I am designing a Parallax RPG game for android. It will be small team online, so like parties of less then 10. I am thinking about a weapon system and would like some opinions. The graphics are similar to limbo (example below). Backgrounds are dynamic with different colors and maps are generated by a custom tile editor. The hero will have skills that you use that are of the magical persuasion :p using elements like fire, ice, shadow (a cool purple), and wind/earth. My idea of a weapon system is to have dynamic weapons with random attributes given on drop (depending on monster and a RNG) these attributes can be strength, speed, defense, or for example +10 to ice attacks. What I want to know is should I skin several different weapons or have a static skin that fits the theme. Skinning weapons may look odd on a dark character.

Any ideas and opinions are welcome!

Here is the system I developed for my game.
(File upload was not working)
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/597005142541407470/B7ABDAA49773068C28160AC91F458ED7064A1E00/

Thanks, thats actually really helpful. Its nice to see what others are using for attributes. My biggest concern is do i skin different swords or have a static sword with dynamic attributes. Any thoughts? would a skinned sword even go with my theme?

I would say that you have to be extremely careful with the aesthetic of your game as it is one of the most important elements in the entire design. If the aesthetic isn't consistent, then it will - subconsciously, if not consciously - jar your player out of the engagement they have with the game. If they disengage with the game (essentially come back into reality against their will rather than remaining in the immersive state the game lulls them into), then they will stop playing it.

From the sound of things, you have a game where the foreground all shares a singular coloration as distinct from the background. If this is the case, I would advise you to keep it that way. Don't ruin the aesthetic merely to graft a game feature onto the well-rounded, existing game.

If you are looking for a way to make weapons have different types of aesthetic indications as to their characteristics, there are multiples ways of doing that besides just the color, though the methods would take a bit more work. 1) Have the weapons actually portray a distinct texture unique to the class, type, or element. 2) Have visual effects accompany the weapon based on its element, but let the colors all be the same as the foreground color, i.e. an ice sword has black snowflakes radiate off of it before vanishing.

However you incorporate the design into your game, emphasize the aesthetic as much as you can. Your difficulty will primarily lie in coming up with ways of maintaining the aesthetic while still making the dynamics unique enough for your player to recognize and understand. You don't want them to be confused because they can't tell what a texture is indicating or because they can't tell the difference between two different effects, etc.

I think some particle effects might fit as well.

Ice might drop a subtle fog effect.

Fire, as usual, slightly deforms its surroundings.

Defense looks bulky.

Others... not so easy.

Even sticking to the single-colour foreground aesthetic, you have a lot of room to play with shapes. Many common weapons have very distinctive silhouettes - for example, a sword, an axe, a scythe, and a spear all have completely different silhouettes, and should be easy to distinguish from one another on shape alone.

I would say that you have to be extremely careful with the aesthetic of your game as it is one of the most important elements in the entire design. If the aesthetic isn't consistent, then it will - subconsciously, if not consciously - jar your player out of the engagement they have with the game. If they disengage with the game (essentially come back into reality against their will rather than remaining in the immersive state the game lulls them into), then they will stop playing it.

From the sound of things, you have a game where the foreground all shares a singular coloration as distinct from the background. If this is the case, I would advise you to keep it that way. Don't ruin the aesthetic merely to graft a game feature onto the well-rounded, existing game.

If you are looking for a way to make weapons have different types of aesthetic indications as to their characteristics, there are multiples ways of doing that besides just the color, though the methods would take a bit more work. 1) Have the weapons actually portray a distinct texture unique to the class, type, or element. 2) Have visual effects accompany the weapon based on its element, but let the colors all be the same as the foreground color, i.e. an ice sword has black snowflakes radiate off of it before vanishing.

However you incorporate the design into your game, emphasize the aesthetic as much as you can. Your difficulty will primarily lie in coming up with ways of maintaining the aesthetic while still making the dynamics unique enough for your player to recognize and understand. You don't want them to be confused because they can't tell what a texture is indicating or because they can't tell the difference between two different effects, etc.

Great answer! I think i will incorporate most of this in my game!

Edit: another question - Do people generally create a new sprite per weapon and have an animation sheet per weapon or do they use coded translations (ie. rotate, moveTo ect...) I am thinking animation sheet would be the best for me because there are not going to be a ton of weapons and it gives me more control.

If you are looking for a way to make weapons have different types of aesthetic indications as to their characteristics, there are multiples ways of doing that besides just the color, though the methods would take a bit more work. 1) Have the weapons actually portray a distinct texture unique to the class, type, or element. 2) Have visual effects accompany the weapon based on its element, but let the colors all be the same as the foreground color, i.e. an ice sword has black snowflakes radiate off of it before vanishing.

Shameless plug, this might help with these ideas: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/creative/visual-arts/the-total-beginner%E2%80%99s-guide-to-better-2d-game-art-r2959

I think it would be interesting if you each element had it's own weapon type associated with it, so swords are fire weapons, scythes are shadow weapons, axes are earth weapons, etc. So between that and the effects it would be pretty obvious what kind of weapon you had.

In terms of shape like SwiftCoder was talking about, historically hand weapons have an enormous variety that fiction hasn't really tapped into:

http://www.himalayan-imports.com/khukuri-history.html

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/home.php

http://impressivemagazine.com/2013/06/18/brutal-medieval-weapons/

Very helpful, I do like the idea of elements for different weapons. Ive started on some ideas ill post here when their implemented to see if they should be fine tuned.

Check out what I went with so far swords are "ice" and create ice skills. They remain black until they start to attack then they turn color (based on element) and there will be several skill per element.