Printable Instructions for Board Games

Instructions to your beloved board games get lost all of the time, but not all is lost as you can find printable instructions for board games by using the Internet. You can also print your own instructions for the games that you want to design yourself.

There are a myriad of reasons why instructions go missing. Your family moves and games spill out and in haste the pieces are picked up, replaced, and then directions go missing. Perhaps you bought the game at a flea market or yard sale, and the instructions just weren’t inside the box. Whatever the reason, they are, in fact, gone.

You want to play the game, and you don’t feel like making up the rules as you go. For newer games, you are in luck. Most games that you buy at Wal-Mart are from big companies like Hasbro, Mattel or Avalon Hill. These companies are located on the Internet. Usually in their game sections, under download, you will be able to locate the printable instructions for board games that you lost in a PDF format.

Some small game companies may also have instructions available for you to download and print. The best course of action is to flip your game box over and look near the UPC for the website of the game’s publisher. Point your browser to the site and look around for a download section. If there is none, locate the contact page, look for someone who is in charge of sales, and send an e-mail inquiry about printable instructions. Many times, they e-mail you a copy in PDF.

Older games that have long since been extinct will be a lot harder to find. In some instances, these games may be known by a new name like in the case of Draughts (now known as Checkers), and if you can find that name, you could find instructions on the Internet. For those games that do not turn up under new names, there are a few resources that you can point your browser to in hopes of locating the instructions you need, like the following:

1. Game Cabinet - This website has many instructions for old, defunct games from 5 Alive, Acquire, and Cacho to games still in production like Clue, Risk and Phase 10.
2. KidsCrafts - This site offers games for download (which includes the instructions) and printing.

If you cannot find the game company that made the game you need instructions for, then try a Google search for the title of the game with "instructions for" preceding the title. You may just luck out.

People are usually surprised to learn just how old board games are. The first recorded board game in history was dubbed "Royal Game of UR" which was discovered at the Ur Tombs. The carbon dating on the game places it around 2500 B.C. The game Draught, known as Checkers today, dates back to 1100 A.D. making it one of three of the oldest "current history" games in existence.

Finding instructions for games this old may take a little research on your part. The first step is to see if the game has a name that is current – like in the case of Checkers and Draught. There are other games, like Chess (Three and Nine Men’s Morris) that have older versions. It certainly can be more fun playing the original version of these games to get a feel for history.

Maybe you spent time creating your own board game, and you’re ready to put it out there for the world to see. The players of your game need to know how to play it! Printing professional looking instructions for your game is a little more intricate than simply writing them up in Microsoft Word and making copies (unless you are merely putting together a playable prototype).

The key to good instructions are in their simplicity. The consumer that is used to buying well-known games like Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly sometimes ignores games that require a high learning curve.

When creating your instructions keep the following in mind:

1. Keep the instructions simple to understand, be precise and to the point.
2. If you have special spaces with icons and the like that do different things then include an icon and a short description as visual aids are a great help.
3. Make a booklet out of your instructions by using a program like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher where you can select to make a newsletter.
4. Remember to have a cover page and include a decent logo of your game and your copyright information (if you have it copyrighted).
5. Print using double sided printing and using the collate function as well as the "print last page first" to make it easier on you.

Keep these ideas in mind when making your instructions, and you will be on your way to looking even more professional in your game publishing duties.

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