(audience clapping)
Hi, Drew!
Oh, Neil!
Your introduction was so exciting
that you scared your dog!
Oh, Douglas, well he's a rescue.
He's scared of everything.
It's in his nature.
Poor thing got like, you know...
He has a past.
Don't we all?
Right?
I have to tell you
that last night I played your game
and I don't know if the control room is ready for this
but we've got, I mean, they're ready for anything,
but I have, yeah, that's me.
Okay, good, look at you!
Oh yeah, no, I'm playing the game
and I also did the instructions
where (throat clears) I don't wanna spoil anything,
but you say to go put something somewhere and I did that
and I got through a lot and I ...
Neil, okay, first of all, oh, here's another shot.
This is my game closet at home.
And this might sort of give you a sense of-
You like the games.
Why games are so important to me.
Oh, nice!
Now are those games you buy and never play
or are those games you've actually played?
No, we're big gamers in the house.
I mean, when I was younger, single,
I used to have fun parties with a bunch of adults
and play games, but now it's definitely more me and my kids
in the daylight. So, Drew,
this is why I created Box One,
for game closets like that, because I, like you,
love the games, and I would go to a store,
and I'd go straight to the games,
like a bookstore, one of those giant...
in Union Squares or something. Oh yeah!
And I would go straight from the books
to the game section.
I would see all the games and I thought they were great,
but most all of them were for groups of people, two to six.
I love me some Scrabble, you know,
but I can't play it by myself 'cause I cheat.
But I thought, wouldn't it be cool to make a game
that's a party game that's only for one person
that you can play by yourself,
in fact that you're supposed to play by yourself.
And I also love the idea of when you start playing a game
and you think it's a singular thing,
as you're playing it, the game kind of evolves
into something that you weren't expecting,
like instructions, like you said.
You're supposed to take a...
You're supposed to follow instructions to the T
and you're supposed to take a card and put it somewhere
that you normally wouldn't put a card
to make sure that you're paying attention.
I wanna make sure that you, just you,
are playing this game alone.
And I love this idea for a game is to have a game
that you can do if you're a student,
if you're in a dorm room by yourself,
if your spouse is away for the day,
if you're, you know, live alone, if you're single.
Everyone is by themselves at some point in their week
or whatever and most people like games.
So I created Box One.
It's not what you think it is, and I love that you said,
"I'm not gonna spoil anything,"
'cause it's a little hard to pitch
because I also love escape rooms
and I love the idea of a narrative within a game.
I know that sounds strange,
but you haven't completed Box One, have you?
No, I haven't, but I definitely had questions
along the way of how did you come up with these layers?
And one of my favorite games used to be...
why am I blanking out on the name?
Oh my gosh, I can't even believe it.
It had everything in it.
Why am I blanking out?
Cranium. Cranium, thank you!
Ah, thank you, it was like hangman and Claymation
and Pictionary and everything.
That was always the game I wanted to play
because it wasn't just one thing.
And that is definitely not a game you can play by yourself.
And Right!
I play solitaire. Nice.
I'm on my Scrabble Go app like a maniac.
And I just, I'm such a gamer, and I always have been.
I used to be a master solitaire player.
I almost won every time.
And I never cheated.
I love solitaire, but I find solitaire,
sometimes it's a little solitary, right?
Yeah! We live in a world now
where we're all in isolation a little bit,
so I wanted to make sure that you're not playing
the same type of game over and over.
You showed the cards part of the game.
It evolves from that in a way that's kind of interesting.
And this is all from my own love of games,
my love of immersive entertainment, my love of escape rooms,
as I said before.
It's really intelligent. And I came
up with this myself.
Thank you, thank you!
And it took you a long time.
Yeah, a couple years it took to do the whole thing,
and I did it myself.
I'm a little, to be honest, I'm a little annoyed at not you,
but there's some guy online
claiming that he helped design the game,
and I'm getting emails and texts from people.
There's a guy named Martin Maloney or something like this
who's claiming that he was involved in Box One,
which is starting to get a little frustrating
to the point of almost wanting me to get litigious.
I probably just shouldn't even be talking about it
live on your show or else it gives him more credibility.
But I take pride in the fact that this is
a thing that I created.
And I liked talking about it.
This is why I'm on the show with you, not to profit from it,
but to legitimately have people experience a fun,
super cool evening day of a game that,
trust me, is not, starts out simple and winds up in a larger
kind of epic scale, if that makes any sense,
and I can't tell too much about it or else I spoil things.
No, you really do.
It's very challenging.
It's like, there's a lot of intelligence,
a lot of imagination, a lot of action.
And you're a fan. Just wait.
Of escape rooms.
It just builds and builds.
I've never really seen anything like it as a true gamer,
and I was blown away at its uniqueness, its cleverness.
This is gonna be huge. Dude, I'm smiling
from ear to ear, because you have no idea
what's still in store for you.
And by the way, I woke up to Raymond,
a gentleman who came up to me and was like,
there's a guy in, I don't know, some country
who's acting like you, but he's really disgusting
and doing garbage stuff and you should be aware of it.
So there's always someone out there doing something weird
and maybe he and your guy can get together
and do a whole party.
(laughing) No, no.
We're here in Cake Week, and I have to,
before we go to commercial, throw to your cake,
the robot versus princess cake.
Neil, as if you're not-
I did this for our kids a few years ago!
It's so incredible! My husband bakes cakes.
He's amazing, David, he's like the chef in the family
but I get to sort of decorate them, so this year we did,
yeah. Look at this!
Harper wanted princesses. It's on top of her.
And Gideon wanted Legos, and so I said,
"Okay, we'll make a double cake,
and it'll be Legos versus princesses
and they will be attacking each other. (laughs)
It's like three rooms with a bridge.
I think the kids were six.
I was in a very Banksy stage.
I was really trying to take art to a subversive level.
I don't know that it was healthy for the children
to see robots and princesses destroying each other
on the top of the birthday cake, but I enjoyed it.
You and David are such good parents.
In fact, I have a little David story.
We're gonna go to commercial
and I'm gonna tell you about it.
We'll be right back.
He's here, do you want me to get him?
Oh yeah, please do!
All right, we'll be right back, everybody,
with Neil Patrick Harris!
Yay!
(upbeat music)