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The White Box
The White Box is a learning, planning, and prototyping tool for tabletop game designers. Inside you'll find The White Box Essays, a book of 25 essays on game design and production. It covers subjects like where to find a great concept, how to use randomness, what to ask playtesters, whether you should self-publish, how to crowdfund wisely, and what to do at game conventions. The White Box also contains a ton of components to get you designing right away: --3 counter sheets with 71 pre-printed and 49 blank counters --150 small wooden cubes in six colors --36 wooden meeples in six colors --6 giant wooden cubes in six colors --12 six-sided dice in six colors --110 plastic discs in eight colors --If you believe designing board and card games sounds challenging, rewarding, and fun, The White Box is for you.
Hardcover
Published October 31, 2017
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 27, 2019
Jeremy's essays are more "how to get your idea from being an idea to store shelves" and the guest essays are more "how to think of making your game disability-accessible" and "how to find a delineation in how the games pacing's determine fun" which... in my opinion, the last two essays didn't really need to be there. The accessible one is useful, but the GamePlayWrite publisher essay and the acts one isn't useful (again, IMO).
And Jeremy's main essay(s) don't really teach you how to be a better designer. They're abstract in "do a lot of play-tests, try to understand that while you want to be balanced, your balance may make the game less 'fun'," and the like... but isn't a "game design" workshop/lesson thing that I was expecting.
Also the Kindle Version doesn't come with the "Game Design Workshop in a Box"/meeples and stuff that they include in the physical version. You can get those through Tabletop Simulator on Steam (or GoG, I guess but it's on the Steam Workshop so... not sure it's possible to mod them into non-Steam versions) but I haven't messed around with those to see how "useful" they are.
It's not a bad thing for $7 to read through, but I'm not sure if it's truly "helpful" for designers beyond thinking of how to get your idea from being an idea to store-shelves.
And Jeremy's main essay(s) don't really teach you how to be a better designer. They're abstract in "do a lot of play-tests, try to understand that while you want to be balanced, your balance may make the game less 'fun'," and the like... but isn't a "game design" workshop/lesson thing that I was expecting.
Also the Kindle Version doesn't come with the "Game Design Workshop in a Box"/meeples and stuff that they include in the physical version. You can get those through Tabletop Simulator on Steam (or GoG, I guess but it's on the Steam Workshop so... not sure it's possible to mod them into non-Steam versions) but I haven't messed around with those to see how "useful" they are.
It's not a bad thing for $7 to read through, but I'm not sure if it's truly "helpful" for designers beyond thinking of how to get your idea from being an idea to store-shelves.
Displaying 1 of 1 review