There was a game that I was attempting to develop at the same time I was starting out with A Game About Colors… This other game was called Boxed In.
Boxed In came from wondering what a competitive version of Shut the Box (the classic pub game) might look like. Giving each player their own tray made the game immediately more interesting, and most of the development came from ongoing playtests with ChatGPT—mainly experimenting with doubles penalties, pacing issues, and ways to keep the game from stalling out.
We found a few solid ideas, like the Stalemate Release rule, but I never quite reached a final version that felt fully balanced. Still, the process paid off. A lot of what we learned while testing Boxed In directly shaped the design of Race to 65, which grew out of the same experiments but landed in a much stronger place.
Original Rules — Boxed In (Early Concept Version)
- Each player has their own tray with tiles numbered 1 through 12, all starting unclaimed.
- On your turn, you roll two dice.
- After the roll, you may claim:
- either die result (if unclaimed),
- or the sum of the dice (if unclaimed),
- or both individual numbers and the sum, if all three are unclaimed.
- You could not affect your opponent’s tray; the game was mostly a race, not a conflict.
- Doubles rolls were allowed to trigger bonuses for the roller or penalties against the opponent, but these were still very loose ideas at this stage and not yet defined.
- First player to claim 10 tiles on their own tray won the game.
- If a number was already claimed, you simply couldn’t take it; the roll did nothing.
- There were no locked tiles, no cursed tiles, no drain effects, and no stalemate rule.
- The flow was straightforward: roll → claim whatever’s free → try to reach 10 tiles before the other player.
In the beginning, both players are just getting their boards started. You roll, claim a few easy tiles, and see what kind of shape your board is taking. It’s mostly about opening things up and seeing where the numbers fall.
As the game settles in, you’re making small adjustments based on what the dice give you. The doubles effects add a little movement, but most of the time you’re just trying to keep your board flexible and avoid boxing yourself into a corner.
Toward the end, there are fewer open spots and each roll gives you a couple of decisions to think through. The Stalemate Release rule helps keep things moving, and you’re mostly trying to keep the board workable long enough to reach your goal.