The Catalan board game that has become one of the best in the world

BarcelonaJust a few months ago, Gerard Ribas managed to make it onto one of the most prestigious lists of children's board games, the one published annually by the German publisher Spiel des Jahres. Thanks to his game "Isla a la vista!", he made it onto a list that already included two other games from our company: Sherlock—co-created by Martí Lucas and Josep Izquierdo—and Baobab, by Josep Maria Allué.

Cooperative and memory game

Island in Sight! is Ribas's first game, which found inspiration in his eldest daughter, Pepa, shortly before the COVID pandemic broke out. It was 2019, and Pepa was two years old. She is now the eldest of three sisters. "The goal was to try to create something to play with her. I'm not sure about the sequence of whether I wanted to make a pirate game and then found a way, or if it was the other way around," explains the author, who, instead of competing, proposes that the children playing collaborate to achieve a common goal: finding hidden treasure. The starting gun comes when a group of pirates see, for just a moment, the map of an island where there is hidden treasure and decide to go find it.

Ribas points out that, in general, memory games are not very experiential or immersive. Island in Sight!, on the other hand, has opening stories that serve to put children in context. They explain that they all belong to a company of small pirates who manage to see the treasure map of a company of large pirates for a few seconds. "The objective from then on is to try to find the treasure before the big pirates do," he explains. The immersive aspect is achieved thanks to the elements of the game: a spyglass with which the children try to visualize the elements they have seen on the treasure map on the islands around them, or a cannon with which they roll the dice and also attack the ship of the large pirates if they cross theirs during the '

Multi-level experience

"Children can play alone, but if there's an adult to guide the game, it'll be much more enriching," emphasizes Gerard Ribas. Island Ahoy! Each player takes on a role. One person looks through the spyglass and describes what they see on the islands, which is sometimes more obvious, but sometimes less so. Everyone must agree on whether what is being described also appeared on the map of the island they were able to see at the beginning, so they can zoom in or out. The object is then passed to the next player, and so on until they have seen all three or five elements (depending on the difficulty) that were on the island on the treasure map.

Having to play multiple roles throughout the game also allows children to play at three or six years old. The game also has three difficulty levels, which, as Ribas points out, "are actually six, because each level has two types of maps to choose from: one illustrated, as seen with the glasses, and one mapped." Thus, younger children will only have to identify three elements of the treasure island, and older children, five. At the most advanced level, there are seven or eight drawn elements, but only five need to be chosen; "the rest are just to throw them off."

The game's versatility allows for a balance between the people who play it. The Ludo Association, a non-profit association that brings together board game creators from Catalonia and Spain, contributed to the idea of different levels. "Once the game was created, I was able to try it out at one of their meetings, and there they suggested creating several difficulty levels to broaden the audience," recalls the creator, who currently acknowledges that his creative work must be carried out "secretly, at night, while the rest of the family is asleep."

Present and future of the sector

To date, Isla a la Vista!—which has sold 7,000 copies in two years across Europe—can't be found in Catalan, but it is available in German, English, French, Russian, and soon, Korean. Before learning about Mercurio, the publisher that finally published it, Ribas contacted the people at El Pot Petit to see if they would publish it in Catalan, but they were in the process of changing their visual identity, and it fell through. "Perhaps when Mercurio relinquishes the license to me, I'll try again with them or another publisher," he notes.

The board game market has been growing especially since the pandemic, which Ribas associates with two key trends: the avoidance of screen time during childhood and the need to spend quality time with the family. Ribas also believes that, "generally, board games are inexpensive: with a 15 euro purchase, you can play 25 or 50 times." As a family, he continues, "it's very rewarding to be all around the table having a good time" and celebrates the fact that there are publishers promoting children's board games and importing excellent games. "There are Catalan authors, such as Ferran Renalias, Dani García, Guillem Coll, and Eugeni Castaño, among others, who publish a lot, and there is a fairly established board game culture that will only grow," predicts the author of Isla a la vista!, who emphasizes that, in terms of creation, the sector is quite male-dominated. "There needs to be more female creators," concludes Gerard Ribas.