The visual aesthetics of board games

When looking at some of the visual aesthetics of board games it soon becomes apparent that the box cover art itself usually tells a story and puts a meaning behind the game, I feel that this should be incorporated into our game once we decided on a name. However not all board games use art to relate to actual game played, they may just use this narrative artwork to pull the audience in.

For instance this image shows a board game using aesthetics in a highly detailed way to draw the viewer in, yet the game is only chess;

The high detail in the artwork really helps to convey a victory or a loss but also a story.

Another box art cover that helps convey a story and a battle is Risk;

The point that we need to think about is how high in detail do we want our game to be, do we want the artwork to convey a story, a battle or emotions that relate to the game. I feel that so far we have made a fairly simple game with its own complications, the main objective of the game is to capture the tower, however we haven't finished play testing yet so we don't know for sure if it will work, for 2 players we have play tested merely taking out each others opponents and for the most part it worked, however for the art work to actually be suitable I feel that through play testing a lot more will help our entire group get a clear vision on the type of style, colours and artwork that will suit out game.



Image (Battle Chess); http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/969
Image (Risk); http://gfbrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/risk-funagain-com.jpg