Designer Diary: The Case For The Plastic Case

When I started packaging Rust & Revenue as a physical product, one of the first considerations was the box.  There are all sizes and weights and I quickly found that all were expensive.  A cardboard box large enough to hold the 5 x 7 (really 6 x 8) components complete with printing costs at a 50 unit run were around $8.00 before shipping.  If I had gone that route, the game would have to retail for at least $5 more.  Shipping would have also been more expensive and probably been closer to $8 or $10.

Winsome Games (John Bohrer) released train games in clamshells - clear plastic containers.  His games were basically US Letter sized and had enough depth for 8 mm cubes and rules.  I had followed that lead with Bindle Rails a long time ago, but I needed to pivot.   

So, the plastic box - the smaller clamshell - was the way to go.  It comes in around $2.50 a unit and its light,  and durable.  It was practical, however, sizing up attractive packaging and covers was  much more fuss than a cardboard box so there were still trade-offs.  And let's face it - retail store shelves do not have plastic containers.   Modern board games are often designed to impress before you ever open them.  Heavy boxes with glossy finishes, inserts, trays, elaborate art, and endless layers of polish are part of the ritual now. It’s not just packaging - it’s theater. The clamshell does the opposite. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to convince you of its value. It just quietly hands you the game. And that silence has its own kind of weight.

I decided early on that the entire presentation of the game would be simple - one focused historic photo showing a man decommissioning a steam locomotive was the perfect vehicle for the game's theme and packaging.  In the end, there was no wraparound art (the clamshell wouldn't reasonably permit it), no multi-panel box, no flourish - just one clean piece.  That limitation became a kind of clarity.  Like an old LP sleeve, it suggests rather than declares. It gives the game a face and trusts the contents to do the talking. It’s less about selling and more about showing.

Next to a modern box, a clamshell looks almost too humble.   It doesn’t compete for shelf space, it fits in a bag, and it carries no illusions about being anything other than what it is. It belongs to an older lineage - bagged games, folios, microprint runs - where the focus was on design, not spectacle. I didn’t choose it out of nostalgia, but somewhere along the way, nostalgia found its way in.

At one demo, a player picked up the game and smiled. She said it reminded her of playing 1830: Railroads & Robber Barons on her old PC. Pixelated DOS at its finest. That game may well have come in a clamshell too, but what she was reacting to wasn’t the packaging.  It was the feeling.   A sense of a different era in gaming, when mechanics carried the experience and the presentation didn’t need to be loud.   That struck me.  It still does.

The clamshell is easy to open. It’s transparent, light, and durable. You can see the game before you ever commit to opening it. It’s an unglamorous choice, and maybe that’s exactly why I love it. There’s a kind of beauty in being enough.  It’s a design decision that mirrors the game itself.

I didn’t build Rust & Revenue to compete with the spectacle of modern board games. I built it the way I could build it - by hand, with care, with deliberate restraint - physics and finance definitely force difficult decisions.   But that restraint gave the game its shape, its tone, and, I think, a little of its soul.  A box tries to impress you before you open it.   A clamshell doesn’t need to.