Tattoo Stories – The Unboxinating! – U-Con Gaming Convention

Welcome to the first posting of a game freshly unboxed and my take on the parts and such. Today, I opened Tattoo Stories (Designed by Eric Slauson – follow him on Twitter: @slausondesigns) and my very first impression is this packaging is AWESOME!

Number One: Check out the art work on the box cover. There are images everywhere – line images, filled images, good images…and other images. Plus…SHINY! All the line images are silvered and catch the light (and eye) nicely.

This is some super swank packaging design and we haven’t even gotten to the innards!

Number 2: Opening the box you can see that there are some white boards, dry erase markers, a small box secured below (it is full of 220 cards with random words on them) and instructions. Everything fits incredibly neatly in the packaging (the white boards snug into the space above the blue cards box). It does look like players are going to have to do some drawing so if art isn’t your thing you might want to sit this game out. Or maybe not.

Sadly, the line art isn’t shiny like the outside of the box but it’s a nice touch to include gray line art on all the box packaging and the instructions when they could have saved money and gone with plain orange. Also, the card box is a nice call back to the color images of the box lid.

Number 3: A small selection of the cards. They are all written with a font that looks like someone (with good penmanship) jotted down some notes or ideas. Also, the box the cards come in is really sturdy (and can we rewind a bit and discuss that the cards COME IN THEIR OWN BOX??). The cards are not too fat, not too slick, made of good card stock, and they shuffle and bridge really well for as small as they are (roughly 1.2 inches by 2 inches).

Number 4: The things I didn’t like: Notice that the contents are on the side of the box, not in the instructions like 95% of all the other games out there (the other 5% having instructions printed on the bottom of the box or not at all and don’t get me started about that!). Is it too much to ask for some industry standards that we all follow?

Also…where is the timer? In glancing through the instructions looking for a parts list, they mention players having 3 minutes to draw their tattoo ideas and yet, no timer.

I happen to have a 3 minute timer lying around but there is no place to stash it and not mess up that nice packaging. I’m not fond of games where you have to supply your own components.

Lastly :