Thunderbox Entertainment consists of a small team of developers with a passion for board games. With an innovative culture, they have transformed traditional table-top board games into tablet form. Read about their experience of starting a new business:
What inspired you to start your business?
I love board games! …and I wanted to use my design and tech powers to share something I was passionate about, with a fresh, new audience.
How do you find inspiration for new games or projects?
I always want to give people something they haven’t experienced before. In the case of digital board games, the starting point has to be a boxed product that not only has a uniquely refreshing premise, but also the potential to be something more in its new, digital form.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your field?
We use a bespoke development technique called Emotional Game Design. We start with the end result – player emotion – and use this to identify areas we can disrupt, and where to best spend our energy so as to deliver those key emotions. For example, in our game Tsuro there is hardly any UI – players interact almost exclusively with the game pieces… which is because we want to evoke the sense of connection you get from playing a physical board game. In our forthcoming game, The Captain is Dead, we want players to feel child-like wonder so we ditched the usual epic sci-fi soundtrack for some amazing synthwave that feels both nostalgic and futuristic at the same time!
What is the biggest challenge that you have overcome as a business owner?
As the Director of an indie game studio, I have to be 33% Creator, 33% Marketeer and 33% Business Developer – switching between those hats means that it’s sometimes difficult to build up the mental momentum to do each element as well as I need to.
What advice would you give someone that is thinking about starting their own business?
Don’t do it by yourself. Get a partner, or, better yet, two partners… so everyone can wear an appropriate hat, and you don’t end up wearing your head out.
