While I’m usually the type to take announcements as they are without sliding into full-blown speculation, a recent shot of the King of Tokyo box art had me just a little intrigued by it all. After all, the game that takes the concept of Yahtzee, but with players taking on the role of monsters beating each other up and dominating Tokyo doesn’t really need much improvement since it occupies the niche of the not-too-serious dice-chucking game quite nicely.

But what about the artwork? If you look up at the picture above, the aesthetics for King of Tokyo are pretty cartoony, which pretty much captures the spirit and seriousness of the game nicely. In contrast to that, if you look at the box art at the bottom, you might just wind up wondering what’s going on there.

Instead of the old box art with the monsters going at it in a general melee, this box art features the monsters in their respective sections prominently. There are also some replacements! The Cyber Bunny (basically, a rabbit piloting a giant mech) is replaced by a Cyber Kitty. Cthulhu also seems to have gotten the boot, only to be replaced by the Space Penguin with his dual freeze guns.

On top of all that, the tone of the new artwork makes the game more like a serious monster’s brawl than the cartoony aesthetic. If nothing else, the art is indisputably better.

What this doesn’t tell us is whether we’re in for a second edition of King of Tokyo, a cosmetic facelift, or merely artwork that’s dedicated towards a different market. After all, if they’re throwing in new monsters and new abilities into the mix, that might make the first King of Tokyo expansion’s specialized monster ability cards incompatible with this newest slate of monsters.

But this post is mostly pure speculation. The core rules of the game aren’t going to change any if you’re in it for just the mechanics. The question then becomes which edition people prefer: cartoony artwork or more of the sleeker serious business stuff.