Four in a Row Game: New Product Launch

I designed a custom four in a row game many years ago for my digital business over at CNCKing.com (which is still online) so I decided to dust off the digital files and update them for my son Simon to play with.

This four in a row game has a number of improvements, they are focused on making the game solid and a lot stronger so that my two and a half year old won’t destroy this game when it plays with it in his free time.

I had some scrap plywood and MDF in the shop, both quarter inch, so that’s what I used for both the custom four in a row game and the tokens that you use in the game for this new SandboxRanch.com product launch.

Here’s the first video launch of this four in a row game I made, back in 2009, as you saw in the video at the top of the blog posts, I made a few modifications to my design for extra strength and durability for a young child.

I then 3 years later released another animation at a higher resolution to make the video clearer.

Simon knows his numbers, colors and shapes, in three languages, so it will be interesting to see how well he puts it all together to realize that this is a game that’s actually very simple and learn the rules that all he has to do is put four of these in a row to win.

When it comes to four in a row games, the rules are exactly that, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, just put four tokens in a row.

The cool thing about designing your own items is that you can customize it to your needs exactly, there are no molds or rules other than physics that you need to adhere to, this is an aspect that I really enjoy and am so happy I taught myself to do all those years ago.

As you can see, this is quite a contrast to the banks I made earlier, but to me, it’s really all the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inSCPwuZoRM/

As the laser cuts away through the quarter inch plywood, you can see some smoke stains appearing on the surface, I wasn’t concerned about this as it’s for personal use and I was expecting to have a few issues in this prototype that would require me to make a nicer version of this four in a row game but as luck worked out, everything was perfect so I ended-up using this one to play with my son Simon with for this upcoming SandboxRanch.com product.

The nice thing about laser cutting this four in a row game is that I don’t have to worry about holding the material down like I’d have to do with my routers and I don’t need to account for extra cutting material being lost due to using a spinning bit, as such, the process is slower but also faster, the precision is the same.

Quarter inch plywood is nothing for my laser, it cuts it fine, the inner corners are sharp, not rounded like they’d be if I used my router, and I can nest things incredibly tight across the board as the diameter of the beam is almost nothing.

If you are wondering, this material actually comes from a custom box making project I did a few months ago, have just one more sheet of scraps left over from this project which I’ll use for another job then it’s all eaten by production!

My main business, CNCROi.com, has and continues to engrave and cut a wide variety of materials, this is left over plywood from one of those such products, I prefer to use what I have in the shop if possible for product testing as it’s already in place and I’ve already optimized the cutting process for this material.

The design of a four in a row game is pretty straight forward, front and back, with spacers in-between and held together with two side parts and a solid base, once all glued together, the overall structure is incredibly strong, which is why I designed it this way.

Making this entire four in a row game out of plywood gives it a lot of strength as well, laminated wood, either as ply or slab, which I do for the SandboxRanch.com banks, adds a lot of redundancy to a design and lessons the power of warping from humidity and environmental changes that can slowly cause a model to break apart.

Doing a dry run of this four in a row game, everything fits together fine, if it was for non-2-year-old use, I’d say using it without glue is very possible, but with a little boy, this is guaranteed disaster, so it will be thoroughly glued together.

This isn’t the first plywood project I have on SandboxRanch.com, this is the same plywood I used for our element coasters.

But first, I need to make the little tokens, or chips, that will be then painted contrasting colors on both sides to turn this game into a four in a row game where colors and numbers are required, it’s actually a fun little game, the rules are simple, but if you go fast, easy to screw-up and lose from innateness.

I used my go-to paint, enamel paint, the red came out great on this quarter inch MDF and the white just as good – really enjoy using this paint, it spreads great, provides a solid color and cures very fast.

After the red side is dry and somewhat cured, I used the same board that I cut these out of to do the other side, this way, the paint doesn’t get onto the edges of the custom four in a row game tokens.

Of course, if you wanted these chips to be made out of hardwood, not a problem, we also make custom wooden coins, which is basically these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cloFGjEKMQE/

While the tokens are drying on this SandboxRanch.com game, I can begin the assembly process, again, I wasn’t expecting everything to work perfectly right off the bat but it did, so the smoke stained and seeping glue version of this custom four in a row game is the one I brought home to play with my son Simon.

There is one slight design change I’ll do to this custom four in a row game though, I noticed that the base wanted to go beyond the supports I gave to it, it’s a minor detail that didn’t affect the model but a slight mod will make the assembly by somebody that isn’t me that much more intuitive, and that’s the goal on SandboxRanch.com, to sell both assembled models and those that you do this yourself.

I decided just for fun to sand one side of the custom four in a row game, looks great to me!

There are a ton of game options that I want to launch on SandboxRanch.com soon, here’s another one I did many years ago that’s a prime candidate.

I played a game against myself and I won, this custom four in a row game is awesome!

If you are interested in buying this game, it’s available now at SandboxRanch.com, head over to the top header under buy now and follow the linking hierarchy.

I no longer sell digital files for various reasons, so you can buy this in pre-cut kit form or fully assembled, up to you… of course, shipped right to your door!