“Shrink designing” board games

Mar 26th, 2025

by Juha-Matti Santala

This was published in categories: tabletop

I’ve been trying to figure out what to call the subset of board game hobby that I’m most interested in. I’ve decided to give it a working title of “shrink design” until I come up with a proper one. It’s not the best name because “shrink design” in general means designing different kind of shrink wrappers for products.

What and why?

What I mean with shrink design is that I enjoy taking existing board games that often come in big boxes and look into what I can do (or what others have done) to shrink them down into travel size format.

I basically never play at home so whenever I want to play a game I own, I need to bring it with me. It’s not a major issue if I take a few bigger boxes to a planned game night but even more than that, I want to keep games with me so I can play them when a good moment arrives: when I travel and meet people, while waiting for trains or while in the train and making new friends with people sitting around me, while in conferences or just grabbing a drink with mates in a pub. That’s probably 90% of my gaming these days.

Here’s me playing Skip-Bo with a couple of strangers I met when traveling to Prague from Berlin:

Three player Skip-Bo game on-going on a table in a moving train.

In addition to being able to play these games on the road, I also enjoy the learning opportunities. I eventually want to design my own game and I find it very helpful practice to examine existing designs and rethink them in a different format.

All of these are projects that I’ve made for my personal use and I’m not selling copies. If you like some of the games, you should support the designers and your local game shop and purchase the originals.

My projects so far

A bunch of deck boxes in various colors in the background and on the front, a deck of sleeved cards face down and a couple of colourful cards fanned out next to the deck. The cards have different vibrant background colours in orange, purple, yellow, red, blue and green and video game characters on them, the goose from Untitled Goose Game on the top most card.

It all started in 2019 when my new job enabled me to travel a lot across Europe and I wanted to bring games with me. That led to the first Minimal Travel Table Top Game Collection. I took Hanamikoji, a great two-player strategy game and turned all of its components into standard sized playing cards. I then took Famous First Downs, an already small card game, made my own cards for it and added it to the bunch with minor adjustments to work with my deck.

When the deck arrived from print, I got to enjoy it for a month before the pandemic and lockdowns grounded me to sit alone in a small apartment.

A clear plastic case full of colorful wooden meeples. In front of the box, a small cloth pouch with more meeples on top and four cards depicting different dinosaur pens and a reference card.

My second main shrink design was turning Draftosaurus, a great big box game into a small form factor. I purchased a set of different colored meeples and turned the player boards into cards and the entire thing fits into a deckbox. I’m really satisfied with how it turned out and how it doesn’t have to sacrifice any playability compared to the big box version.

Two piles of cards with large numbers 54 and 78 on top-most cards. In front, a bunch of cards from the same decks fanned out showing different elements of the graphic design on the cards from different coloured numbers to traditional card suits and in the bottom left corner of each card, different amounts of small bullheads.

My third and fourth projects were creating semi-universal decks of cards that can play plethora of different games. I called these Project 108 and Potluck (and currently in-progress sequel Banquet). They are less about turning big boxes into smaller ones but rather combining many small things into one and I’ve been so happy with them.

Five white cards fanned out, showing numbers 73, 12, 19, 94 and 65 as well as a variety of other graphical elements all around the cards. In front of those cards, one card showing its back with large title Potluck and dark blue background. Another card shows a list of games in a small font as well as credits for the design and artwork in small font.

I carry Potluck deck with me everywhere and play regularly. I can teach someone a new game with the deck and if they like it, continue playing and if they don’t, I can teach a different one with the same deck. 6 Nimmt!, Lost Cities and No thanks are the ones I’ve played most often with it.

It’s one of the most proudest projects that I’ve done in my life. Especially since it’s a physical, tangible product rather than one of the digital ones that I usually tinker with.

3D printing

A tiny chess set with a small black case. The black chess pieces are stacked up in a round tube inside each other and the white pieces are spread out showing their tubular design. In front of the pieces, 8 pieces of 4 times 2 chess board fanned out.

Another dimension to all this is 3D printing. I started with chess. This chess mini set by Kagarov is so compact as the pieces fit into each other to form small tubes. I combined that with a board and case by trstn and now I have a full playable chess game that fits into a pocket.

I then discovered these fantastic Photo Caddy inserts that people have been making for small games. I purchased a box of 16 Photo Caddys and after printing inserts for the games I already owned, I looked into games that were shrink designed for these.

A tiny 5 by 5 black and orange playing board inside a clear plastic case and an insert that holds the board and has four smaller compartments for various game pieces. On the board, there are four player pieces in red and yellow as well as a couple of white buildings stacked from two to four pieces each with an orange dome on top of one of them.

Then I printed Santorini, a 2-4 player strategy game. The 3D design is by sys_er26 with Photo Caddy insert and board by cmtaylor333. This game fits all its pieces and the board into the box and you can even play it completely without taking the board out from the box. Since Santorini uses a 5x5 board, I chucked in some extra meeples into the case for Onitama for which I have the cards in Potluck deck.

A black 3D printed insert inside a clear box. Inside the insert, there are 81 small circular holes and between them, space for tiny 3D printed orange walls. Some walls have been inserted into the game board with a red and yellow player meeples in two of the round holes.

A similar design is this Photo Caddy Quoridor by CplJonlan and a great design detail there is that you can close the box mid-game and continue later as there’s enough space to fit all the walls and player pieces in.

Couple of white 3D printed tiles with black branches and red and green leaves in a grid-like setting.

I also have printed Leaves and an insert for Hive Pocket. Both of them are very interesting 2 player tile-laying strategy games that don’t need a game board so they are easy to play anywhere.

A black 3D printed case with space for 18 small dice and on the other side of the hinge, an area for rolling dice. There are 9 black dice and 9 red dice in the board.

And Knucklebones from Cult of the Lamb video game. They are not exactly shrink design but I wanted to show off my amazing growing game collection.

All in all, I now have a really nice collection of Photo Caddies with various different games. Whenever I leave home, I can pick a couple of them to carry with me and have a nice variety of games with me when I travel, visit friends or sit in a pub. One of the best features of the Photo Caddy approach is that every game in them has the same form factor. I know exactly how much they’ll take up in my backpack before I decide which game I bring with me. They have a case (I was going to write nice case but it’s ugly clear plastic) where I can keep them at home and they all fit in exactly, no need to play Kallax Tetris with the collection.

If something above resonated with you, let's start a discussion about it! Email me at juhamattisantala at gmail dot com and share your thoughts. In 2025, I want to have more deeper discussions with people from around the world and I'd love if you'd be part of that.