Inkpot Games
board game publisher - London
board game publisher - London
Inkpot Games was founded in London in 2012 by Cordelia March, James Croft, and Anna Voss-Hartley — three people who believed games could be small, strange, and worth taking seriously.
We do not exhibit at trade fairs. We do not have a distributor. We do not target mass markets. Each title is designed, manufactured, and shipped by us.
We make games about observation, memory, and the decisions people make when no one is watching. Our games have small print runs. No two of our titles are the same. Several are now out of print.
We work with minimal resources and no external funding. This allows us to take creative risks that larger publishers cannot.
We believe that interesting games emerge from simple rules. We believe that observation is a form of play. We believe that mystery and uncertainty can be features, not bugs.
We do not believe that bigger is better. We do not believe that more players make better games. We do not believe that a game must produce a winning condition to be meaningful.
Cordelia March. Cordelia brought us together. She had been working in organisational assessment — measuring how people classify what they see — and she kept asking a question none of the rest of us had thought of: what happens when you turn the assessment into a game? She designed the rules for Percept in a single evening, and we spent the next six months not changing very much. Cordelia handles our business relationships and keeps us solvent. She is the reason we exist.
James Croft. James is a researcher by training. He was completing a PhD in perceptual psychology when Cordelia approached him about the game idea — he had been studying how people describe ambiguous images, and he realised the scoring mechanic for Percept was essentially a controlled experiment. He designed the classification system for Percept's inkblots and writes our rulebooks. James does not own a mobile telephone. He believes that games should not require batteries. We do not argue with him.
Anna Voss-Hartley. Anna studied fine art and printmaking at Central Saint Martins before joining us. She is responsible for the physical production of all inkpot titles — material selection, print quality, assembly standards. She is the only one of us who knows how to operate the box-cutter without injuring herself. Anna established our printing relationship with a specialist manufacturer in London whose usual clients are research institutions, not game companies. They produce our inkblot cards to standards usually reserved for assessment materials. We like this. Anna says they find us baffling. Anna designed the visual identity for Cumulus after spending three days watching clouds from a park in Hackney. She said the game told her what it should look like. We believed her.
All Inkpot Games titles are manufactured in London. We use local printers and small production runs to maintain quality control. Each box is assembled by hand. The inkblot cards for Percept are produced by a specialist printer whose usual clients are research institutions and assessment companies. We are their smallest account by a considerable margin. We consider this a compliment.
All Inkpot Games titles are manufactured in London. We use local printers and small production runs to maintain quality control. Each box is assembled by hand.
Because we do not use industrial manufacturing, our costs are high and our margins are small. This is intentional.
Inkpot Games dissolved in 2016. No further titles will be produced.
Archives of all four games remain online for reference. This site will remain live indefinitely.
Inkpot Games no longer operates. We are not accepting inquiries, licensing requests, or partnership proposals.