How a Childhood Love of Drafting Led to Game Design: An Interview with Andres Aristizabal

EP082_04-04-25_Andres Aristizabal

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unbox. Today we have a special guest, Andres the creator of HexPath A game that’s redefining what a board game could become and what start out as experiment with different pattern has evolved into a award winnings and match accredited games designed to spark [00:01:00] creativity.

Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Andres Aristizabal: Thank you, Jason for having me.

Jason Hsieh: First of all, will you mind sharing with our audience, like what start this whole like journey with you creating the games and of course, like what was your background before you start the game?

Andres Aristizabal: Sure. So my background I just love drafting technical drafting. So I’ve always, since I was a kid, I just with rulers and pencils, I just love drafting. And for the last 20 or so years, 25 years, I’ve been doing civil engineering drafting and CAD design. But what started this whole thing was back in, I think 2008, 2009. I came across these true shed patterns and everybody’s seen ’em around. They just didn’t know what they were called. It’s basically these tiles that have one two different colors. One these red square patterns, sorry, square tiles that have two different colors. And as you tie ’em together they generate these nice patterns, and as you rotate ’em randomly, the patterns change, even though they’re all the exact same square.

And so I started playing with [00:02:00] those and there’s some variations where instead of the two different colors, you have little paths connecting the two sides. Those basically generate little, like maces and labyrinths and so for, yeah so that’s what got started just for years playing with those patterns on the computer on my free time. And then little by little it started becoming more of a just looking for other ways of using the patterns. That was, so I don’t know how far you want me to get into the whole process, but

Jason Hsieh: I see what moment do you realize that you could become like a full-fledged board game?

Andres Aristizabal: Oh, it wasn’t till years later because it actually started like I said, just playing with the patterns. Nothing having to do with any games whatsoever. But and then there was a, we had a, in our history, we’d like to show our, a little ferret, our pet. We have a for a while there we had a ferret and ferrets love tunnels. And so we we had the ferret playing with the tubes those AC unit tubes. And we noticed that the ferret would get tired or bored after playing with the same tube over and over.

Jason Hsieh: [00:03:00] Yeah.

Andres Aristizabal: So I went back to thinking it would be cool to use those through set patterns for, instead of just flat tiles to make them like cubes and those lines instead of lines having tubes. And so when you connect those cubes with tubes in them many of ’em in the floor, the tubes would connect and create a tunnel. So the idea was that I would place those on the floor have our ferret Ted playing the tunnels. And whenever I would notice he would be bored, we just rotate one or a few of the cubes and the tunnel would change and even the idea was to grow that into a wave, that it would be more automatic, that the cubes would rotate automatically. But as you can imagine at the beginning playing with trying to create the cubes myself cutting little piece of wood. The tubes and everything was a big it was very difficult and this was just something I was doing my free time. After a few years trying, Ted passed away. And so I put that aside and for years it was just in the back of my mind like, oh, it would be nice to do that, [00:04:00] but it would be too complicated to do this big cubes for big animals like. A big rodents, like a ferret cat.

So I started thinking maybe something smaller for like insects or for small rodents. During that time is when I started realizing that maybe a cube was not the best solution. Maybe what the best would be a hexagon shape. ‘ cause I’ll give you more variety in terms of the connection paths instead of just the four sides. And again, the whole difficulty of creating those 3D tunnels was always a challenge. So that’s why I decided to make ’em just tiles and instead of as tubes, as tunnels I made flat, but still with the channels in them. And the reason for that was that even though I gave away the idea of having the tunnels. I wanted to keep the idea of the I guess the channels that would guide marbles through the channels.

That’s when I switched instead of animals or pets, I switched to gaming. And that’s the origin, that’s the first switch that we did was [00:05:00] changing from that idea of pet products to an actual, toy.

Jason Hsieh: For our audience, that’s hard to visualize exactly what you are referring to. I think you have a sample with you. You might also sharing the sample and see how like you actually work in real life.

Andres Aristizabal: Yeah. And so what I can do is I’ll put a few of the tiles here and if you can see I’ll probably tilt this down a little bit. If you see the tiles, they’re flat, but they have channels in them.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah,

Andres Aristizabal: they’re, and so you can put small items like marbles and they will stay within the channels because of those walls. And so that the original idea was to have games that would take advantage of those channels. However, this what I’m showing right now, this is not the original version. The original version was actually made outta wood and made in with the CNC machine. So the channels were nice and deep because they were basically made for the heights of a marble.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, I also pulled out your website just for a better picture.Hard to visualize it. Yeah. [00:06:00] And it’s a little bit bigger so people can visualize it for those that’s actually watching the video instead of listening in. It’s a very unique concept, so it’s hard to explain.

Andres Aristizabal: And you can even go to the history because there’s a couple of images there. But so I was saying is I started with the CNC machining. Yeah, those are the true shape patterns. That’s Ted. And those are the original ideas for the hexagon. And as you see the marbles, if you go up a little bit to the marbles. So that was the original inspiration for changing it from pets to plate toys was the marble. And as a kid in Colombia, we had this game called, butta Colombia, which is like a tour of Colombia. And what it was is you would either draw path like you see on the picture, you draw with chalk on the pavement. You draw a path and you would toss either like caps or stones following the paths. And whoever gets to the end of the path, first wins. But you can also do that same version on dirt. You can create these channels on the dirt using a stick [00:07:00] or something. And you would push the marbles along the path trying to get there first. The idea was to convert that marble game, but on a tabletop situation where you could simply bring a bag tiles together. And then you can play, once you’re done, you could remove them and take ’em with you. So it was infinitely reusable anywhere you were, where there was a flat surface.

Jason Hsieh: What are some of the biggest challenge to bring this idea into life?

Andres Aristizabal: The biggest challenge was finding a way to create it. And I have to say I guess timing was great because when I first started playing with the idea there was really no mention of 3D printers or anything like that. It was very nascent. And the only three printer I had access to was a one in the regional library that I was like 45 minutes away from here. And if you see the picture, that’s the first attempt I did see 3D printing and it was horrible. It was really bad. It took you have anyways, over time there was more access to 3D printing. It was either at the first chance I got was at a [00:08:00] Makerspace called Moonlight And that was basically my way home. So I would always stop by all the way there, play a little bit with it, leave the prints going, and then continue home. That helped a lot. So that’s, I think if it, if there was not, if there hadn’t been a access to Makerspace or 3D printing or CNC machining. I don’t think I would’ve been able to pursue this because I would’ve been stuck doing things at home with rudimentary tools or and it would’ve been a much, much slower process. So that was definitely a catalyst having that ability

Jason Hsieh: I see

Andres Aristizabal: purchase a 3D printer myself to make the iteration process faster. And I didn’t have to wait to get a chance to go to the Makerspace. I could just iterate real quickly. We print a home, come back, continue.

Jason Hsieh: How many years did it took you?

Andres Aristizabal: I mentioned, yeah, I mentioned, so the I first started playing with through parents back in 2008. The whole issue with the, our pet fer Ted was 2009, 2010. And I started playing with the actual like 2013 or 14, something like that. So [00:09:00] it wasn’t until I switched, like I mentioned before, it was wood, wooden tiles first using CNC machining.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

Andres Aristizabal: It wasn’t until I realized that the wood tiles would be too heavy. And it would be too costly to manufacture. That I switch to plastic and 3D printing. And that’s when I started making the tiles much Slimer and it was always, it could be either very easily manufactured. And once I did that, one of the things I mentioned in the history is that the whole idea of using marbles went out the window for a while because the plastic is so smooth that you could just push a marble and it would go halfway across the board just one push. So we made it, we made it very silly. That’s when we decided to put those dots, and use dice and ponds because in my culture in Latin America and many countries, but in Latin America Parici is or parque as we call it, is very popular. And so we all grew up playing parici as kids dies and problems and trying to get to the end. So it was natural for us to hey let’s put the, and that’s how it morphed into what it’s today. I mainly dice and [00:10:00] PA’s game, but I never wanted to stray away from the channels as I mentioned before, because I want to at some point bring that feature, that useful feature to other games in the future. Either marbles or little cars or little hex bugs, whatever it is, just wanna be able to use those channels.

Jason Hsieh: What kind of marketing have you tried and which one has been working better for you so far?

Andres Aristizabal: Yeah, it’s been challenging because like I said like we mentioned before, the process has been so long and with just in 2019, I was finally able to patent the game. And before then I was just looking for somebody, other games. I was basically looking for games that already had that feature because I just wanted to play it. When I found that there was no other game that feature that, those rotating pieces. And that’s another thing, I don’t think the, I showed how it works.

The biggest how do you call that? Is that they rotate. Change in the paths. It’s kinda hard to show it that way, but that aspect of the game where the tiles rotate, nobody else has ever done [00:11:00] that before. So that’s when I thought it would be good to patent it. And because of that, it was a whole process of getting patented but once I had the patent, I was able, but that wasn’t back in 2019, I was able then to show it to the world and, tell ’em start searching for manufacturers and advertising It basically, but not as a product. More like to show people and say, how, help me do this, help me do that, how do I fine tune it. And obviously COVID hit, so that put things in pause for a couple years. I focused, I tried to focus on the digital version because I didn’t know where the physical board game was gonna go at that point.

But luckily we started slowly getting back to normal and then the digital game then took us a backseat and I jumped back to the physical version. And so finally back in 20 23, the very first thing I ever did to promote the game was to go to the toy Fair because as many people realize, I am not a game designer by trade. I just came to this happenstance, I guess you could say.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

Andres Aristizabal: And so I was very [00:12:00] new to the whole industry and somebody just mentioned to me, you should take to the toy fair. And I did. It was many people don’t really do that at first, and I kinda wait until I had a quote unquote final product to go there. It helped me a lot to connect to people, connect with people, and start realizing how the industry works. And I’m still learning. this is very, how do you call that? Because I have a full-time job. This is just my side time hobby, I guess you could say. it’s not like I’m going to take courses. I don’t go into academies or things like that, learning how to do the trade. It’s more okay, I have some time to work on this today. What should I do? Try to learn whatever I can online and then apply it.

So to your question, how in marketing it. I haven’t really been marketing it because until just last month because I didn’t have a product until the official launch was on January 26th. Before then, I didn’t really have a product to sell. I had the original product was what we thought was the final, and that’s the part we took to the toy Fair in 2023.

We were supposed to be selling that one, but [00:13:00] once I went to the fair and I saw how many changes had to make to that version, I decided to stop selling that one and stop marketing it. Basically not even start marketing that one and put it on pause for another year. And so marketing wise, we started doing just social media just barely a couple months ago. And right now we’re just looking for avenues to show the game, like the toy fair and so I foresee the next few months it gonna be very busy looking for different avenues. I obviously take them put the game on Amazon. We already have a few stores picking it up, but yeah, this is just the beginning. We’re just barely getting started.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. And because the product is very different and of courseyou also wanna highlight it. It’s a little bit harder to explain how it works

Andres Aristizabal: Exactly. And that’s a challenge because I don’t have anything, there’s no like template that I could follow to just say, oh, just grab that, change the images and call it almost everything is different, even the instruction manual. I’m rewriting, we’re I’m with the help of of David he’s really experienced in the field. I hired him to help me rewrite the instruction manuals [00:14:00] because I wrote it very, to me, it’s very obvious. Obvious as you can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. But many people, when they see that for the first time they read it, I’m like they get lost. And so hopefully with this rewrite, it’s going to be a lot more clear to people that have never seen the game before.

And also we’re going to be showing a lot more uploading a lot more videos, showing how the game is played, how it’s set up. And as that it’s not just one version of the game. There’s at least five that come in the instruction manual with the original box, but we already added two more. And so you probably didn’t know this, but in the last month we spoke, yeah. We added two more versions of the game. And we’re gonna keep adding more. The game is a living, breathing I guess you could say a creative platform. And I’m not gonna be, once people start purchasing it and using it, I foresee the community growing. People themselves coming up with games and adding ’em to the list, just playing cards. Playing cards themselves are not really much of a game unless you pair it with some rules and some variations.

Jason Hsieh: And what are some of the feedback [00:15:00] you are getting from the retailer and?

Andres Aristizabal: Yeah, to me that, that’s been the craziest thing. Because originally the feedback was great among family and friends and it was awesome because they loved the game. They were always looking ways to play it. But once I started getting the same feedback from the industry, not just from retailers, but also from other designers, from publishers. Not just in the first fair in 2023, but this last one in March, it was even more of a positive feedback. That’s every time I hear that, I get more and more excited because it’s not just a fluke. It’s not people found it interesting, but then they got disinterested on it. Everybody keeps going back to it. And people that have purchased the game, they have whenever I get a chance to talk to ’em again, they say they love the game, they’re still playing it, their kids love it. And in general it has been absolutely positive. There’s been just a tiny few cases where people either don’t understand the game or they are probably looking for something more challenging, more adventurous. And perfect example is Dungeons and Dragons [00:16:00] games. People that look for that kind of adventure, a role playing game. They don’t see the, a way of playing those sort of games with HexPath. But at the same time it’s, you’re not, I’m not trying to create a game that’s gonna be like by a hundred percent of the people.

I’m just hoping that everybody will find the interesting aspect of my game, the rotating tiles, and who knows, maybe eventually with the right accessories, the right set of rules. Maybe you could adapt it to Dungeons and Dragons or, it’s imagination is really your only limitation with this platform.

Jason Hsieh: And I think you we mentioned in the pre-interview that your game is also MESH-accredited. Yeah. So that’s something I also want to discuss for our listener that doesn’t know what mesh is mesh also stem for mental, emotional, social health.

can you also talk about the aspect of your game that’s encouraging some of that aspect?

Andres Aristizabal: I was, again, I had no idea who Mesh was a couple years ago. They reached out to me they probably reached out to many games saying we should get it checked [00:17:00] or reviewed by them. And I was hesitant because again, I have no experience with the industry.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah.

Andres Aristizabal: So I didn’t know who they were or what they did, or so basically I was I’m not too sure and I didn’t really have the game ready last year when they first reached out to me. So once I started researching it and once I had the game ready, I decided to go ahead and send it to them. So they, what they do is they have a team of researchers have bring the game out and have kids play with them and they observe them and they interview them. And it’s a pretty lengthy process as far as I understand. And at the end of the process, the researchers actually created report with multiple aspects of gameplay. So it’s not just a it’s a good game and that’s it. They look at different aspects of the game and they give you a report. And so depending on how many parts or how many aspects of the gameplay your score your game score high. Give you points and like from zero to three points depending on, if your game has that aspect and what level of that aspect your game [00:18:00] reaches. And as you start getting points for each one of those aspects, the add ’em up and you game has to reach a certain threshold.

And I believe the threshold is minimum of nine points. I, don’t remember the top of my head right now, but I was very surprised that my game, scored really high on cognitive on cognition, very high on problem solving very high on adaptability. And it scored very high on on three of their aspects and strongly on another two aspects. So when I saw the report and it scored like a 12, I think it points, it got 12 points or something like that. When I saw that reporting how ex the explanation how they work, I was very excited because for the first time ever somebody had taken it in a professional setting to kids. And I had never been able to that because the only kids I have access to are my nephew and yeah and they’re like, I only see ’em like once or twice a year for a few days.

And so that was great to get that feedback. It was very exciting. And also mesh has been around for a few, I think it’s pretty new. It’s pretty [00:19:00] on only a few years, maybe three or three years. But they’re very quickly becoming the go-to accreditors basically because of their process and how extensive it is and what they score.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, we had, we have Dr. Amanda Gummer on our podcast for talking about her program.

Andres Aristizabal: I know. And yeah. So I was very excited to get that and just because we only got the game a couple months ago it’s only now being shown to people and being sold to people. And the hope is that the more people see it, the more people play it, the more feedback we’ll get. And we’ll, if we need to, we’ll adapt the game in future versions. But so far everybody keeps loving that main game detour. It seems to be the more universal game, the race style game everybody gravitates to, so

Jason Hsieh: I see. Yeah. So as well, wrapping up today’s interview, if you have to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s getting started in, within the toys and game industry what would that be?

Andres Aristizabal: I would say definitely if you have an idea, follow it. I would say don’t rush to it. Definitely let [00:20:00] it keep thinking about it. Take notes keep playing with it. Find out what you can move forward with. And just, and do it. Don’t feel bad if you try something that doesn’t work, definitely just take note, learn from it, try something else. There are so many different ways of doing things nowadays like I said, with the 3D printing and nowadays with ai really. Just what ideas you think so many people have so many ideas and then years later they realize or they say, oh, I had idea and I never followed it.

Just follow it and do it to the best of your ability, and don’t, get frustrated with it. Just if you start getting frustrated with how your idea is going, take a pause, put it aside, try a different approach, and then revisit it at a later date when you’re you know when you’re ready to it.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. That’s a very good piece of advice, and thank you again for being on our podcast today.

Andres Aristizabal: Oh, thank you for having me.

Jason Hsieh: And for our listener, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode, toy Business on Box Podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring.[00:21:00]

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Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using hashtag #ToyBusinessUnboxed. We’ll love to hear your feedback and suggestion for future episode. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, and keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much everyone.