Warcraft Rumble Devs Talk Bringing Minis To Life

Minis are at the core of Warcraft Rumble, and its physical miniatures that first inspired the title's creation. The aesthetics of Warcraft Rumble's miniature units, taking cues from tabletop, were not only key to its development, but continue to be at the core of its appeal.

Warcraft Rumble got itself a section in Warcraft's 30th anniversary direct, and that spot included a number of announcements. Rumble will be getting a PC port, releasing in beta on December 10, as well as a number of monetization changes and the implementation of Split Leaders. This segment also placed special emphasis on the game's minis, showing fans the display of physical miniatures printed and painted by developers at Blizzard—all based on Rumble's minis. The Best War Games sat down with executive producer Vik Saraf and art director Jeremy Collins to learn more about the history of these minis and their influence on the game.

Warcraft Rumble Devs Speak On The Importance Of Minis To The Game's Art And Development

How Minis Make Warcraft Rumble's Art Style Work

Despite bringing Warcraft Rumble closer to World of Warcraft via the latter's upcoming PC port, both Saraf and Collins highlighted how Rumble would retain its stylistic independence. Part of the reason behind Rumble's toy-like, miniature art style is for visual clarity, especially on small mobile screens—something Collins explained at length.

"For us, you need to be able to look at any unit on the field at any given point and go 'Oh, that's the orc,' or 'That's the footman because I see silver and blue—and I see green and red for the orc.'

We very much take the platform that we're going to be presenting the game on into consideration when we're defining those art styles. If we were to move Rumble more towards the WoW art style, I think it would actually suffer a little bit on mobile, because the screen is so small, and it's not built for that level of detail."

Saraf concurred, saying "When you're looking at a mobile screen, which is notably smaller, you need the colors to pop more and have a little distinction behind them." He then went on to reference the importance of Rumble's miniatures to the game's creation, saying that minis were part of its "original conceit." Collins went into further detail on this, stating that "Warcraft to me is hand-crafted. Because all of World of Warcraft is hand-painted textures, a literal artisan has touched every single character—painted in those details for you."

Both developer statements here show how important the concept of minis is to Warcraft Rumble; the game's units go out of their way to pursue this tactility. Not only does this art direction help units stick out on a small screen but it also ties into the lore of Warcraft and the game's development.

Warcraft Rumble's Devs Have A Lot To Say About Physical Minis

Warcraft Rumble's gameplay and focus on minis appeal a lot to fans of miniatures, be they fans of TTRPGs like D&D or players of wargames like Warhammer. Both Saraf and Collins had a lot to say about the subject, and Saraf shared an anecdote about miniatures at Blizzard, though he emphasized that there were no plans for a physical miniatures game:

"One of our colleagues that we work with took it upon himself to take the 3D blueprints and print out a bunch of minis, and he actually went ahead and made a Horde vs. Alliance chessboard!"

"I think this is something a lot of us have a lot of interest in, but there are no official plans yet."

Collins added that they were "huge fans" of Blizzard releasing STL files for Warcraft Rumble's minis. He also mentioned how Rumble's devs "do all sorts of wargaming, like Warhammer 40K stuff and fun miniature painting," emphasizing the team's passion for the subject.

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