icons - How to represent level of difficulty while selecting a game?

I am working on a menu to select from various (3) game variants shown from top to bottom, each variant offering different difficulty levels.

The difficulty will be selected by swiping (touch input mobile) on one variant to left or right.

Now I am stuck how to indicate the difficulty level graphically as I want to avoid labels such as easy/medium/... I have a bar display in mind, which will show stacked bars, each bar representing a higher level still being able to show max. difficulty level. Stacked bars also will only work if arranged vertically (not to mix up with progress indication).

So what are other options to show a difficulty level on limited screen space?

Answer

How about each button showing a different number of daggers/guns/bombs? One for easy, two for medium and three for hard. The actual weapon/icon would depend on the context of your game.

Or, if you don't have a lot of room have a different weapon/icon for each level.

Obviously this only works if your game involves combat of some kind.

As always icons don't have to be representative as long as their meaning can be easily discovered and they are distinct from each other.