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I've been playing around with Beasts of Balance recently. It's quite impressive, really - it manages to take stacking bits of plastic and somehow turn it into a sandbox game about the nuances of hybridisation. How's that for a pull-quote? One of the things that has impressed me most about Beasts of Balance, however, is the packaging. I'm fully aware how that makes me sound, but I'm deadly serious - we can all learn a lot from the Beasts of Balance box.
In Beasts of Balance, you have 24 handsome looking game pieces and one chunky plinth. When strewn about for a game they take up quite a bit of room, but the box itself isn't actually very big. What's remarkable about the packaging for Beasts of Balance, however, isn't how snugly the pieces fit, but how beautifully. Open the box and you're confronted with an uppermost tier that is, for want of a better word, pretty pagan looking. The six eponymous beasts are arranged in a ring, each staring expectantly at the game's plinth. The plinth, meanwhile, greets you personally - "Greetings divine creator!" it says. With the pieces laid out like this, Beasts of Balance immediately feels very special - but it also makes you feel special, too. There's a tremendous sense of expectation, as if the game pieces are waiting to see what you're going to do with all this potential. Opening Beasts of Balance for the first time genuinely feels like an event.
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