Prototype art

A prototype needs exactly enough art to be playable, and no more. In early testing that usually means no art at all: text, simple shapes, and color coding carry the whole game. Art becomes useful only when it does mechanical work, such as helping players tell card types apart at a glance or making a board region instantly recognizable.

When you do want placeholder visuals, cheap sources abound. Free icon libraries offer thousands of game-ready symbols under permissive licenses. Public domain art and free stock photos fill card frames. Clip art, rough sketches, and AI-generated placeholders all work for testing. The single rule is that placeholder art must be clearly temporary in your own mind, because none of it can ship in a commercial product without proper licensing.

Beware the placeholder trap. Once a prototype has attractive art, two things go wrong: you become reluctant to cut cards that look nice, and playtesters start giving feedback about the art instead of the game. Some designers deliberately keep prototypes plain through heavy iteration for exactly this reason, adding visual identity only once the card list is stable.

The exception is pitching. A prototype headed to a publisher still does not need finished art, and publishers say so explicitly, since they will commission their own. It needs clean graphic design: readable text, consistent layout, and clear iconography. Crowdfunding is the opposite case, where near-final art is required because backers buy with their eyes.