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Board games are a productive means of passing time, both indoors and outdoors, encouraging us to sharpen our strategic thinking skills and creativity. Product designers keep adding modern twists and turns to the classic games that make them more engaging and exciting, while retaining the essence of this enjoyable activity.

Sydney-based studio Faum has crafted an elegant chess set entirely out of beeswax, transforming each game piece into a small, individual candle that will provide hours of burning and eventually disappear without a trace left behind. The result is a truly eco-friendly set that not only provides an enjoyable pastime, but is also a real work of art that would enhance a cozy candle-lit game night.

The fully functional set comprises the traditional organically shaped 32 pieces, with the pieces coming in naturally pigmented wax in sage and ivory tones to help players differentiate between the two.

Japanese sculptor and author Yuka Morii has re-imagined Go, an abstract Chinese strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. Titled Nego, a play on “neko,” the Japanese word for cat, this version invites the players to fit the most cats on the board by taking turns placing them onto a small grid. The small figurines show the felines stretching and napping.

The chessboard designed by Kai Xia for EIFplay, a startup company based in Shenzhen, presents a revolutionary concept that offers a lot of innovative features to address most common concerns associated with traditional board games, such as portability, convenience of storing pieces, and even child safety.

The intelligent chessboard employs a unique button system to enable the players effortlessly switch between the two pieces in Go, showcasing two different colors to represent the pieces for each game. This phygital solution eliminates the frustration of missing pieces over time – you literally won’t need to worry about storing pieces at all.
It also make the game suitable for young children, for its button system ensures that the it is free from small parts that could be swallowed.

Additionally, the EIFplay chessboard provides the option to play against the computer, offering a man-machine mode with adjustable difficulty levels, which turns the game into a smart alternative to a smartphone or device for the parents who wish to lomit their kids’ screen time.

The chessboard is smaller than an A4 paper sheet, which means it is perfectly portable fitting into any school bag or travel case. The game’s lithium battery, rechargeable through a type-C interface, provides a battery life of more than 4 hours, which is long enough for a long journey.