The Biscuit Rule: Drawing a Family Board Game for a Wet Sunday Afternoon

Rain on the window, a restless house and a tin of biscuits within reach: that is the classic British Sunday afternoon. Rather than reach for another screen, I reached for a sheet of A3 cartridge paper. The plan was simple: draw a board game by hand, make some tokens from the recycling bin and see whether the family would actually play it. It turned out to be one of the best illustration exercises I have done in ages, because a board game has to be read, understood and used. It cannot just sit there looking pretty.

Start with a sheet of paper and a bad idea

The best starting point was not a clever concept. It was a winding path. I drew a loose pencil line around the page, letting it curl past a puddle, a bus stop, a sofa, a kettle and a suspiciously large biscuit. The game was called Rainy Day Roundabout, mostly because the path went round and round and because I could not think of anything better. The title was written in pencil first, then gone over with a fineliner, and the letters went slightly wobbly at the end. That felt right.

The materials were ordinary: A3 cartridge paper, a pencil, an eraser, a black fineliner, a small watercolour set, an old cereal box, scissors, glue and Sellotape. The board did not need to be archival. It needed to survive a game and a cup of tea. I drew the underlayers lightly, then inked the main path before adding colour. The watercolour bled in a few places, especially where I had been impatient with the drying. One bloom near the bus stop looked like a rain cloud, so I labelled it as one.

The board is a drawing, not a design

There is a temptation to make a hand-drawn board look like a manufactured one. Resist it. A board drawn by hand can have margins that lean, arrows that point slightly off and a puddle that is more of a kidney shape than a puddle. Those are not flaws to hide. They are the reason it feels like a game made in a house rather than a product ordered from a warehouse.

I kept the squares large and the labels short. Long instructions on a board are hard to read when everyone is leaning over it. Instead, each landmark got a tiny drawing and a two-word prompt: tea break, puddle jump, bus delay, biscuit stop. The path crossed itself once by accident. Rather than redraw the whole board, I turned the crossing into a muddy shortcut and added a small pencil note: only if you are wearing wellies. That rule came from the drawing, not from a rulebook.

Tokens from the recycling bin

The tokens were cut from an old cereal box, two layers glued together so they felt sturdy. I drew a wellington boot, a teapot, a dog, a bus ticket and a biscuit. The dog looked more like a potato with ears, so the potato became the official name of that token. That is the sort of thing that happens when you draw quickly and do not let yourself rub everything out.

We also made a paper die from a printed cube net, though a wooden die from a drawer would work just as well. The paper one was slightly wonky, which meant it sometimes rolled a one when it looked like a four. We made a rule for that too: if the die lands on the floor, it counts as a puddle splash and you miss a turn. The game was already teaching us to be flexible.

Rules that fit on three cards

The rules were drawn on three index cards, not typed. Each card had one heading and three short lines. The aim was to reach the sofa square with the teapot token, collecting a biscuit card on the way. You roll, move, follow the prompt and pass the die on. That was it. Anything more complicated would have been abandoned before the first cup of tea went cold.

The chance cards were where the rainy Sunday crept in. Kettle boils: everyone waits while you make the tea. Dog shakes: move back one square and wipe your hands. Last biscuit: offer the tin round before you move forward two. Bus is late: miss a turn and draw a raindrop on your score card. Sock pairing: swap places with another player. The best rule arrived during the first playtest, invented by a nine-year-old: roll a one and you have to do a silly walk before moving. It stayed in.

The Biscuit Rule

The centrepiece became the Biscuit Rule. If you land on the biscuit square, you must offer the tin to everyone before you take one. It is not a complicated rule, but it changed the mood of the game. It made the board feel generous rather than competitive. It also meant the tin emptied faster than expected, which is probably the most British game mechanic I have ever drawn.

Mistakes are part of the game

By the end, the board had a coffee ring, a pencil smudge and a small tear where a token had been dragged. None of that ruined it. The coffee ring became a pond. The tear became a trapdoor square. The smudged puddle became a muddy shortcut. When you draw a game by hand, the mistakes are not outside the experience. They are part of the map.

The finished board is not neat. The path wobbles, the dog is a potato and the die is unreliable. But it has been played three times, argued over twice and packed away in an old pizza box with the tokens in an envelope. That feels like a proper illustration job: something made by hand, made for use and made a little bit better by the rain outside.