Meet The Vanilla Folder

World record holder. Origami game designer. The person who asked: why isn't anyone making games out of origami?

Hi, I'm the creator behind Origami Games by The Vanilla Folder, and I've been obsessed with paper since before I knew what to do with that obsession.

The name "The Vanilla Folder" was a gift from my brother, he has a talent for clever names. (You might know him from our board game channel, Papersalt where we're currently working on a Kickstarter together.) Before all of this, I ran a YouTube channel called "Good and Fast Tutorials", a name that made complete sense to me at the time. I wanted to make tutorials that got straight to the point, no fluff. But "straight to the point" turned out to be a lot less fun to build a creative life around. So I leaned into what actually lit me up: origami.

🏆 Yes, really, I hold the world record for the world's biggest origami giraffe. He was 27 and a half feet tall and we named him Mongo but then I accidentally burned to ash in a fire.

Why Origami Games?

The idea started simply: I wanted to make a game that lived in both worlds, my origami channel and the board game channel I run with my brother. So I started looking for origami games, tabletop experiences that use the actual physical properties of folded paper as part of the gameplay.

"I looked around and realized: nobody is doing this. Nobody is taking the unique qualities of origami, the folding, the transformation, the tactile creativity, and turning it into a real tabletop experience."

Every game on this site is built around that idea: origami isn't just a medium, it's part of the mechanic. These aren't games printed on paper, they're paper games where the paper itself plays.

Who These Games Are For

The board game and card game fan who's always looking for something fresh, a new mechanic, a new experience, something to bring to game night that nobody has played before.

The maker, the person who builds LEGO sets for the process as much as the product, or who has spent an afternoon folding cranes just to see if they could. You'll appreciate that the assembly is part of the fun.

The kid with a piece of paper. Not every great game needs to come in a $60 box. If you've got a printer and a sheet of paper, you've got enough to play. These print and play games exist because great game experiences shouldn't have a price tag that locks anyone out.

What's Coming Next

There's a lot in the works, new origami games, new paper game designs, and the Kickstarter project with Papersalt. If you want to follow the journey (and see some very satisfying folds along the way), find me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

Thanks for being here. Now go fold something.