Key Largo (2005)

History of the Game

It Started With Pirate's Cove
By Bruno Faidutti (Source: Bruno Faidutti's website)

I really like Pirate's Cove, and I had exchanged a few nice and interesting emails about it with Paul Randles, one of the game's authors, when it was first published as Piratenbucht, but we never met. We could probably have arranged a meeting later, but Paul was caught by a cancer and died after a few months, just when his first boardgame was becoming a small hit.
Paul didn't want to capitulate and, until the end, he worked and made projects. One of his last projects was Treasure Island, a boardgame that was intended as a kind of follow-up of Pirate's Cove. Action takes place on the same island, two centuries later. Players are now divers vying to bring back the sunken treasures lost during the many battles and boarding around the island in the blustery times. A few days before Paul died, in february 2003, his wife Katty and him gave the prototype of Treasure Island to their friend Mike Selinker, whom fans of pirate games will
know from co-designing the game Pirates of the Spanish Main.
I happened to make in april 2003, for the first time, the trip to Columbus for Alan R. Moon's Gathering of Friends. Paul, who had been a regular, was no longer there, but I met Mike who invited me to play Treasure Island. I really liked the basic idea of the game, and made a few suggestions after this first game; as a result, I was immediately hired as a third guy to finalize the game.

Mike and I started sending emails and files over (or is it under?) the ocean between France and the USA and soon the Treasures Island took its definitive form. The basics are still those of Paul's prototype, with, for example, day to day programming and divers that can buy extra hose to search deeper wrecks, but the game has become lighter, faster paced, more fun to play, without losing its depth and variety. When we were all satisfied with the game, we started to look for a publisher, Mike canvassing the American ones while I was looking in Europe.
I found one first, so the game got published in Europe by Tilsit, with light graphics depicting the Treasure Island on a sunny day. Later, Mike became involved with Titanic games, which became the US publisher and opted for darker graphics depicting the island while clouds are gathering and the hurricane is approaching. I don’t know what Paul would have chosen, but I’m sure having both a sunny day and a cloudy day version of the same game is more than he would have dreamed of.

We needed an international title, a title which suggest the diving theme and makes clear this is not one more pirates game. We thought of Sargasso, Tortuga, Barbados and finally made up our mind for Key Largo. this will make no problem for the american gamers, but can prove funny in France. Though everybody here knows about the great film noir by John Huston, with an archetypal closed doors plot, few know that it's also the name of a divers' paradise island.

Microbadges :

• Key Largo fan