Retro Gaming Hacks

Create Packaging for Homebrew Games

Make lots of money off your creations with slick package designs.

Many of the people that purchase homebrew games are just as much collectors as they are gamers. For a collector, the nostalgic feeling of opening a brand new game title is a tremendous rush. If you’ve invested the time to create a homebrew game that you’re truly proud of, you owe it to yourself to spend the extra bit of time required to round out your product with good quality packaging and artwork. Collectors will love you for it!

In this section, I will cover some options for producing labels, boxes, and manuals—from simple, do-it-yourself options to professionally produced packaging.

Now, maybe you’re more of a programmer than an artist. That’s okay—all is not lost. There are services dedicated to helping homebrew authors create artwork, publish, and even market their productions!

Before we get started, I’d like to go over a few printing terms that you’ll need to be familiar with:

Bleed

A term used to describe printing that goes right to the edge. Artwork printed full bleed will have no borders visible. Coverage

Coverage

How much area is occupied by printing. A sheet of paper with “test” written in 12-point font has a very low amount of coverage. That same sheet of paper with a photograph printed right to the edges has a high amount of coverage.

Weight

Typical measurement of the thickness of paper or cardstock. A more precise measurement is the grams per square meter, or gsm.

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