When buying a board game, the foremost question in each of our minds should not be whether the game is fun, but how nicely the designers built the game’s case in order to store all the components. A perpetual problem for board game enthusiasts is getting all those pieces back in the box after playing. Or even worse, having to sort through the aftermath of a tornado localized entirely inside one’s Catan box.
This article serves to bring attention to the philosophy of board game storage design. I, for one, decide which games I play solely off of how easy they are to store, so I’m sure everyone will find this the ideal way of assessing your next purchase.
Studying the Case: Azul
Azul is a colorful tile-placement game where players attempt to arrange their tiles to create beautiful mosaics. But we aren’t here to review the game, we want to know if its box is any good!
As we study Azul’s storage system, we seek to understand the designers’ motives and priorities. As a tile-placement game, there are going to be a lot of pieces, so how does Azul manage them? I’m going to break down Azul’s storage system by looking at its setup and cleanup, its containers, the fit and its style. This assessment is based on the artistic vision that the developers clearly had when designing the layout of the box.
Setup & Cleanup
“Gotta go fast!”
-Plato, probably
In gaming, we seek not just to play, but to experience. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to this experiential bliss is the setup and cleanup time of each game. For some, the delicate arrangement of pieces is a zen-like endeavor. Each piece finds its place slowly and meticulously. Their table is a carefully cultivated garden. For others, the need for speed surmounts all else. They want a board game ready and they want it done yesterday.
Regardless of which camp you fall into, we all have to set up and put away our games, so what does Azul’s storage method reveal?
Azul has shockingly little setup or cleanup for a tile-placement game. At surface level, Azul’s commitment to speed in this area seems at odds with the purpose of the game—to carefully craft a mosaic—but rather, it is a meta-commentary on the nature of artistic creation itself. In pursuing the object of the game to create a finished, perfect mosaic, we lose sight of the meaning of the exercise itself. We are bringing individual pieces together to form the whole.
The speed with which the game can be assembled and disassembled reminds us that we should not be so concerned with the holistic mosaic which can be instantly destroyed, for the beauty is in the individual moments of placement. So too is there beauty in Azul’s simplistic and quick approach to storage.
Containers
“Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.”
– Marshall McLuhan
Do we not judge the artisan on the tools they use as much as the finished product? So, too, must we look at the containers themselves, which of course are contained by the board game box.
These meta-containers are a microcosm of the storage philosophy and serve an essential role in consolidating the materials of the game. What a game provides to contain its components reveals to us what its authors want us to value and what they draw attention to. How are pieces separated? How are they stored? Critical questions to be answered if we hope to understand the developers’ choices.
Azul, in its minimalist approach to storage, compels us to deeply examine how it chose to store its sparse components.
Primary amongst the containers is the canvas bag of mosaic tiles. This serves not just as a receptacle but is itself a game component from which tiles will be drawn.
For this reason, the creators must have decided that the adornment of this container was necessary for players to see the importance of this dual role. Its hardier-than-usual material asks us to understand that the container is not just storage, it is something that is meant to be handled. It is between the worlds as both a means to store and a means to retrieve, and the developers want us to understand this through tactile interaction.
Contrast this to the storage of the cardboard display plates, which instead receive a customized insert into the plastic frame inside the box. Their positioning here downplays their importance, subjecting the cardboard to wear and tear of the movements of the box over time, as they are mostly loose. While they seldom escape this receptacle, the possibility always exists.
The designers are telling us that it is okay if this happens—they have stored their components with sufficient separation that the identity of the cardboard disks is never trespassing into another storage zone. It is clear that the designers wish to tell us something because the display plates (or “factory displays,” as the game describes them) do not matter much in the construction of a beautiful mosaic. In fact, they tell us that the pieces of a mosaic can come from humble origins, and the pursuit of flawless displays from which to find mosaics is inherently impossible and counterintuitive to the point of mosaic making.
Fit
“Anything that causes you to change who you are just to fit in is not good for you.”
– Tiffany L. Jackson
All pieces of a game ultimately come together in the box (usually). Assembled neatly, they can be a beautiful thing, a perfect rectangular prism of entertainment. However, for many games, this aspiration is wholly unreachable, save for in their unopened primordial state.
The desire of board game enthusiasts to return to this primordial state reveals perhaps more about us than the games themselves. Our pursuit of this idealized beginning is often too much for some games to handle.
Azul lacks an overly specialized box for keeping its components stable but what it does have suffices to accomplish the task of neatly fitting them all in and closing the box.
The biggest challenge is the canvas bag which, when holding the mosaic tiles, is somewhat bulky and may need to be lightly massaged to keep things flat. This reminds us as players that everything need not be perfect to be presentable, and that ultimately the box as a whole comes together without the need for minute modifications. The world is imperfect; the case lets us have room for some imperfections.
Style
“Real style is never right or wrong. It’s a matter of being yourself on purpose.”
– G. Bruce Boyer
While for some, discussion of a board game’s style is dedicated to the aesthetic of the components, the artwork on the box, or even the rules themselves, this view overlooks a constant between all board games: The style of the storage.
Obviously, every piece of a game case’s design is an intentional, well-thought-out design decision that reflects the designers’ outlook. It reveals an attention to detail, and what’s more, the true philosophy of the designer.
Azul’s style reflects the year in which the game came out: 2017. A clear product of modern, but not contemporary, board game storage design. What this means is that Azul’s storage has character but is still firmly based on simple and practical design philosophy.
The plastic insert is not black but a delicate light blue, with an imprint of the game’s name, lest you forget it. This reveals the designers’ intention to convey a sense of whimsy, and yet it still recognizes the need for order and structure, which is fundamental to the designing of mosaics themselves.
What’s more, the aforementioned canvas bag is hardly plain but bears a print resembling the box’s cover art. This small detailing goes a long way toward conveying the importance of this bag as being an indispensable part of the gameplay itself. By not being easily disposable plastic, the bag says to the player, “Bring me out! Hold me! I am a piece of art meant to be experienced in your session.”
My critique here is that I question if Azul did enough. Certainly, Azul sought to distance itself from traditional minimalist box stylings, and yet it seems it was unable to escape them. Why be so bound to the use of a bag? Why not a bowl or small decorated box to hold the tiles? I began to question myself at this point in my analysis, wondering if I was overlooking the case’s true meaning.
Overall
The design of Azul’s interior provides a pragmatic approach to storage with light ornamentation, indicative of its time. Azul pushes developers to consider how minimal changes can result in a greater understanding of the game’s meaning, and how storage interplays with the gameplay and philosophy of players themselves.
On examining Azul’s storage principles, we must accept that our analysis will be fundamentally incomplete. Scholars will debate the developers’ intentions for years to come, as the meta commentary being made on the nature of art itself is a rich vein present in Azul that I feel cannot be fully addressed in this piece. But most importantly:
Less than cat-friendly
Whenever I play a board game, a cat invariably enters the box. This is cute, but unfortunately, my chonky girl is slightly too big for the Azul box, which is causing the lid to become slightly warped. While my cat is quite fond of this game’s box, it isn’t prepared for her. I pray that the designers take this into consideration for their future installments and make a box with proper Zorya-sized dimensions and durability testing.
