Tabletop_Gaming__Issue_27__February_2019

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tabletopgaming.co.uk 9

PHIL WALKER-HARDING


e Australian designer behind Sushi Go!, Bärenpark and Gizmos

digs deep into his gaming past to excavate 2007’s Archaeology

FIRST TURN


HOW TO PLAY
“You’re trying to collect dierent sets of treasures. So
you have these treasures in your hand and when you’d
like to play a set down to the table, that’s selling it to the
museum and essentially cashing it in for points. But
every now and again a sandstorm happens which means
you have to discard some of your cards to the centre of
the table. So there’s a push-your-luck element, but also
you can trade cards from your hand for cards in the
marketplace. en most points at the end wins, and the
rarer the card is in the deck, the more points it’s going to
get you, but the riskier it is to wait on building up a set.”

END OF THE GAME
“Archaeology: e Card Game got picked up by Z-Man
Games in 2009, which was super exciting, and it was
in print for four, ve years. en a couple of years ago,
Z-Man wanted to re-release it as a whole new edition
[Archaeology: e New Expedition]. at really excited
me, because I’ve often thought back to the game and how
I would improve it, so I had an opportunity to go back and
implement those changes and add some new content.”

STRATEGY TIPS
“e biggest thing Archaeology taught me is to get my
designs in front of people and to take criticism seriously.
Which is a general life skill: to be open enough to say,
‘Okay, here’s my new thing. I think it’s really good, but
I need to take on criticism.’ I think putting Archaeology
out the way I did forced me to learn that quickly. I still
don’t nd it easy to take criticism, and I still get nervous
putting new games out and playtesting and all that stu,
but it was a good lesson to learn early.”

BACKGROUND
“I’ve always p layed games and, in a way,
I’ve always made them too. I can remember
being very little and making my own copies
of games with markers and paper and stu.
It’s something that’s always been in my DNA,
but it was only at university, where I studied
lm, that I got into modern game design, with
Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and so on. Pretty
soon after that the game-design bug was back.”

COMPONENTS
“One of the games I got into really early was
Lost Cities, a very simple two-player card
game by Reiner Knizia. e thing I loved
about it was that, because of the way the
scoring works, at one point in the game a
certain card might be the most valuable card to you in
the world, but then at another point it could become this
horrible card clogging up your hand. So that was oating
around in my head with Archaeology. People have also
compared it to Bohnanza, but I hadn’t even played or
heard of Bohnanza at that point. I guess some ideas are
just kind of out there in the ether, aren’t they?”

OBJECT
“I think for most designers with their rst design, your
objective is to just design a game, really – you just want
to get something completed. Having said that, I was
obviously aiming more for casual players than deep-
strategy gamers. I always wanted it to be a game
that was kid-friendly, a good family game.”

SETUP
“e rst proper, full-on design I nished and
tested with friends – this was in 2006 – had a
pirate theme. You went around an island trying
to nd treasures. You could walk, you could
sail, there was weather... it had this completely
convoluted system and it didn’t work very well.
But the thing everyone liked was the little system
I had for collecting dierent sets of treasures
and, depending on what you already have, certain
treasures are worth more and some are worth less.
So I stripped that out and the theme of archaeology
presented itself pretty quickly. I made about a
hundred copies of the original Archaeology using Adobe
Illustrator and self-published it, then based on the
feedback I got from that I redesigned it a bit as
Archaeology: e Card Game, which
was more rened and polished.”

Interview by Dan Jolin

February 2019

The


biggest


thing


Archaeology


taught me


is to get


my designs


in front of


people and to


take criticism


seriously.


and so on. Pretty

certain card might be the most valuable card to you in
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