We’re now just over halfway through our kickstarter campaign for Outside The Box : a “game engine for your imagination” designed to inspire storytelling and improvise play. We’re trying to raise £4k to manufacture a 1st edition of the complete set to get it into people’s hands and see what they do with it. Its had a slow start but we’re hoping we still may pick up momentum.
Outside The Box has no rules, nothing to win or lose, it simply provides a framework for you to imagine stories and make up your own games. It’s made up of 27 cubes, 3 layers of 9 cubes, each layer being a distinct game : Animal Match, Mission Improbable and StoryMaker. Check out the whole OTB collection of cubes and books on bookleteer.
Animal Match starts out as a puzzle – match up the animal halves to complete the pattern. From there you can make it much more fun : mix the cubes up to invent strange creatures; what would you call them? What would they sound like? How might they move?
Mission Improbable is for role-playing. There are 6 characters: Adventurer, Detective, Scientist, Spy, Storyteller and Superhero, each with 9 tasks. Use them to invent your own games, record your successes in the mission log books or take it to another level by designing your own costumes and props.
StoryMaker incites the telling of fantastical tales : Roll the 3 control cubes to decide how to tell your story, what kind it should be and where to set it. Then use the word cubes as your cue to invent a story on the spot.
Outside The Box began as a side project when illustrator Mandy Tang joined Proboscis. Inspired by the Love Outdoor Play campaign to get more children playing outside, we came up with the idea of using our StoryCube format and our bookleteer self-publishing platform to make a set of cubes that would inspire playfulness. We think its a lovely thing worth getting out into the world – we hope you agree.
