critical roles, it’s important that the player can tell them apart on the screen.

To do that, I wanted to come up with a recognizable and distinct set of icons for each profession.

Troop One

Troop One is your main game unit. It is the only troop that will always be visible to you as the player. Troop One can learn tasks from any profession but will never master them. It also has the only icon that is variable. Troop One’s icon color is selectable by the player. I will also implement an icon selection feature so that it can be further customized.

Gatherers

Gatherers venture outside your forests and bring back food that is added to your community larder. Having additional larder will boost your forest populations with various bonuses.

For the Gatherer icon, I wanted to include some form of fruit. I wanted it to be recognizable as a fruit, but not an existing earthly species. I settled on an icon that included both a fruit and an arborin reaching for it. I felt red/magenta was a good color because it is reminiscent of a ripe and sweet fruit.

Growers

Growers are central to the arborin way of life. Much like beavers are driven to cut trees and build dams, arborins are driven to plant trees. Growers apply experience and ingenuity to sharpen this innate impulse into a mastered skill.

I tried representing this skill using a tree, but always felt this was too generic in a game that already has so many trees. In frustration, started doodling to see if I could come up with something more raw and appealing. I ended up drawing the symbol above. I am very happy with it. In contemporary art, leaves are used as a representation of nature in a gentle and idyllic way. This symbol has that, but its asymmetry and near-sickle shape of the stem gives the symbol direction and energy. Naturally 😋, the color for the growers is green.

Thanks for reading, we will pick up on the other three professions next week!