Ranking and Roasting Board Game Boxes 

Babe, wake up, there's a British man being mad at boxes for 50 mins

thank you

"So you won loads of awards... why does that have to be my problem?" 😂

20:32 "I'm not going to have it on my shelf like this, nobody is doing that" *Looks nervously at my shelf with all my Oink games displayed exactly like that*

This video should be renamed 'Jon roasts board game boxes' 😂 some of these are savage

Going straight from "I feel like that's just a font and is lazy" for Cascadia to "I do really like the font" for Parks was wild.

“You’re not Reiner knizia!” Haha that killed me. But let’s face it, there are few people who are like the Doctor himself.

Wow. One of my pet peeves is actually when they DON’T put the little player count, play time, suggested age indicators on ALL sides of the box. No matter how I orient my games on the shelf, I like to be able to quickly scan my shelf and look for games that fit my current needs (players, time, complexity). It really annoys me when they omit these from the side of the box I actually have facing out from the shelf! To each their own, I guess. Another thing that annoys me is when they don’t have sides with the art/text to support both vertical OR horizontal display.

I often find myself when looking at my collection, fantasizing of having the woodworking and leatherworking skills to make custom boxes for my games that make them look like a collection of classic novels on my shelves.

You've done the outside of the box, how about the inside. A tier list of the default insert that comes with the game. some inserts are great, while others can need to be replaced immediately.

I feel like the grey on Sagrada is what makes the colors pop and not overwhelm the viewer, one of my favorite boxes, personally

12:04 I also can't resist chuckling every time the box farts

In German-speaking countries the Ravensburger triangle is kinda iconic and even invokes a bit nostalgia for old jigsaw puzzles in me. Also it manages something that the Kosmos logo does not do: It tucks itself away nearly in a corner. However I do agree with you - for El Dorado, it's just too much on the sides of the box, especially when it's not even a triangle.

The biggest sin is the number of boxes you have where the lid isn't correctly orientated. It drives me mad when someone puts the lid on a game incorrectly! Otherwise, excellent video as usual :)

SO TRUE about the company logos on the box. Massage to board game publishers: putting your company logo on the box is nearly always irrelevant and always a negative, so keep it to a corner on the back of the box. I promise, the people who care about who published the game already know who published it before they bought the game, so you don’t need to tell them. The people who don’t know who the publisher of the game is will never care about who published the game because they’re not those people, so there’s also no reason to slap your logo all over the box.

You know it's a good day when Actualol uploads.

If it weren't for you and Prozd, I wouldn't have got into modern board games. Nice crossover!

French and English on the box might be for legal reasons. Where I am in Canada, you must put French on the box.

Now I know you aren't a fan of the game, but the various wingspan boxes are just gorgeous.

The orientation of the text on the side of the box (top-to-bottom vs bottom-to-top) is a holdover from books. In Germany, Italy and France it is/was usually the case that the title was printed in a a way that you could read it when you tilt your head to the left. In english speaking countries it is/was the other way round. I suspect if you take a look at the publishers/designers it would mostly match. The wikipedia article on bookbinding has some info on it.

Best boardgame box, imho, goes to Wingspan. If I knew nothing about the game, I would want to play that game just based on that box.

I wish someone would get the rights to print correct sized boxes for games like Lost Cities, No Thanks, and Splendor to sell as replacement boxes...

Just spent an hour in your company thinking about boxes. Love it!

Do you not close the boxes with the backside rotated to align with the cover? Omgggggg

I love how truly passionate Jon gets about many of these. There are so many great moments in this video. Also love that slight shade towards the Sagrada cathedral 😃 Thank you for an awesome and funny video!

You should do the same thing with box inserts.

Hey John! I have a video idea that I don't believe I've seen anyone do. I'm a board game loving dad and I love introducing my young kids to new games. When I watched your review of Trekking through history it made me think how great it would be to teach kids about history. Similarly, I've thought Similo History would do a good job of exposing kids to important historical figures. Ticket to Ride Europe to teach my kids about European cities. Pandemic has major cities. I've played The Mind with my 5 and 6 year old with some number tools and its helped them with their 1-100 numbers. I think you can see where I'm going with this. Could you do a video recommending board games that could help kids (or adults!) with every school subject? Call it Best Board Games for kids that'll actually teach them something!

I LOVE a good box. It’s my own little obsession. Haven’t watched the vid yet but my favorite box is unearthed - which holds (in the original box) the base game + the expansion SLEEVED with zero issues. Splendor could never. Edit: I’m now realizing you are rating the outside of the box… which is not what I was expecting. I’m calling for another tier list that evaluates the space usage and organization of board game boxes. I want a utilitarian box tier list!

Now rank the inside of the boxes. The amount of boxes with wasted space or are too fiddly to put away really annoy me

I understand the frustration with how they orient the text on the sides of boxes. I don't store my games vertically, I have them all horizontal on my shelves and I don't run into that issue very often. Also A Fake Artist Goes to New York doesn't need its title on the sides. Little pink box is very recognizable. Name me another game that is in a little pink box like that.

I love how passionate you feel about the game boxes. I can see myself when I go into a rant with my wife about certain games.

He actually did it! He actually did it!

It’s like watching a video Sheldon from big bang theory talking about something he loves 😂 and I can’t explain why

Everdell is my game box that certainly wouldn't be out of place in the Louvre.

Next you can rank the best and worst box inserts.

The old version of 'love letter' says love letter on the bag and it's much cuter and the tokens are cubes that come in a bag.

The Pandemic box looks like the cover of every DVD at a car-boot sale. Dominion looks like the box art from a 1990s PC point and click game.

This is the cranky rant I needed today. Thank you! I loved every minute of this 😄

The left half of my collection along a big wall has titles reading one way, the right half the other.

The front of the Skull box compels me to play it, but every other side of the box compels me to hide it. I'm glad someone else finally stated that publicly!

Mate I reckon the mind mgmt box is a work of art. The hidden messages using the time token 👌🏼

LOVE how passionate you are with you opinions! They're not all right, but it doesn't matter because I appreciate your confidence. Haha! Great video!

Canvas is chef's kiss.

This was great! Lots of fun. I have never seen anyone go so deeply into the details of box covers.

Love how grumpy he's getting with age. Embrace it. Also... Luxor. Literally one of my favourite covers (minus the stupid SDJ 2018 logo) and you put it on the bottom rung!

Catan's color scheme is iconic. The box and the rising sun on the front is so recognizable.

This is ridicilous. I loved it.

I'll say for foundations of rome, I had the expansion arrive today, and it came with a new tray designed to fit all the expansion stuff in the same general tray, so it fits exactly the same.

The pink version of Skull doesn't have the barcode on the side where the name is, but you do have either the designers or space cowboys logo with it (both integrated nicely). I do prefer the purple colour tho

An idea to have your games fit inside their box is to put them horizontally, how they belong.

HUGE agree on the Oink Games lack of naming on the sides. I just dealt with this when moving to new home. On the other hand, I adore the stone grey look of Sagrada. What a fun video.

I love how much of a deduction a box gets from advertising on the inside edges of the box. ;-)

Thank you Jon for another great video! I would really like to see that same kind of video about the inside of boxes.

I love this! Thank you so much. Can you also make a few video's about boardgames with not too much elements? And board games for solo players?

Every board game company needs to watch your video so that they can do a decent job of their box designs when it comes to the practical things that we want to see. Like no bar codes on the sides, don't put awards on the front of the box, don't plaster logos on every side, put irrelevant ugly numbers on the back, make the box size fit the game properly, no lid lift, give us a choice of sides with different versions of art and importantly the game name so that we can have a nice side of the box showing regardless of whether we store the game horizontally, vertically, or face on. These are some really simple basics that board game companies need to start getting right. The only place that ads belong is in a little extra booklet inside the game box which I can browse through quickly and immediately throw in the recycling (better yet, just don't do it, I bought the game and I don't want to be served up ads there are too many ads in my life already). Jon, if you ever get offered to have your currently non-existent logo on the front of a board game box, you've got to say no. Insist it should be on the back or your logo will no longer carry the weight and credibility that it would at the time of this video. I'm with you on almost all of your criticisms of the box art, except for Azul. I think that it's a perfectly legitimate choice for that box cover to pick out a font that works well, has some character to it, and is set well. The kerning looks pretty good to me. Good typography is an artform in and of itself and not every game requires artsy lettering. Look at the serifs on that font, they match in so beautifully with the styalised flowers. I think its quite the insult to compare the use of Azul's font to the over-used, poorly kerned, and often poorly applied font Papyrus. The really boring sans serif font with no stroke variation and some generic grunge brush on Codenames deserved much heavier criticism than Azul for being so very bland, characterless, and slapped on. Azul made a clear and purposeful choice which works well. That said, I'd agree on your ranking of it - it isn't quite Louvre. I also felt that on Sagrada you ought to have noted that it was a particularly subjective decision on its ranking. Sure all of these are subjective, but after discussing seeing the cathedral itself and understanding why the box has grey stonework on it you clearly understood the reason behind that choice, and your ranking seemed harsh due to personal preference rather than the vast majority of your points which have been based in design principles and functionality. Ooo, I just hit Decrypto. It's such a very ugly and uninviting design to me. Talk about a drab grey box. It's top-heavy in its design, it has too many things trying to be the focal point which results in no focal point, it's too fussy and busy (and this coming from someone who loves overly intricate detailed artwork). It's a poor design. I appreciate that the cover of Heat informs me immediately that it isn't a game for me. I've played Heat, it isn't a game for me. I agree it has a good cover design, but subjectively for me it's really ugly. It can't ruin my collection because I'll never own it. You just lost all credibility with me for putting Cascadia that low. It's gorgeous, the art is gorgeous, the cover is really well balanced and has a really lovely baroque line of dynamic movement leading the eye up to the name of the game. I agree that the fading out thing spoils it a little bit, but that's a rather minor quibble on the whole. The Cascadia cover should be in the Louvre. You should take a look at the covers of Life of the Amazonia, and Isle of Cats. Harmonies is also cool but it doesn't tell you anything much about the game (Amazonia doesn't either, but it's so eye-wateringly beautiful that I forgive it).

That was again a very entertaining video - I wouldn't mind a part two. 😁

Yes! Get the info and awards off the damn beautiful cover!

There's so much empy space in that Lost Cities box that I use it to store not only the cards but a bunch of Buttonshy games as well. And when I found an old edition of Lost Cities at a thrift store, I was able to get those cards into that box with everything else.

I was about to call you biased until you changed your mind about Ticket to Ride lol. I completely agree on Through the Desert, the fit was one of the main reasons I didn't get the expansion.

I feel like Planet (one of the games I have), had such good potential with the artwork on the front, but then they put on logos/prizes and an entire side of the box is barcode and boring information and more logos(and just sticks out from the rest of the box)

Only 10 minutes into an almost hour-long video, and I absolutely love it!! Absolutely roasting and tearing apart some of these boxes, with a lot of very valid and real criticism. I would love to see another one of these done, but with the actual inside box storage being reviewed! It's one thing if a game looks and plays well, but some games take almost an hour to set up or put away, Not because they're so massive, But because as soon as you shift the contents of the box at all, every card and piece is a mixed up mumble jumbo! Put in some dividers and storage containers!!

This is a fantastic video. I love listening to you criticize minute details of box designs. I am not alone.

This is so entertaining. Well done!

That was fun. Thanks for sharing. My games are stored in a few different spots, but I do try to arrange them in a way the displays the artwork that I like most.

Awesome video, as always! And i really did enjoy the theme, one of a kind. I also think and apreciate and get annoyed and display up front the boxes I like. The one that really surprised me and totally has a special appearance on the table, is the box concept from a Playte series called L-board, I have the game Moon Leap from them, and you really should experience it first hand, no youtube reviews or unboxing, just try and get it, you won’t regret! 🤗 Looking forward to the next video! 🤩

Canvas has the most beautiful box IMO. The neat thing is, that you really can hang it on the wall.

well we all missed that iconic intro sound...

Great video! For me, the Canvas (plus expansions) boxes are very well designed. The fact that they can be hung up so you can (lie in) wait for someone to comment on them and you can reply with "want a game?" 😁 I LOVE that. Not only can they be hung/displayed together, forming one picture, but if you're storing them flat, the name of each can be found on the top of the decently-sized boxes. Move over, Mona Lisa.

I can't tell if it is a bit or not that he's talking about the way the boxes look, drawing a ton of attention to each side, but has the lids on upside down for so many of them.

I have my vertical games stored with the text like Zoo Vadis. To be fair, it’s like that because of the way I’ve had to store my games in a narrow room under my stairs and the shelf is on the right side of the room. So, that’s the best way to read them.

Love this video. I'm really interested in board game graphic design, and it's interesting to hear your perspective focused on shelf presence! Need more videos of board game visual critiques, please & thank you.

lol at 52:49: "Games are not meant to be kept horizontally..." Proceeds to show a horizontal box with the name printed horizontally as well, implying it's meant to be kept horizontally.

I've never paid this much attention to my boxes but now I might look at them in a new light! I agree that the Portal Games logo changing for Detective is great. I also love magnetic clasp thingies.

I thought you were going to talk about the box size for the content inside - components size, insert, filled with air.... Now THAT drives me crazy. Love your channel though. Just dont care too much about the outside. My games are store inside a cabinet anyway x) Cheers

Very fun video! Publishers LISTEN UP!

Good job downgrading Ticket to Ride.

52:19 it even sticks out in your tier list :)

I wonder how bad Bears vs. Babies would get torn apart here. As besides being a bit of an odd shape, it's completely covered in fur on all sides and most of the top, so it'll look like a poorly taxidermied tribble regardless of how it's placed on the shelf.

Literally reorganizing my board games shelves while watching this, and it's heavily impacting my choices.

That was not the first US release of Settlers of Catan. The first and second release was a dark brown box and the tiles used photos instead of artwork. 2nd edition was the same cover, but had 4 different colored player pieces so you could combine two sets and play with up to 8.

28:22 I checked my collection and I have my board game titles facing that way, but mostly because you enter the room from the right so the game titles would be upside-down otherwise

I love how unscripted and passionate this video was. Makes me rethink my whole display!

About the box direction on the shelf. I usually use the front of the box pointed to the door of the room, so increases the chances of seeing the front cover when you pick up a game

This is amazing, and I love the rants! I'm actually quite surprised your background game Cascadia was second place collect $10. With it your background, I thought it would be the Creme de la Louvre tier!

Canvas (+expansions), Unfair (+expansions) and the Century Trilogy. I just like the way that the artwork flows across the boxes; and thematically speaking with Canvas, the boxes are even designed to be hung on the wall.

I'll send you the game box I designed to roast 🙂 Pandemic looks drab both in and outside the box. Sorry you're wrong. I love hearing you go on about fonts too. Cascadia uses Futura, heavily used font.

You should do a video highlighting common misunderstandings of rules that people make when they first play a game. Had a moment this weekend where I misunderstood the voting system in Zoo Vadis and played that you only needed a majority of the animals in the exhibit, not a majority of the total spaces in the exhibit. Had huge implications and made the game feel much less fun until we clued in and corrected. Might be cool for you to go through your favourite 20-something games and call out ways you may have misplayed them early on, or struggles friends have expressed to you about learning them.

Hi Jon, I'd love to know what you think about the presentation of the Dark Cities games from Facade Games like Bristol 1350 and Salem 1692. The ones that are packaged to look like old books.

Apparently, I have a superior copy of Love Letter because mine has the name on the bag AND puts the tokens in a little ziplock baggy so they don't fall out.

Love it, speaking of your background games, how about Paris: City of Lights and Mysterium? Also where do you stand on Kyle Ferrin artwork? Where would they go in the ranking?

One of the reasons I consider Cascadia’s box to be absolutely gorgeous is how good it looks with Verdant and Calico as well. I store games horizontally, and they just pop. Fit to Print doesn’t pop quite as well, but it’s the same size and all four share a shelf together.

Your ideas always brilliant

I feel like PARKS is gambling for being displayed front side up, because of how gorgeous it looks. Also I adore that on the german version, by Feuervogel, is a diagram how to pack it properly. And Parks should get extra points for how efficent it uses its box

Love this. Perhaps another tier list of box sizes? I imagine ticket to ride and kosmos 2p would be near the top?

This has to be the most unhinged video on this channel. A real look into Jon’s mind here. I found myself irrationally upset at some of his comments and requirements. Fun video

I'd like to reserve a special slot in hell for the Codenames XXL variants. I picked them up so I could play them with larger groups and older relatives, and the boxes are so heinously huge. The cards themselves are barely any bigger, and the text cards have laughably small text compared to their increased size, so turns out it was a pretty pointless endeavour anyway. But, in spite of all this, my main source of contempt is still the box size. Words cannot express just how empty these boxes are. If you strip out the atrociously-designed plastic organisers inside, the actual game itself takes up less than a third of the box. And then they took the already disappointing box art and just slapped an XXL "stamp" motif on it that's completely detached from the rest of the theming. And bright yellow. I've managed to squeeze the contents of all three into a single box and put the other two in the loft, but catching sight of even just one of these nightmares as I walk past the shelf puts me in a bad mood. ...Anyway, I'll see you next therapy session

Heat is gorgeous, and the insert’s organization is fantastic. It’s too thin though. Mine arrived with multiple cracks.

Came here hoping for a roast of the 7 Wonders box - which is *way* bigger than it needs to be. Disappointed to miss that, but still a fun video.

I like nice boxes, but the ok/ bad ones I just ignore, they might as well just be plain grey.

You are super funny and I love your videos. Predicting whether you will love a box or hate a box is particularly challenging (Oh he hates this font, but randomly likes Carcasonne's???). Also your level of hatred for certain details cracks me up.