A metal coin costs roughly ten times more to produce than a cardboard token. It adds weight to the box. It adds complexity to manufacturing. We chose metal anyway. Here is why, and what it says about how we think about every other component in Lying Pirates.
The feel of premium is a design decision
Most board games use cardboard tokens for currency. They are cheap, lightweight, and perfectly functional. But there is a category of decisions in game design that do not affect how the game works. They affect how it feels to play.
When you pick up a metal coin to make a bet, your brain registers weight. Gravity. Consequence. It is a subtle signal: this bet matters. That is not an accident. That is intent.
‘We did not make Lying Pirates with good enough components. We made it with the components that make players lean forward.‘
Bamboo over plastic
The bamboo cups went through more design iterations than almost any other component. We tried ceramic. We tried leather-wrapped. We kept coming back to bamboo: warm to hold, satisfying sound when shaken, lifts cleanly off the table without dragging dice.
Bamboo is also sustainable. We are not making cheap plastic widgets. We are making things people keep.
The modular tile decision
The board does not have a fixed layout. It is modular magnetic tiles. You build the map before each game, and it is different every time. Fixed boards are cheaper to produce and easier to teach. We chose modular because replayability is the whole point. A game night that looks the same every week stops being a game night.
What light and medium weight actually means
The board game community uses weight to describe complexity. Lying Pirates is light to medium weight: learn it in ten minutes, play it all evening. People who have played it twenty times still find new angles.
We made deliberate choices about what to cut. Every mechanic that made the game harder to teach without making it richer: gone. Premium components cannot compensate for a confusing rulebook. Both have to work.
The custom insert
We added a laser-cut custom insert to the Big Box because we know what happens to games without one: components get loose, cards bend, and after six months it takes five minutes to set up what should take two.
It is the component nobody talks about until the box opens cleanly for the hundredth time. Then they talk about it.
Explore the Big Box →