Most fantasy games use gold. A small number don't, and the ones that don't tend to have opinions about why. Currency choice is worldbuilding. The money a character earns shapes the world they live in more than almost any other design decision. This piece from the team at Tyrian Games covers fictional currencies in games, what they signal about their worlds, and why HAWKER uses ichor ducats instead of gold.
TL;DR
- Currency in fantasy games is usually gold by default, but unique currencies do specific design work.
- Games with notable unique currencies include Hollow Knight's geo, Dark Souls' souls, Hades' darkness and gemstones, Outer Wilds' no currency at all.
- HAWKER uses ichor ducats, a copper-ichor alloy currency where the ichor is literally alien fungal excretion turned into money.
- Unique currencies that link to the game's lore produce richer worldbuilding than abstract gold.
- The currency-as-lore principle is underused in indie gaming and is a design opportunity for studios willing to commit to it.
Why most games use gold
Four reasons gold is the default.
Zero explanation needed. Players understand gold instantly. It maps onto real-world wealth concepts without requiring onboarding. No tutorial time spent on "this is the money, it works like you'd expect."
Cross-game compatibility. A player moving between fantasy RPGs carries muscle memory about gold. Treating currency the same way across games reduces friction.
Narrative neutrality. Gold doesn't say anything. It's just wealth. This is useful for games where the wealth's origin or meaning isn't central to the story.
Production efficiency. A gold icon is easy to communicate visually. A specific fictional currency requires design work on the icon, the in-world explanation, the UI integration. Gold is the path of least resistance.
These reasons are legitimate. Gold is a good choice for games whose stories aren't about money. For games whose stories are about money (shopkeeper roguelites, debt-based games, economy-heavy management sims), gold leaves design value on the table.
Games that use unique currencies well
Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017) uses geo, small orbs collected from defeated enemies. Geo feels specifically bug-world-y. It fits the game's insect aesthetic. The name signals "this isn't your world's money" without requiring heavy explanation.
Dark Souls (FromSoftware, 2011) uses souls as currency. Souls are both the experience points (you spend them to level up) and the buying currency (you spend them at merchants). This double-function reinforces one of the game's central themes: everything is borrowed time, and every transaction has existential weight.
Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020) uses multiple currencies, each tied to specific mechanics. Darkness for Mirror of Night upgrades. Gemstones for the Court Contractor. Obols for in-run purchases. Keys for weapon unlocks. The proliferation of currencies lets different game loops have their own economic logic.
Dave the Diver (Mintrocket, 2023) uses money alongside specific resource currencies (fish of specific types, ingredient categories). The layered economy fits the game's systems-stacking design.
Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019) has no currency at all. The game's economy is entirely information-based: knowledge is your progression. This is a currency choice by absence, and it signals the game's specific commitment to exploration rather than accumulation.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020) uses bells. The name and the general cuteness signal the cozy tone. Bells don't feel like serious wealth; they feel like the currency of a community that isn't quite like our world.
Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe, 2016) uses gold as its primary currency, but the Star Tokens and Qi Gems function as specialised second and third currencies for specific systems. Partial use of the unique-currency principle.
Pyre (Supergiant Games, 2017) uses talismans, masks, and other named items rather than abstract gold. The game's economy is built around specific objects, not accumulation of an abstract resource.
HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026) uses ichor ducats. Details below.
What HAWKER's ichor ducats are
The specific fictional economy is worth unpacking because it's a case study in currency-as-lore.
Ichor is the amber substance excreted by the mycelial roots of the akhlotic fungus native to the Laustic homeworld Austica. It's a literal waste product of alien biology. On Austica, ichor is the primary food source for the Laustic themselves; a few drops a day sustains them. It's also an incredibly efficient fuel source. The Laustic used it to power their entire civilisation, including the starships like the Caladrius that crashed into Ysward.
The Fall. When the Caladrius crashed approximately 125 years before HAWKER's timeline, it spilled thousands of tonnes of ichor across Ysward, mostly over the regions of Keridann and Lechtenval.
Yseans discover ichor. The humans who didn't know the Laustic were aliens found the ichor, studied it, tested it. They experimented with smelting it into an alloy with iron or coating it over blades and tools. The results had greater durability than any known steel. Burning it as a fuel was far more efficient than peat or coal.
Mining expansion and currency. In the short years before the Fall, mining operations in Keridann expanded to exploit this new resource. Exports to Aurelia began. To mark this new era, the official currency of Ysward was minted with a copper-ichor alloy: the Ysean Ducat.
A hundred years later. Despite the Laustic reclaiming much of their lost ichor, veins remain throughout Ysward. The ducats are still legal tender. But the humans minting and spending them still don't know their currency is literally alien mushroom byproduct.
This is the fictional economy at HAWKER's centre. The debt to Ankou is paid in ichor ducats. The player's shop transactions are in ichor ducats. Every coin the player collects is a piece of the game's secret sci-fi premise hidden inside a fantasy economy.
Why currency-as-lore matters
Four reasons the ichor-ducat approach is worth the design effort.
It makes every transaction meaningful. In a game with gold, buying a sword is a numerical transaction. In HAWKER, buying a sword with ichor ducats involves a piece of alien biological matter changing hands. Nobody in the fiction understands this. Players who piece the backstory together do. Every purchase is a small reminder of the world's underlying strangeness.
It reinforces the sci-fi-as-fantasy reveal structure. HAWKER uses the pattern where the game looks like fantasy and reveals itself as sci-fi across the run. The currency is one of the constant-background clues. Players who notice early have a jump on the full reveal.
It gives Ankou specific mechanical meaning. The debt to Ankou is in ichor ducats. Ankou wants ichor. Why does Ankou want ichor specifically? Because he's an alien who needs to feed himself, power his civilisation, and build a beacon to call home. The currency-as-food connection isn't arbitrary; it's how the narrative's central tension works.
It roots the game's economy in its fiction. Gold is interchangeable across fantasy games. Ichor is specifically HAWKER. The currency carries the game's identity into every transaction. Players remember specific fictional currencies in ways they don't remember generic gold.
How to design currency-as-lore
Four principles from playtest and study of other games.
Connect the currency to something the antagonist wants. Ankou wants ichor. The player collects ichor to pay Ankou. The loop closes. Games where the currency and the primary antagonist's goals align produce richer economic play than games where money is generic.
Don't explain everything immediately. HAWKER doesn't tell you in Act 1 that ichor is alien mushroom excretion. That information arrives across the thirty-day run through lore fragments, NPC dialogue, and environmental hints. The slow reveal is part of the currency's emotional weight.
Show the currency physically. Ichor ducats are visible items in HAWKER. Players see them, pick them up, watch them accumulate in their inventory. The physical presence matters. Currencies that only appear as numbers in a UI feel lighter than currencies that have visual weight.
Let the currency's source matter. In HAWKER, ichor has ecological meaning (alien fungal byproduct), historical meaning (minted after the Fall), political meaning (the Aurelian expedition wants it too), and personal meaning (the Hawker's debt is denominated in it). A well-designed currency carries multiple layers of meaning at once.
A first-hand Hawker design note
One of our decisions in 2024 was whether to expose the ichor-is-alien-fungus connection to the player early or late. The early-exposure version made the connection clear in Act 1. The late-exposure version kept it implied until Act 3.
We went with late exposure. The playtest data supports this choice. Players who finish the game with the full ichor backstory have a specific retroactive reaction: "so the debt was literally about alien food the whole time." That reaction only lands if the connection isn't spelled out upfront.
This is the broader principle we've applied across HAWKER's worldbuilding. Specific lore fragments are available to players who look. The full picture assembles for players who pay attention. Players who skim still get a complete experience but miss the deeper reframe. Players who invest get the deeper reframe as a reward. The currency-as-lore approach requires this kind of tiered reveal to land properly.
Common mistakes in currency-as-lore design
Four failure modes to watch for.
Too many currencies. Hades manages four currencies but it's a tightly-designed game. Most indie studios should cap at two or three to avoid splitting the player's economic attention. HAWKER uses ichor ducats plus specific rare materials; we considered more and pulled back.
Currency names that sound made up. "Thrillion-crystals" sounds fake. "Ichor ducats" sounds like it could be a real historical currency, because "ducat" is a real historical currency word and "ichor" is a real Greek term. Pairing fictional specifics with real-adjacent vocabulary anchors the word.
Currency without visual presence. If players never see the currency as a physical object, the lore connection stays abstract. Show the coins. Let players see them in inventories, in NPCs' hands, in loot piles.
Currency that doesn't interact with the game's main tension. Gold in a game about dragon-slaying is fine because the two are disconnected. Ichor in a game about an ichor-hungry death-god is better because the tension and the economy pull the same thread.
Where currency-as-lore could go
Four directions for future games that want to push the pattern.
Dynamic currency. Currency whose value shifts based on in-game events. A plague outbreak devalues normal currency and spikes the value of medicine. HAWKER touches this but doesn't commit fully.
Currency that ages. Coins that become more valuable or less valuable as time passes within a run. Could suit a thirty-day arc.
Currency as story telescope. Each denomination carries a different piece of backstory visible only on close inspection. The player's relationship to money becomes a reading mechanic.
Currency from multiple cultures. Multiple civilisations with incompatible currencies, and navigating them is a mechanic. Kenshi approaches this; few others do.
FAQ
What's the currency in HAWKER?
Ichor ducats. A copper-ichor alloy minted as the official currency of Ysward before the Fall. Still legal tender a hundred years later despite most users not knowing ichor is alien biology.
What is ichor?
In HAWKER's fiction, ichor is the amber substance excreted by the akhlotic fungus native to the Laustic homeworld. It's a literal alien fungal byproduct that humans misunderstand as a precious resource.
Why did Yseans adopt ichor as currency?
The Caladrius crash spilled thousands of tonnes of ichor across Ysward. Mining expanded, ichor was smelted into an alloy, and the duchy minted it as currency to mark a new era of prosperity just before the Fall.
What games have unique currencies worth studying?
Hollow Knight's geo, Dark Souls' souls, Hades' multi-currency system, Animal Crossing's bells. Each does different design work with its currency.
Does the currency matter to HAWKER's story?
Yes. The debt to Ankou is in ichor ducats. Ankou wants ichor because he's an alien who needs it to survive and to power his equipment. The currency and the primary antagonist's goals are the same thread.
What's the literary source for "ichor"?
Greek mythology. Ichor is the blood of the gods. HAWKER uses it in a sci-fi sense, but the word's mythological weight is part of why it fits the game's semi-classical register.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps to the demo-line currency for Hawker. The ichor ducats, the debt, the basic trading economy, and the Aurelian expedition's interest in ichor are all shown in the first seven days. Specific late-game revelations about the ichor's biology and the Laustic hunger sit behind this wall.
Closing
Currency is worldbuilding. The money your characters earn says something about the world they live in, whether you design it to or not. HAWKER's ichor ducats do specific design work that generic gold couldn't: they root the economy in the game's sci-fi premise, they reinforce the reveal structure, they give the antagonist a clean motivation. If you're designing a fantasy game whose story is partly about money, the currency question is worth more than the default answer.
Next read: Shop economy as constraint optimisation, or The debt to Ankou.
Further reading
For related context see Breton folklore in modern games.