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Playability Podcast


Episode 3: Lauren Woolsey with Sarah and Will Reed


Run time: 18 minutes, 36 seconds


Episode recorded by Lauren Woolsey.


Playability is produced by Mike Risley.


Transcript written by Lauren Woolsey.


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00:09 Lauren Woolsey
Hello and welcome back to Playability, where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility.  I'm your host Lauren Woolsey and I'm here today with Sarah and Will Reed, the designers of "Oaxaca: Crafts of a Culture." This game was a successful kickstarter in Summer 2017 that has recently completed fulfillment. It must be nice to have the project wrapped up!

00:30 Sarah Reed
Yes, definitely.

00:31 Lauren Woolsey
So, can you go through the game's back story a little bit?

00:35 Will Reed
I would probably be the best one to answer that. I originally wanted to make an archaeology game, mostly because I was intensely watching lots and lots and lots of documentaries. So when I came with the idea to Sarah, it was with all these intricate, uh [Sarah: "background notes"] yeah, vague historical references of all sorts of mysteries. And I also wanted to make a dice manipulation game. So, that was the initial thought behind the game, and as we proceeded, we found out that making the art for something that has been virtually unseen or nobody really knows what it should look like...

1:18 Sarah Reed
Like for example, he researched a sword that people know exists, but nobody knows where it is currently, so there's only kind of like vague written recordings of, I mean, there's not much to go on to make this thing a real thing!

1:34 Lauren Woolsey
That sounds like you could just make it whatever you want to (laughs).

1:36 Will Reed
Right, right, but explaining that to an artist is a little bit dicey, so during that whole process of getting this into some sort of shape of an IP, our partner Ben who had been working on a Oaxaca game, and he had like three or four iterations he was never happy with, he said, "okay I'm just going to through this out here, and you can say no if you want, but what about Oaxaca?" And we had fallen in love with the theme.

2:06 Sarah Reed
Yeah, we wanted him to make the game.

2:08 Will Reed
Yeah, so we were fully intending that that was going to be one of his projects, and we said sure because one of the things I really wanted was some real life IP attached to the game. A real theme that existed somewhere. So, Oaxaca was more than enough, and we didn't have to vaguely tell an artist, "okay, make this thing we don't know what it looks like, but make sure it looks like that thing." [Sarah: "yeah."]

2:35 Lauren Woolsey
Excellent. So we've started to walk through this game's development path, it seems like you had a lot of the mechanics and Ben had this existing theme that he wanted to make and it seemed like a very smooth combination of the two. 

2:50 Will Reed
Yeah, yeah, originally I used the general concept of archaeology, where swords didn't necessarily mean attack, but they meant how cultures interact and usually battle. [Sarah: "or just interact."] Yeah, interact. And then pots were how a society lives, and then there was like a fossil one to determine how the people are, and then that kind of represented different mechanics in the game, and he then presented all the various types of handicrafts that are in Oaxaca, and we went over them and discussed them to see which one was the best fit, and once we got over that hurdle, the game really didn't change.

3:34 Sarah Reed
Yeah, because mechanically, the original archaeology game is, you'd go out into the ruins, dig up whatever artifacts you find, bring them back to your study, you would research them, get them prepared, write your whatever [Will: "thesis"] thesis about it, then you'd put it in your gallery for display, and that's how you would get points at the end of the game. Well, with Oaxaca, you go out into the wilderness, you acquire your raw materials, your wood, your clay, whatever it is you need. You go back to your workshop, make that into art, then put it into your market stall, for points at the end of the game! So, it was amazing, it just so seamlessly came together, I think the hardest part was the different decks, how to best fit the concepts to the art. And even then it's all abstracted anyways [Will: "Mm-hmm"]. But it worked really well once we switched over and we started having some basic art assets, it was never turning back, that's the way it was going to be.

4:36 Lauren Woolsey
That's fantastic. Often it's difficult to try to take an existing game and apply a new theme to it, but it seems like this was some sort of already prepped and ready to go, and that it fit perfect. [Sarah: "yep."] You've talked a little bit about the mechanics that the game's using. What are the primary goals of the player? Like, how does one win, and what are the targets that you're trying to reach?

4:56 Will Reed
Uh generally the player is trying to build the most and the best handicrafts that are available. And the ones that are best are usually the ones that take more work. And you do all of this through various dice manipulation. And I wanted to make sure the dice didn't have numbers like so many other dice manipulators are, because it just felt like a cheap way to say, "oh, just add one to your die pip."

5:23 Sarah Reed
Yeah, 'cause the problem with just being numbers, it's very anti-thematic. And we've experienced that in a lot of things, the game may tell you that a one means whatever it is, but when you're playing the game, you see the one as a one. And it is kind of cool that you can add one, subtract one, and so those mechanisms make it really easy to design, but it's not thematic, so that was one of the big things is, we wanted symbols on the dice, so this -- well in the original, pot but now it's wood carvings or basic wood that you're collecting, um, and you use these dice when you roll them, you're going to use them both for gathering the raw materials, as well as crafting what's in your workshop. And then the cards, as you get them finished, you have new abilities that let you manipulate your dice, as Will was saying.

6:13 Will Reed
Another important thing was with handicrafts, usually certain families specialize in a certain craft, so we have it set up, so the way the dice work, is if you use more of one particular thing, you actually get better at that craft and therefore have a kind of characteristic design to how you play as well as the things you make.

6:40 Lauren Woolsey
Yeah that helps bring players into the theme and into the feel of the game. Now, bringing us around to one of the things that Playability likes to focus on: what does accessibility mean to you guys?

6:54 Will Reed
Well for me, since I'm legally blind, it's "can I even play the game?" [Lauren: "yeah, absolutely."] Because it goes beyond color blindness, which I also have. I just don't see most games, so most of it has to be done in memory, or we put games up higher if they have more open information because that's things I can then ask Sarah, like "ok, what do I have in front of me?" and she can just read it out without affecting the gameplay. So we try to incorporate as much of that open information -- I mean there's still a bit here and there, that I guess if you show people the cards you draw it won't affect the game too much -- but we try to make it so that as much of the game information is open to players, so that if anyone does need assistance, it's not going to be a game breaking experience or give someone else who can see an advantage in any way.

7:48 Sarah Reed
And we use symbols everywhere, so anyone with any color blind issues is not going to have a problem, because in fact all of the icons are black and white, so there's not even color to them. The dice are colored, but only because we got to a stretch goal where each player gets their own set of colored dice, but honestly if everybody played with a different colored die, it doesn't matter, it's just that if everyone is rolling dice at the table, I know mine are blue, so I can pull my blue ones back if they mix in with your green ones. But other than that, the color of the dice doesn't matter, everything is symbols. I will admit, it's small cards.

8:24 Will Reed
That's just so we're not taking up [Sarah: "yeah"] a monstrous amount of table space.

8:27 Sarah Reed
Yeah, that's the one thing where if there's any vision accessibility issues, it's the fact that they're smaller cards. We did try to make the font more bold and not too complex. So again, it's the best we could do without taking up a whole table, because a tableau builder just takes up a lot of space. So it made more sense to do the mini cards than regular poker sized cards.

8:48 Lauren Woolsey
Yeah there's always a balance to have to try to strike and it sounds like you had a lot of the right kind of ideas in mind. It also feels, over the past decade or so, it seems like games have gotten into a lot more open information, and it's not just every single game has a hand of cards that nobody sees. [Sarah and Will: "yeah, yes."] It seems like as a community, we've branched out into realizing that open information doesn't mean that it's a solvable game. There's still a lot of play space out there.

9:16 Sarah Reed
Mm-hmm, and especially with this, you may know what your opponents have, but because the dice introduce that random element, there's no determining who will win until you get to the end of the game. And there is a deck that can interact. For the most part, the game is multiplayer solitaire, and if the players don't get into the woodcarving deck, you really won't see any player interactive abilities. But even when you get into them, more of them are positive loops, such as I can take a cube off of each of the cards in my workshop, but everyone else can take one cube off of one card in their workshop, so it's positive player interaction, and the few things that are negative are more, annoying things. Although there was one time, there was, it did kind of make the difference between the game winning, but most of the time it's just going to be annoying your opponents rather than really hurting them. 

10:08 Will Reed
Yeah, another thing with the accessibility that's a bit different than just overcoming some sort of disability is, we noticed in our own game playing is, the bigger the game is, the less likely it hits the table. So when we, ah, was working with Oaxaca, we originally had a really large game in mind, and we tested it out to go five rounds, and it really dragged on to the point of where most Euro games are, where it's good, it's nice, it's fun, and now it's on the decline and is this game finally over. So, we actually made the conscious decision, that we saw where the game started diverging and you started seeing the clear winners of the game, which was all the way back in round three instead of round five. So we made the tough decision of, it's only going to be a three-round game [Sarah: "yeah"] just so time-wise it's more accessible to hardcore gamers who might have a huge library and just looking for something easy to hit the table with enough meat on it that they're going to feel satisfied. And sure enough, we get a lot of that comment of "it's too short!" And we tell them, well, you could play it longer, I don't recommend it!

11:24 Sarah Reed
Yeah, because it's interesting, you get to about the middle of the fourth round, and the game can actually start breaking people [Lauren: (laughs)]. Because it's a tableau builder, so you keep adding cards and adding cards and adding cards, but you can only use so many cards per turn. So if you get more cards than you can use in a round, and then you've got to divide it up by turns, people got heavy AP. Anaylsis Paralysis hit hard and even in people that don't normally have any issues making decisions, and so we realized, yeah if we could do kind of a half of a round it would probably work, but at the end of the third round, you know who's going to win. If you like it that much, play again because now you have a new chance to actually win.

12:06 Lauren Woolsey
It's always better to have players want to play the game again rather than asking, "is this over yet?" [Sarah: (laughs) “Yeah.”] It seems like it was a tough choice to have to cut it down, but the right move. [Will: "Yeah."] What's your favorite part of the game when you're playing it? I know it's hard to pick just one thing.

12:26 Sarah Reed
It is, I like it so much!

12:28 Will Reed
I like it when you can actually see a chain of actions that you can all stitch together on a turn and have a very satisfying play. 'Cause, that's the goal that we typically have when it comes to a good engine builder, is, "how do all these things work together?" So when you can use a die, and use two cards, and use your meeple, and it all explodes into this, cubes are flying everywhere and you're building like [Lauren: (laughs)] That's the really golden spot for me.

13:03 Sarah Reed
I would have to say so, too, kind of for me, and this is where some people have difficulty, at the very beginning of the game, you roll your dice. You are pretty much going to have to do what the dice tell you at the beginning of the game 'cause you have no ability to modify it, other than reroll once. And I actually like that point, because it makes me play differently every time. 'Cause normally, I play, I have a certain way I play. There are some decks that I like to play if I can. But if the dice are telling me I rolled four jewelry, and I don't normally play jewelry, but I've got four of my dice are jewelry, I'm gonna have to play jewelry. And so it helps me challenge myself to every single time try something new and explore the game even deeper. I mean we are the designers, but we haven't played the game in over a year, so it's like kind of relearning it all over again, so.

13:56 Lauren Woolsey
Yeah, it seems like that helps with replayability too, is you can't just have one strategy that you're going to be able to do every single time. [Sarah: "Right, yeah."] What do you think makes this game most memorable for players? When you've been playtesting this and watching people play, what do you think really hooks them in?

14:12 Sarah Reed
Well what hooks them in is definitely the art. People love the look of Oaxaca, I mean, we worked really hard to look authentic, we had a consultation to make sure we weren't doing anything wrong. In fact we had to change the art at one point, because we had told our artist to do this certain style, because it's beautiful, and then we were told, um, "there's only one artist that does that," so that's kind of, not exactly like copyright but he is the only person that makes that style. What was it, I think it was tin art? [Will: "Yeah it was tin art with a heart style"] Yeah so we were advised to not plagiarize, basically. 'Cause other styles, everybody does it. And if everybody does it, then that's fine, we can copy it. If someone makes a wood carving of a giraffe and that's a common thing, then you can do that. But there was a certain style of tin art that this heart and a hand, and I can't remember it exactly, but it was beautiful. So we had to change that. But that's what draws people in because it's just such beautiful art. And then I'd like to think that what keeps people staying is the engaging gameplay, that you get to roll dice, but then you're trying to learn how to manipulate it and build different cards, I mean half the time it's people ooh-ing and aah-ing over the art, and it's the "oh wow, I get to do this now?!" So, that's pretty cool.

15:32 Will Reed
Yeah, I can't say, uh, we put anything in mechanically that's awe-inspiring or game-changing, we just tried to do it in the way that we felt was the best experience, so what it ultimately comes down to is, yeah the theme is really what grabs people, and in fact I've had people from Mexico that have done podcasts about it and they said it's gone over very well because our push and emphasis on the game was to celebrate the culture of Oaxaca. 'Cause I know Ben and I have hispanic heritage, so it was something in our backgrounds that we were like, "we want to see this because this is something we don't see out on the market" and there's nothing that's negative about what we're presenting. If anything, there's been a lot of people who see what, like we did a special edition where we imported almost five hundred alebrijes, which are the wooden little sculpture [Sarah: "woodcarvings"] woodcarvings and Sarah's been, she keeps directing people like, "okay this is the importer we used," and, 'cause he has some really beautiful alebrije sets, there's like five of them.

16:45 Sarah Reed
Yeah, so for our game we imported four per game, and so we don't have anymore to offer, but whenever somebody asks, "hey, how do I get a special edition?" I'm like well, we can't get the box, there's just no more, but these alebrijes came from Oaxaca, so you can buy them! Granted, if you can fly to Oaxaca that'd probably be the best way, [Lauren: "And then you get to visit Oaxaca!"] Yeah! But sans that, here's the link, he imports quite a bit, and right now, as of the time of recording, he has several sets of five, and they're really cute! So five is obviously more than you need, and then when those run out, he goes and does another trip to get some more, so his site is always getting new stuff in and he has a bunch of wonderful other Oaxacan crafts that are available. And yeah, I'm just so enthralled and I'm just so happy that we could take part in this to support the culture and spread the love of it, and just get more people interested!

17:48 Lauren Woolsey
Yeah absolutely! I'll have to get that link from you to put in the description of the episode. [Sarah: "definitely."] So that our listeners can access those. So for our listeners that are interested in getting a copy of the game, is it available at all? 

17:58 Sarah Reed
Yes! Uh, you can go to Undine Studios dot com, forward slash Oaxaca and we'll make sure you have the link to that. 

18:05 Lauren Woolsey
Perfect. That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on today! For more information about the topics that we discussed in this episode, and the links that we just mentioned, we'll have those in the "About this Episode" section on our website at Playabilitypod.com. And if our listeners have any questions or comments that you would like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod@gmail.com and find us on major social media platforms as @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening, play with a new perspective.