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 for board games, the German Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year), which annually recognizes the best board games in the world. In this case, the award recognized him in the children's category. Thanks to his game Island in sight, reached a classification in which two more games from our house had already debuted, Sherlock –co-created by Martí Lucas and Josep Izquierdo– and Baobab, by Josep Maria Allué.

Cooperative and memory game

Island in sight (Mercury) 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 the hidden treasure. The starting gun is fired 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, Instead, it has some opening stories that serve to put the 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 goal from then on is to try to find the treasure before the big pirates do," he points out. The immersive aspect is achieved thanks to the elements in the game: a spyglass with which children try to visualize the elements they have seen on the treasure map on the surrounding islands, or a cannon with which they roll the dice and also attack the big pirates' ships if they cross paths during the voyage.

Multi-level experience

"Children can play alone, but if there's an adult to guide them, it'll be much more enriching," Gerard Ribas emphasizes. Island in sight 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 items (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 others are just to throw you 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

Today Island in sight –which has sold 7,000 copies in two years across Europe– isn't available in Catalan, but it is available in German, English, French, Russian, and, soon, Korean. Before learning about the publisher Mercurio, which ultimately 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 back 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: not using screens during childhood and spending quality time with the family. Ribas also believes that, "generally, board games are inexpensive: with a spend of 15 euros 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 that there are publishers that are promoting children's board games and are importing games that are very good. "There are Catalan authors, such as Ferran Renalias, Dani Garcia, Guillem Coll or Eugeni Castaño, among others, who publish a lot, and there is a fairly consolidated board game culture that will continue to grow," predicts the author ofIsland in sight, who highlights that, in the creative field, the sector is highly male-dominated, with women accounting for only around 20% of authors. "We need more female creators," concludes Gerard Ribas.