------------------------------------------------------------------ Playability Podcast Episode 4: Assembly (Janice Turner) Run time: 17 minutes, 05 seconds Episode recorded by Rebecca Strang. Playability is produced by Mike Risley. Transcript auto-generated by YouTube and edited by Rebecca Strang. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 00:00 Intro Music 00:06 Rebecca Strang Hello, and welcome to Playability where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host Rebecca Strang and I'm joined today by Janice Turner of Wren Games, a UK-based games publisher. Janice and her husband Stu have recently had a successful Kickstarter campaign for their game, Assembly, which should be fulfilling later this year. Janice, can you tell our listeners a little bit about Assembly? 00:34 Janice Turner Yeah, thanks, Rebecca, for having me on! Yeah, so, Assembly's a one to two player cooperative puzzle game that's relatively small in size but hopefully has plenty of replayability. So, basically, you're on a space station, deadly virus is breaking out, and the AI has quarantined the station and she doesn't want you to escape. Everyone else unfortunately has succumb to this virus and died, so you, and possibly a friend, have a chance to escape but luckily you’re on a spaceship factory so if you can build a spaceship, then you can escape. If you don't then, unfortunately, the AI’s quarantine processes win and you die, so, it's as simple as that. In terms of the gameplay I find it really hard to describe with just audio because I think it just, in its basic form, it sounds boring, but here we go. So, in its very simplest form is you have a load of tokens… these are all distinct colors and have distinct icons on and then you have a load of cards which, funnily enough, have the same distinct colors and and icons on them… there's twelve colors each with their own icon. And you just have to match them up, but you are limited on how you do that. In the two-player game we also introduce challenges regarding communications between the players as well. So it works very well as a solo game in one way and then the dynamics change of fair bit as a two-player game. 01:50 Rebecca Strang Yeah, and I can definitely attest it's definitely not a boring game. I was lucky enough to be able to preview a copy and I loved it. I thought it was a very fun puzzle game, very thematic. I played the two-player version and it's definitely a very tight puzzle and I like that you guys have the variety of communication methods available to increase or decrease the challenged based on what you need. 02:12 Janice Turner Yeah, we found during the the playtesting that one of playtesters came back and said “I hated it” and I was like reading all the comments and realizing she was wanting to abide very strictly to the rules but those rules weren't for her and her friends. But people you meet all over the place want to play by the rules and only the rules that are set out and they don't like to modify. In games that I play with my husband, Stu, we modify them to make them fun for us play and if it's not in the rule book it doesn't matter to us… it's about having fun, but not everyone’s like that. So, we actually looked at… well if people out they want to play it and we want them to enjoy it. If they don't enjoy it in certain his we have certain sort of communication limits put on well you still can play and you still can have fun and you still can make it harder in different ways even when you remove that. So we wanted to sort of give people the option to play it as a completely open level where you just have just playing it really for fun then there's different ways in there that you can make it harder anyway, through that there's changing of the deck and the composition of the deck. Or you can start introducing communication challenges all the way throughout as well which then if players enjoy that then they introduce that and then there's a way to make it harder… by harder if you don't know sign language, by using a sign language as a way to communicate rather than verbal communications. Obviously if you're fluent in sign language, that's not part of it… that's the easiest variant for you. 03:38 Rebecca Strang Mm-hmm and so here at Playability we like to focus the conversation around accessibility and what that means to the designers we’re talking to. So, what does accessibility mean to you? 03:45 Janice Turner It’s… accessibility crosses a lot of different things. You have sort of the thing that, I guess it might be taught, about the various players have a disability of some form… whether that be visual that you need, if from the simplest impairment, but some of them need reading glasses all the way through to someone the finds using their hands much more difficult or someone who is colorblind… again it's more of an impairment than necessarily a disability in itself, but all these things are going to impact how you play. Not only that, you've also got reading ability. So younger children, so accessibility to younger children or just those that perhaps not native English speakers or readers, so you've got accessibility from language to reading ability to impairment to disability. And so to me it's across that whole spectrum that accessibility needs to cover or should cover. 04:43 Rebecca Strang Sure, and so, as far as Assembly is concerned, what kinds of decisions or implementations did you make with the game design with accessibility in mind? 04:55 Janice Turner I guess the very first one that we did was… getting 12 very distinct and unique colors that are a hundred percent colorblind friendly is… difficult. We did try and there’re a lot of them out there but the main thing is that we put a very clear icon on each of them so that they're different, they're always distinguishable from one to other. And it's also… some people will find the icon perhaps easy to see… other people just be matching the color, but it gives you that double verification that if you have any uncertainty you can always check the icon to make sure before it's over. So that was one of the early things that we wanted… to make sure we had that sort of colorblind friendly in there. So that's sort of the base ones we call the blueprint card in the the remodel, so they all have it on there. Secondly, the command deck, again there's very clear colors and very clear icons on each of them so you always have that double. We also have, I was trying to consider about left and right handed… so how you hold the cards in your hand… So making sure that there are symbols on both the left corner and the right top corner and if you had it upside down, obviously the bottom ones too, but having it on both sides. One thing we had a bit of a debate about was that one of them has a diagonal on it… I mean, this sounds like really nitty gritty things, but one of them has a diagonal on it and we actually had it so that it was actually more suitable for left-handed than right-handed. In the final implementation we’re changing that to go to the right-handed… it's simply because more people are right-handed than are left-handed and it wasn't as obvious to have the diagonally opposite direction but… it's basically… it's a diagonal with two colours on either side and when you have the cards fanned out you only see one color if you're right-handed in the way it's currently set up and two colours if you fanned them the opposite direction for left-handed. So, we swapped that round to go with the majority but still having the icon at the top to make sure that it's still clear what it is and so it's not confused. So that's a couple of things with just about the cards themselves. And then the physical things… the big one that kind of came through the Kickstarter campaign is that we originally had mini-sized cards and we loved mini cards. We found this beautiful tiny little box that you could fit in your pocket and it was this nice little compact game and it… this had originally started out as a mint tin design contest entry so it sort of had its footprint was small. But then going through… I did some market surveys and I was quite surprised to see that, well, there's a fair few people out there actually who didn't like mini cards but I love these mini cards so much I just ignored that and I just looked at the other surveys like “oh yeah these people like mini cards, it's all right it doesn't matter” 07:24 Rebecca Strang [laughs] They are cute! 07:24 Janice Turner I wanted a game that can fit in your pocket, that's important to me.. and then the question is “how important is it fits in your pocket?” and I think it was less than 10% of the people said that that was important to them… nobody really cared about that, but I loved it. I loved the fact that they could fit in the pocket so I… I ignored them. And then I got talking on World of Women and one of the ladies there was explaining about actually the physical difficulties in manipulating small, mini sized cards when using hand braces… And so, so here I am doing a game which has some sign language in there to help educate a bit and we've been careful about colorblind and my mom is disabled and so with disability and that's why other things are important to me and here I am actually actively excluding some gamers out there and now I know that I’m excluding, now I can't claim any ignorance at all. Yeah I know there's mini card haters out there but I now know I'm actively excluding people and that was hard to swallow. And now I also I previously I'd listened to this podcast, I can't remember which one it was, but I think they were also talking about accessibility and about the fact that mini cards don't fit in most shuttle machines. In Assembly you have to shuffle about four times in the game and this is in a relatively short period of time, so again… and it's a solo game so you haven't got someone else to shuffle for you either and it just… now there's two weeks before the campaign I'd already started getting some quotes for British sized cards and poker sized cards as well as mini cards because in the back of my mind I knew that I probably should steer away from mini cards. And then it dawns on me that I needed to change. I knew I was excluding people. As much as I loved them, people who loved mini cards would also probably be quite happy with larger cards but the other way around less so. So there may be the odd one or two percent out there that wouldn't back and I've just seen on BoardGameGeek one person explicitly has said that they haven’t backed it because it's not mini cards, but at the same time… how many people now have backed it and I… now in terms of… I've now included people and not excluded people all right. That was really important to us to make sure we weren't actively and knowingly excluding people from being able to enjoy something… because we've created something for people to enjoy and excluding people just didn't make sense. 09:44 Yeah, it's definitely a hard decision to come to when you've had the idea of this thing in your mind and then something pops up that requires a bit of change in order to include the folks that you want to be included, but I think you guys did a good thing in going with that change ‘cause, like you said, it will make it easier for a lot more people to play the game than it will make upset the people who like those mini cards. 10:11 Janice Turner I mean it’s just simple. People that need reading glasses… we’re making it more visually accessible to those people by having larger cards so we can put a large text on it, but large icons… all those sorts of things it will benefit a lot more people than it will, I guess, please other people, if that makes sense. With the mini sized cards, a lot of people need reading glasses and having something which they can see without squinting so much is, I mean they still may need the reading glasses, but perhaps it would be a little bit easier on their eyes by having that larger text and larger icons and everything on there to start with. And so it affords lots of benefits, not just in the physical part of it but also the visual part as well. 10:55 Rebecca Strang And, I remember you sharing a photo and Twitter… Because this game already started with a small footprint, going from the mini cards to the regular-sized cards doesn't increase the footprint a huge amount. It's still a small game. 11:14 Janice Turner Yeah, when you have this tiny, tiny box you expect a tiny, tiny footprint, so I guess in comparison to the tiny box to start with it appeared to have a large footprint, but when you have the expectation from the start of larger cards it doesn't have a huge footprint so the… it added, I think, about three and a half centimeters to each side so if you've got your circle you just add about three and a half centimeters top and bottom left and right and that was it. So what's that? An inch and a half? Something like that? It's not as huge when you think about how much table space something like this takes up. It's not that much bigger at all. In the grand scheme of things, you still can play it on a small cafe table it's still gonna fit; it’s going to fit on a hotel room small table or small desk or something. It's not going to change that. It's just, you’re not gonna have to… I think how we actually tested the box out and it still fits in some pockets I'm not talking about huge pockets either. My husband's does manage to get them, get the box into some of his jean pockets. I have tiny pockets on my clothing so it was a little bit more difficult getting into mine but it still would fit into a jacket pocket in this current box size. It's just not as small, not as cute, but it's still small and it doesn't take up much more table space, so yeah, it just seemed to be a bit of a no-brainer in the end. Why make something which you know people can't then enjoy? Okay here's something that has a lot… much better inclusivity. 12:37 Rebecca Strang Right, and I know one of the other things you did, too, was you made a playmat available for it so people who, I know I was one of these people when I was play testing, you've added some reminders, some visual reminders for went to shuffle and add cards and things onto that playmat, as well. 12:53 Janice Turner Yes, yes so it makes setup a lot easier. I know some people like to have things absolutely perfect when they're laid out, so the playmat will help you with that. I mean, me, I don't care, I just like to deal it anyhow and oh that’s good enough. But if you like it perfect it would definitely help you with that. It will make referencing and looking at what you can do in your turn easier you're not going to be juggling sort of your reference cards at all because that's all printed on the playmat and then it has key rules printed on there as well, but it hopefully makes life a lot easier so you just need the playmats and the play cards and then everything else can go back in the deck. It it also has sort of your setup at the beginning of what you're putting out so it makes hopefully, makes life a little bit easier. 13:37 Rebecca Strang So, what is your favorite part about assembling? 13:39 Janice Turner My favorite part? I think, I still get the satisfaction of winning. Even after I don't know how many playtests… it has this satisfying feel when you play it is… I think one of the people that did the preview described it as “meditative.” I can understand that because you… particularly when you're doing it solo that… you're sort of what you're doing and what you're trying to do… I mean, I do try and do things slightly differently, mix things up every now and again, but it's quite nice to be solving this puzzle and going through it and then hopefully winning at the end. It's just satisfying that I've solved something. I've done something. It's like you've completed something but it doesn't take up too much time either. 14:19 Rebecca Strang Yeah, I definitely know what you mean. When we were playing, because it is such a tight puzzle, when you don't win you do have that immediate feeling of “wow, I want to do this again so I can best this thing” and then when you do it does feel really good. 14:35 Janice Turner Even if you've just won and then you play a different one, even if you don't lose the first time, I still find it satisfying, the win, because it's like “yeah, I've done everything, I've like tidied everything neatly, I made it real nice and neat and there now looks good” kind of thing. It's got that sort of satisfaction to it. It's obviously better try to make it very tactile so we've, rather than going for punch board, we've gone for wooden tokens and so that you've actually got that tactile nature to it as well. So, you actually, not just… it's not just the mental, you've got the physical part of the puzzle as well and you're actually picking things up that’s not just nothing in your hand they have, they have length and they have width they have height and they have a bit of weight as well… rather than just being a cobble punch. 15:21 Rebecca Strang Yeah, the tokens are really nice and the iconography that you have I really like because it's part of the game. It's not just something that was kind of thrown as a last-minute thing. It's very cohesive. 15:33 Janice Turner Thank you. 15:34 Rebecca Strang And, so, for anybody interested in getting a copy of Assembly, where can they do that and when will it be available? 15:43 Janice Turner So, you can go to www.store.wrengames.co.uk. That’s wren with a W, so W-R-E-N, like the bird. So the pre-orders kicks in as soon as we place all our orders with the manufacturers. So copies then become limited to whatever we put in as orders but so hopefully that's nice and clear. 16:07 Rebecca Strang And we'll include those links in the ‘About’ section for this episode as well. And I know you are available on Twitter @wrengames, as well, right? 16:19 Janice Turner Yes @wrengames and @dravvin, which is D-R-A-V-V-I-N. 16:23 Rebecca Strang Alright, well, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with us about Assembly today. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the future projects that you guys have coming out, too. 16:33 Janice Turner Oh, thank you! Hopefully! We have some more in the pipeline, so watch this space and maybe in a few months we'll be able to tell you a bit more. 16:41 Rebecca Strang Fantastic! Well, thank you for listening to this episode of Playability. If you have any questions or comments you would like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod@gmail.com or find us on major social media platforms @playabilitypod. Thanks again for listening. I hope this episode helps you play with a new perspective.