So I recently got in this from Kickstarter, and was immediately impressed by how small it is!
Plunked a quarter in for scale:
The components are about half the size I usually expect, and the box has no air whatsoever! It is a bit naff to sort and shuffle the tiny tiles, but I feel like it’s the right size for the type of game it is. And picking up/flipping the little bits feels great 
The new edition of Sidereal Confluence has a spectacular box and insert. The vac-tray holds all of the small components and cards, and keeps them reasonably sorted, while the larger cardboard items stack neatly on top, filling the box fully (while well supported). It’s quick and clean and it’s a thing of beauty, particularly considering how full the box is, and the myriad token types.
[EDIT] I ended up adding two small trays to fit in the middle channel. It isn’t quite perfect but allowed me to eliminate almost all baggies (not to mention removable for in game use)!
Even with the original and a custom insert… this all makes me want to upgrade.
Vasel did a video comparing the two. I don’t have the frame of reference needed to compare the two and pick up on practical, QOL changes but I know he’s a huge fan of the game. His final comments indicated a “maybe” for folks upgrading, dependent on how much they like the game.
It’s the cleaner look that wins me over. The background of cards & tiles of the original makes the game look really cluttered and dense, making a fairly inaccessible game a lot less approachable. I like how the different parts of the tiles/cards are far clearer in hierarchy of importance, whereas the original has an onslaught of instruction. I would’ve preferred a design overhaul to this stripped back look, but anything is a major improvement.
I’m of a mind to hold off until I see a silly sale or whatever. Don’t see myself cracking it out any time soon, and I have the game anyway, so in no rush.
In some ways I’m a bit surprised they didn’t do an overhaul. Granted Kwanchai only did the cover to the new edition, but I think they could have really leveraged his design expertise… though at a much higher cost.
Meanwhile, further to my edit above, here’s another “lucky eyeball” storage hack; These random boxes I found this afternoon are basically custom fit. Another millimeter wider and they would have been useless.
Inserts are only as good as their use on the table. Single-piece vacuum moulded plastic inserts are almost entirely useless, unless they happen to fit boxes like you have there, so that is a very nice find.
I agree, and generally the bigger the box, the more likely it is to be gutted and replaced (in the process of doing this with Feudum*). Sidereal is a dense mass of components and cards, which is what makes this one so surprising. Could I make something better? Sure, but I’m not motivated to here… Yet. We’ll see after a play or two.
I did a similar thing with a plano box for Cosmic Frog. Insert remains functional, tiles are all nicely sorted and quick to access.
[EDIT] *Here is the fruit of that labour, regarding Feudum. I may need to make a few minor adjustments once all the deluxe stuff gets here, but I think I should be pretty well set as-is, and the big Plano on the right has ample room to store the planned 3x Rudders and Ramparts minis.
Very strong contender for this thread: Parks.
Opening the box, the two token trays fit very nicely.
Removing them, you have all the components with the fold-out board sitting fixed between the slightly raised four brown knobs just above and below it:
Take the board out and you see this:
But even with the cards sitting nicely in the previous picture, half of them have another thing fitted perfectly underneath, for example the metal badge and bonfire tokens in the top left and right, and the camera at middle bottom:
And the camera even has a sign under it to tell you that this shallow recess is for the camera!
And then you pack it up by reversing the photos from here up to the first one, and putting the instructions booklets above the token trays just before you put the lid back on. Aaaaah satisfying!
Here is Galilean Moons. It’s in a box roughly equivalent to Z-Man’s flat boxes. The cards are sleeved, the bits are as sorted as they really need to be, and I’ll be on the hunt for a generic box/boxes for the robot meeples. As it stands though, just about perfect!
Do not buy any expansions 
I eventually did manage a solution but now not all the parks fit into the box. The rest works out. This is the trouble with the gametrayz solutions they are not really flexible.
CMON’s Modern Art is a lovely compact box
I am nigh-obsessed with box efficiency and routinely paint a smaller box for a badly packaged game, or else house multiple games in one box and paint a little title menu on the side. In that latter case, I’ll always keep boxes with great art and ditch those without.
This lately has led to small boxes, which are usually more efficiently packed, getting ghettoed into larger boxes that aren’t–an unfair punishment for being small and easily vanished away. I again protect the coolest art or most unusual colours, so The Crew and Air Land & Sea have been swallowed but Tournament at Avalon, Coup and Team3 get their own spaces (how many silver or neon pink boxes do you have?), but I’m not wholly satisfied with this solution.
The new Rails series from Capstone Games are very well-boxed. Know what ain’t? Azul. You don’t need individual scoreboards; I’ve cut them off and kept just one for everyone, slimming the space needs considerably. That beauty of a box and cool blue insert…gone. Such a waste.
I generally find inserts inefficient, and half-useless if you store boxes sideways, so I always ditch them and bag everything in cheap felt bags from China. I fit and organise a lottttt of expansions this way.
Ooohhh maaan! I get you. It’s just more efficient!
Im in the process of creating a topic, and remembered that this thread exists!
I’m really love this. I’m looking at games that have excellent gameplay:packaging ratio like them Eklund games, without, you know, Eklund in them.
Carl Chudyk’s card games.
Jonathan Draper’s Tokyo Metro
Yunnan which is unfortunately in reprint limbo.
I haven’t appreciated how compact Splotter games are.
I have squeezed Imhotep and Fields of Green with their expansions in their small exp boxes. THat’s how much air they are wasting in the base game box.
I need the opposite topic… my copy of Ginkgopolis arrived.
But also Oink Games fit a lot of gamein tiny packages. I like the Escape from Aliens box though Osprey box size fitness varies a lot.
oh I forgot I also own Meuterer and Verräter. Anyone have tried these?
I haven’t played Elder Signs for a long time so I don’t know what I think of this now. It’s the only FFG Cthulhu game of running around and shotgun a Lovecraftian monster in the face that doesn’t take a long time and doesn’t take a lot of space.
The older two Citadels editions are pretty compact for the gameplay they give. Not sure about the latest one.
It’s a tragedy alright. But it fits nicely with the Experts expansion
I still have that. It’s been ages since I played–added it to my “Nostalgia” section Meuterer has long been given away. It is very compact that is true.
For the opposite thread: Quacks of Q Big Box is hilariously too big. It’s not just the huge amount of empty space, it’s the dimensions: so long along one edge that you can’t possibly store it anywhere, or transport it. Completely wrong in every way 
I must say, I was quite impressed with how much game fits into the Architects of the Western Kingdom very decently sized box
