Oink Games’ Jun and Goro Sasaki on Deep Sea Adventure and a 10th Anniversary Boost | BoardGameGeek News

by Oink Games Inc.

Editor’s note: Here’s a history of Oink Games’ best-selling title and its spinoff titles, told in the form of a Q&A session. —WEM

Starting from a Second Grader’s Idea

Question: We’ve heard that you based Deep Sea Adventure on inspiration from your son Goro’s idea, but could you tell us more about that?

Jun Sasaki: We made Deep Sea Adventure in 2014, when Oink Games had gained independence and was just starting its transition from a focus on contracted work to internally directed development. That was when we started to work on board game development in teams.

We also started internal smartphone game development over the same period and had to prioritize it, so it was quite hectic — and as always, I was struggling to come up with a concept for a board game. Maskmen had come out that same spring. My son was still in second grade then, so I happened to chat with him about ideas when I was getting him to take a bath.

Goro Sasaki: I remember a lot of our conversations, even from that age. My dad always used to talk about not having ideas for games, and he often asked me, “Do you have any good ideas?” when puzzling over that. Then I turned the conversation to what makes a good idea for a game, and he told me how a dilemma is vital for a good game. From there, it turned to what sorts of games have central dilemmas, and how games aren’t fun without dilemmas. I remember that process going on for a while. I don’t remember the actual idea or inspiration from me at all, though.

Jun: The inspiration at the time was the idea of having to dive to the sea floor for treasure and getting it, but struggling to make it back as you run out of oxygen and get slower. I think the actual source that gave me the inspiration for the concept was a submarine game they had on the Nintendo 3DS at the time, or the submarine outfit and undersea game from Wii Party.

Goro: We hadn’t really arrived at the idea of submarines specifically at the time. The idea was more of divers each descending from their own ship instead. We hit on the idea of a submarine when thinking of package designs.

Jun: The submarine idea really came from the concept of a shared oxygen tank that drains over time.

Fine-Tuning the Game’s Rules and Mechanisms

Q: How did you fine-tune the original idea for Deep Sea Adventure and its rules? What form did that take?

Jun: The idea Goro was talking about back then was about diving down in the sea and collecting treasure, but not being sure you can make it back due to the treasure’s weight. I thought that was a good dilemma. It’s easy to tie dice rolls into a story about difficulty on the way home, which gave me the idea for a Sugoroku-type game. Then the idea grew out from the story, and it just sort of naturally took on its current shape. Having the treasure be the board/route fit so well with it, and that idea felt very good to me.

Image: Daniel Thurot

In the early stages, I think the concept was that you would get the treasure, then your oxygen starts to deplete. The rule initially was that your oxygen went down each turn. I think that’s partly because the rules and their simplicity are extensions of his original idea.

Then Goro did the illustrations while explaining the game’s backstory. At that stage, they represented the game’s central dilemma.

The Importance of Simplicity in Game Design

Q: How much emphasis do you place on simplicity?

Jun: It’s incredibly important. I work toward simplicity in everything, but in terms of games, I want the gameplay and the way it develops to be more complex. It’s quite challenging to design a game with a simple structure that still creates a complex development.

Incredible Ideas Born from Idle Office Chat

Q: I heard that someone at the office had the idea of everyone sharing oxygen. Could you tell me more about how you polished the idea within the company?

Dan: I don’t really remember the period that well. I do remember it being completed quite quickly, and I suspect my memory’s weak since we finished it without too much testing.

Fumihiro: I traced this back in some internal communication tools, and we had developed the setting for an ocean floor exploration game set in deep-sea ruins and all players having to share oxygen by August 19. It seems like it was finished as of that summer.

Jun: I believe we playtested it that day, then made notes afterward.

Yoshihiro: I don’t remember all that well either…but I had the idea for everyone sharing oxygen. My impression of it was that Mr. Sasaki had been talking about not having ideas during the development of Deep Sea Adventure, then Goro gave us the inspiration we needed out of the blue. Then I just sort of spit out the thought that it might be fun if everyone shared the oxygen supply.

Jun: I think we all presented original starting ideas, then Mr. Shindo came out with that idea, then we did a playtest. For the first playtest, we used a pair of dice with only 1s, 2s, and 3s. I think we had it mostly finished from that starting stage.

Dan: I don’t remember any trial-and-error at all. I remember trying all sorts of things with Kobayakawa and Maskmen, but I don’t remember struggling with Deep Sea Adventure…

Jun: We really didn’t struggle with it. Sometimes that results in a game that’s more fun than anything else.

A Story Players Imagine for Themselves from a Simple Title

From sea to spaceQ: Where did you get the title Deep Sea Adventure from?

Jun: Well, the Japanese title for Deep Sea Adventure — 海底探険 (“Undersea Exploration”) — is a good title for a game, huh? (laughter). It gives me a sense of old-timey adventure stories, like an aged hardcover novel. Something like Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, or Edogawa Ranpo’s The Fiend With Twenty Faces or The Transparent Fiend — they’re simple stories but grow within children’s imaginations.

That’s why we went with the title Deep Sea Adventure just as it was. We didn’t have any other candidates; the title was an easy decision. We also consciously went with a children’s book-style cover font for the text. I typically think up the rules first, then worry over the themes and story later when designing games, but those were set from the start with Deep Sea Adventure. That made the title an easy choice.

Q: The Japanese title emphasizes “adventure”, right?

Jun: People often ask about how that’s written in Japanese. I felt like the idea of “adventure” and the way we write it — using the characters for “search” and “investigate” — didn’t match up well, so I changed the spelling accordingly. The way we write it uses the character for “harsh conditions”. It caused more confusion than we expected when we first named it (laughter).

10th Anniversary Impressions

Q: How do you feel now that Deep Sea Adventure is celebrating its tenth anniversary?

Dan: I still see it with the same freshness, uniqueness, and general image it had ten years ago. It’s quick, polished, and exciting…and my impression of it being that way hasn’t changed. I guess it might be our best work, and I think our value, presence, and strength at Oink Games would all be diminished without Deep Sea Adventure. We’d be a different company without it. It really was that big of a deal.

Yoshihiro: I feel like it all comes down to the phrase “It never gets old.” Ten years passed in no time at all, yet it’s still selling and being played, even digitally… It’s powerful to think of how we had no idea at the time.

Jun: Deep Sea Adventure was the first game that spread the name Oink Games to the world. It was an important release for us in that sense. A single hit keeps you going forever. Just a single breakaway title is enough. You don’t have to worry about subsequent hits not measuring up. I might even make a lot of games that won’t sell, knowing Deep Sea Adventure will keep earning us money (laughter).

I think it’s a beautiful game, but I did have things I wish we had done differently, so I’m glad I got to make adjustments for its tenth birthday. I’ve played it so much that I’m bored of it, as the creator (laughter), so personally, I almost react with “Really?” when people say they always play it. I’m glad I got to increase the options for dilemmas to give it more longevity. With that and the story of the parent-child teamwork for it, it’s basically perfect.

The Enhanced Deep Sea Adventure Boost

Q: The game has evolved into Deep Sea Adventure Boost with its tenth anniversary. Could you tell us about that?

Jun: Well, first, I wanted to remake the game for its tenth anniversary. It was hard to decide how much to change when doing so. The original Deep Sea Adventure wasn’t too variable, and it felt like it was relatively light on choice frequency and density, so I saw room for improvement. When finally doing the remake, it was hard to tell how much to remake as new.

We went with backward compatibility with Deep Sea Adventure. As it stands, Deep Sea Adventure Boost is a superior version of Deep Sea Adventure, and I think it will go into circulation, so we’ve included the original dice to let people play with the same rules as always. We worried over ideas like adding roles, shifting to something like Moon Adventure and coming up with missions and so on with the update, but we didn’t want to make big changes.

That’s why we decided it had to be played with three dice. I think we settled on a good level of variation. I feel like the rules for boosting were good, too, which we came up with later on. Also, there were ideas for changes to chip layouts, but we settled on just the boost and the dice. The game plays differently with just those. I think even people who have gotten bored of the existing Deep Sea Adventure will enjoy this version. It was already a polished game, so it was hard to change too much with it.

From the Father/Son Design Team

Q: Do you have anything to say to the people that play the game?

Goro: Thank you for playing. I’m glad my ideas caught your interest.

Jun: The game mixes all sorts of influences, including German gaming trends while retaining the traditional air of legendary Sugoroku-type board games, so I hope you have a good time. I’d love it if my games influence anyone to take an interest in the depth of game design and the practice of design itself. A lot of different things come together beautifully in it, making it almost a textbook for game design.

Q: What sort of games would you like to create in the future?

Goro: I’m currently designing games solo, and I want to make games that pose dilemmas and have real depth. The tendency is toward games with optimal solutions, whereas what I want to make is something that requires a lot of thought to play. I’ve been raised on the idea that it has to have dilemmas to address, ever since I was young (laughter).

Jun: I want to continue making games for a wide range of people as I always have. I want to keep focusing on simplicity in rules and graphics. Like camping gear, I would like to aim for something that is minimally refined, yet highly functional.