When Fantastic Factories was on Kickstarter, I was in a weird place with games. My wife and I were trying to cut back on our spending, and I was getting pretty hardcore into this whole box-building kick. You know…. the foundation of this whole website? Although I’d done plenty of boxes and other upgrades, I hadn’t really put much thought into building a full-on print-and-play. Then, I saw the Print-and-Play pledge level on the Fantastic Factories Kickstarter, and just decided to go with it.
And, well… you know me. I couldn’t just let the standard components stand. I blinged out my copy with custom energy, metal, and goods tokens, poker chips for the tool label tokens, custom-cut dual-layer factory boards… the works. And it took me forever. I went through two different iterations of the box when I rejiggered the dice box, and I think I made 5 different versions of the player boards due to sizing problems and two sets of finished boards getting destroyed.
I also decided to fit the game into the standardized card box size I’d made for all my other small box card games, and I think it turned out really nice. The form factor is great – smaller than the retail box, which is always a plus – and I’m really proud of the way everything fits into the box. Have a look at all the pretty pretty pictures:
For the token boxes, I wanted something that would fit well in the box, but also be functional for on-the-table use. You’ll notice that when the boxes are closed, the resource symbols on the sides and ends are technically upside down. This is an intentional design decision, because when the boxes are used in play, they’re intended to be set into the lids at an angle. When nested into the lids, as you can see below, the symbols are right-side-up.
And, of course, I couldn’t be satisfied with simple chipboard tokens. I had to upgrade everything. The energy tokens are just cheap acrylic fishtank filler I bought on Amazon, the metal tokens are from The Broken Token (and are the same ones from Scythe), and the goods crates are from a company called Keep Exploring Games, and are for a game called The Dutch East Indies.
As a dumb little design decision, I decided to color each of the token boxes in such a way that they represented the different layers on the cover art and player boards.
I’m not exactly sure where the idea for this dice tray came from, but it turned out not to be half as big a pain in the ass as I thought it would be. It’s just my standard bit box design, but I made a little tray with angled wells to hold the dice and dropped it into the bottom. For a comparatively simple design, the effect is pretty awesome.
Again, I could’ve just gone with punchboard tokens, but come on. What am I, a peasant?
These player boards were the bane of my existence for almost two months. Cutting the dice wells by hand gave me a repetitive stress injury in my right hand. They almost made me give up on the build. But I’m so glad I didn’t, because the final result is fantastic.
