Custom Game Boxes
You’ve dedicated weeks, months, or even years to develop your game idea, build out the mechanics, refine the theme, expand and clarify the rules, and decide on the components you’ll need. You’ve play-tested it through several iterations and refined it further until you’re confident that you have a game people will love to play. One thing we know is that whatever goes inside it, your game’s box will be the first thing that your customers and supporters will see. So, it has to be practical, robust, fit-for-purpose, beautiful, and still on budget.
At QinPrinting, we offer a comprehensive range of box types, sizes, materials, inserts, and special finishes to make sure that your game box is not only a safe and efficient housing for your game and components but also a convincing and attractive ambassador for your game and brand. When your game is complete and boxed, we’ll shrink wrap it ready for retail. We’ll provide you with a custom box design template, too, to get you started.
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Custom Board Game Boxes
Board games may be made from a variety of material substrates. Depending on your design choices, these can then be covered with other paper, coated, oriented, and finished in a number of ways, including reinforcing any folds with fabric and wrapping the edges for a super-neat, high-end professional look.
Telescope Box
Telescope boxes are popular and economical solutions for packaging board games of all kinds. We design and build two-part telescope boxes—which self-seal by air friction so you needn’t worry about them coming apart. Our telescope boxes are made from grayboard wrapped in white coated art paper for printing. We’ll customize your game box with branded designs, text, and special finishes such as glossing, varnishing, embossing, foil stamping, and die cutting to make your telescope game box stand out from the crowd. We can also include custom inserts made from paperboard, foam, silk, PVC, and other materials of your choice so that all your components are snugly housed and professionally presented.
Magnetic Closure Box
We make our magnetic closure rigid boxes in the same high-quality materials as telescope boxes and with the same comprehensive range of options for covering, printing, and special finishes. The key difference is that these boxes have hinged lids or a folding design and they’re closed with a powerful magnetic catch. Ideal as a luxury-level stretch goal for your Kickstarter campaign or simply as a high-end solution to your game boxing needs. As with all our boxes, you can also insert a cardboard or plastic tray to house the game pieces or fill them with cut-out foam inserts for a very professional look.
Tuck-End Box
Not all board games need have zillions of components. Many successful games have only a deck of cards and a notepad! For games like these, with simpler physical designs, a neat tuck-end box could be the optimal solution. A tuck-end box is like a classic card deck box, but can be on a bigger scale. You slide the contents into the box from one end and then fold down a flap which tucks in to close it. For bigger, more complex games that include card sets, adding a tuck-end box which houses the cards inside a larger magnetic closure box or telescope box which holds everything else, too, can be especially classy.
Trays, Inserts, and Sleeves
We’ve mentioned inserts and trays. These are great solutions for organizing the presentation of your game components inside the box. They also keep everything safe and easy to find. Cardboard inserts can be enhanced with full-colour printing. Components—such as custom-made miniatures, accessories, and scenery—can be placed in moulded trays made to fit their shapes and sizes. We can make inserts from cardboard, foam, PVC and PET plastic, and silk. Trays can be cut-and-folded cardboard or moulded plastic.
Sleeves are another great option you can add to any box type. Made of high-quality printed paperboard, they slip over the box for added protection and to give the game a truly finished look. Beside the artwork, you can use the sleeve to advertise other games in your stable, an introduction or story-text to build excitement about the game, a components check-list, the rules, and more.
Custom Game Box Materials
We make our game boxes from grayboard covered with coated paper, uncoated paper, coloured paper, or texture paper. Our standard wrapped papers are:
Printed paper
We use CMYK offset printing on 157 gsm / 106 lb art paper
Brown kraft paper
120 gsm / 81 lb paper made from chemical pulp, this paper is tough, resistant, and durable
Black kraft paper
Same as above, but black, with a slick, professional look
Coloured paper
120 gsm / 81 lb paper in a variety of attractive colours and shades
Soft-touch paper
120 gsm / 81 lb paper with a scuff-resistant, velvety coating
Textured paper
120 gsm / 81 lb paper paper with a textile-like finish
Depending on your board game box size and the weight of the contents, the grayboard could be 1.5 mm, 2 mm, 2.5 mm, or 3 mm thick.
Custom Game Box Printing Options
At QinPrinting, we use soy-based ink for offset printing, which is eco-friendly and produces beautiful, vibrant colours. Box printing options are:
CMYK offset printing —uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to create the whole spectrum.
Pantone colour printing—a form of offset printing, used to obtain 100% faithfulness in colour reproduction.
Silk printing—not suitable for photographs but ideal for logos, text, and simple graphics on black or coloured paper.
Custom Game Box Special Finishes
Here’s a helpful list of the range of special finishing options to enhance your custom game box.
Gloss lamination adds a shiny, smooth look that elevates the vibrancy and colour of your carton’s printed surface.
Matte lamination gives your boxes a charming, more subtle finish than gloss. It also tends to soften the colours on your printed surface, which can be the perfect effect for certain products.
Soft touch lamination is a relatively new technique. The result is similar to matte lamination, but the surface has a delightful, almost velvet feel which speaks of quality and luxury.
Varnishing your carton adds a transparent, tough, protective surface. It looks great and is a good option for boxes that will be in storage for longer periods or spend more time in transit.
Foil stamping adds a metallic effect to lettering or other design elements. Gold, silver and bronze are the most popular choices, but we can use pigments to create a foil stamp in almost any colour you’d like.
Embossing is a process by which we raise the surface of an area of the box to make it literally stand out.
Like embossing, only the surface is pressed inward to creative a concave impression rather than standing out.
Rather than coating the whole box, you can highlight a specific area with spot UV. We apply a clear polymer coat to the specified area — which could be a product name, a logo, or an image — which really makes it “pop” and catch the eye. Suitable only for surfaces treated with matte or soft-touch lamination.
This is state-of-the-art technology. Using lasers, we can adhere and build metal foil on the surface of your box, creating a stunning, metallic effect on lettering, logos, or other design elements — or even the whole box!
Our Environmental Commitment
We actively encourage reuse and recycling of all our products. We can use recycled or FSC-certified materials on request. FSC-certified means materials from responsibly managed, sustainable forests.
Let’s Talk!
If you’re ready to explore your options for developing a perfect custom game box at a price that won’t break your budget, we should talk. With a quarter of a century of success in the business and going from strength to strength, we’re confident that we can build the custom game box of your dreams. Get in touch to discuss your needs or ask us for a no-obligation quote.