 Treasure Island the most straightforward game name you could possibly think of yes It's just directly based on the book at your there's a long John Silver black spot like the monkey hit everything pirate themed It's literally just fucking treasure Island the game So here's the deal way it works is it's a lot like fury of Dracula one player is long John Silver Yeah, I played the first and only time I played this game I was long John Silver and the holy shit is that stressful and difficult the other four players are Parrots, I don't remember if their characters in the book or not. I assume they were their characters, whatever they all they have slightly different powers I didn't I've never read the book all the way through. Oh, I have I read excerpts from it in like Elements, but it was very long time ago. Yeah, I Saw the one old movie. I have better memories of Muppet Treasure Island, which I saw several times I remember Muppet Treasure Island better than I remember any other form of Treasure Island that is true Anyway Animal Treasure Island is also good. Isn't that the is a Miyazaki or Tezuka work? I've never actually seen it I haven't seen it either, but I just know it exists Anyway, the point is this game at much like fury of Dracula as long John Silver Hiding a treasure instead of running around Europe like Dracula and four player up to four players working together to find the treasure but Not really together unlike fury of Dracula. They're competing to who gets a treasure first. Yep And the other conceit that's interesting is that long John Silver the game is basically long John Silver is being interrogated by the pirates He's in jail on the island somewhere So first he's just being interrogated and you have to use cards and basically give clues about where the treasure is Right. Well long John is while he's being interrogated gives clues to the interrogators But then at some point during like one of the turns one of the players puts long John in a prison on the island Somewhere right there are several prisons on the map long John is in one of them at some point you find out which one he's in Eventually the end of the game if none of the pirates found the treasure Long John breaks out and now moves around the map with the same rules as the players And if long John gets to his own treasure, he wins. Fuck you all right One other thing is that long John is giving these clues to the players whether they use their powers or just every turn He has to sort of do something or every so often has to give information to the interrogators But he can lie up to two times during the game It doesn't actually have to lie But two of his clues all the clues must be true except up to two of them may or may not be true Yep, and the mayor may not is key because I one of my lie attempt like possibilities of lies I actually told the truth to try to double cross the players and it worked on everyone but one player Because you basically you tell the truth you put the lying token next to it a player uses their power to look at the Token and the other players don't see it. They see it that player now sees like a question mark, right? But they assume oh that means it's not true, and they invert that thing. It's like no actually So get this this happened in the game So our friend Tracy he though he assumed that the first clue I put down was a lie and he was right I thought you're not allowed to lie in the first Well the first clue that you can't get a lie token until like the first No, you get one lie token at the beginning of the game You get one like after turn X. Yeah, you get the second one after turn X Okay, you're very you have to put one clue out that you can't lie about before the game starts That's right Then you put ones out the first one I put out that I had discretion. I put the lie token and I did lie Tracy said before the game started. I bet Ram will put the lie tokens out, but not actually lie But then he used his power Immediately to check to see if I lied on the first turn and of course I did and I did lie He then played the beginning of the game Searching and acting as though he thought I was telling the truth trying to trick the other three pirates into thinking that I had told The truth there when in fact he thought I had lied and in fact I had lied Mm-hmm. That was really well played The point is this game when you see it is a huge ton of fun because you're not just moving around a map Right, you know with little tokens like a normal game You're drawing on the map everyone has a personal map that they can draw on Yeah, including Long John Silver right the game comes with like all these dry erase markers and a compass you can draw radiuses Yeah, there's a ruler if you move you like draw on the ruler how many miles you're gonna move There's a smaller rule for the mid-much. It's very theme appropriate It's like you're using all these sort of nautical ish simpler much simpler than actual nautical sextants or whatever But you know tools to draw on this map the shared map as well as your personal maps They give you a mini ruler so you can you can use that on your tiny map And the it's at scale to the big ruler you use on the big map, right? So you can measure things out privately, you know, and it's like oh you can you can say like so like you'll be like Ah, yes, the the treasure is within three of one of these players Yep stuff like that, but then of all the players everyone starts drawn circles me like okay It's got to be in one of these circles But some of the clues are things that I hand to the other players So each player knows like five sets of information Independently of one another and then collectively they know another set of information But that set of information may or may not be true and different players might have looked at different tokens Players aren't sharing info with each other hell No, so even though it might be like if all the players shared info They might know exactly where the treasure is right away because they each have separate info, right? It's like well It's gonna take any one player a longer amount of time to figure out where the treasure is this also means that since I was long John Silver I was keeping track of as best I could the kinds of information I'd given to different players to try to give individual players worthless information to them if I had the opportunity to give just them Information, yep, and I successfully gave two players fucking bullshit because I knew things they knew and I gave them the same Information over and over again via different mechanisms Yep, so that's basically how this game goes is long John tries to give as little information as possible The players do a Scotland yard fury of Dracula kind of narrowing down possibilities thing They walk in they walk along the map to the possible areas use their searching ability and attempting to find the treasure So the fun part is that the placement rules for the treasure are literally I just fucking mark an X anywhere Yep And that's it on this whole the map doesn't really have like a grid or anything No Just a picture of an island with a bunch of features on it and you put a dot on your private map And that's what the treasure and of course what Scott was musing that I would do and what I did in fact do is I drew One goddamn pixel and I was like it is here at the intersection of the edge of this building and this forest Yeah, you're very precise and where the treasure was so if someone came close and someone did someone came literally within like They were like a millimeter They were more like a centimeter less than a centimeter But the point is is they came real close and but their circle clearly was not on the spot You had selected so no treasure for you and the way you search and there's a fun little bit here is you use this little ring and You literally draw on the big map a circle around where you're searching and the ring has to fit around your character So where you move to like you're really limited and then I have to decide if it's inside or not The rule is if there's any questions to whether or not it's inside it is Hence I literally put a dot on my map And then I use my fingernail to shave off pieces of that dot because the felt to the markers only so precise To make it down to like this one pixel and then I took a picture of it in case I accidentally smudged that one pixel off Yep, but anyway The one very interesting mechanic in this game is that when players search if they find the treasure long John takes this Little cardboard treasure chest puts the big treasure token so hands it to the player They open it the big treasures in there They win when anyone searches what I did is I took the treasure chest this big cardboard box I either put nothing in it I put one of the mini treasures that I can give out of my own discretion There's reasons why you would yep, or if they got it right I just would have put the big treasure in and not said anything right That's what you're supposed to do But what I'm saying is the clever mechanic is those small treasures Yeah, long John has to give out these clues as the game goes on to the players But there's a it's like a deck of clues suck you read these clues It's like wow any one of these will just fuck me right the clues if you have to give those clues if you give them Honestly, which you have to do all but two times You're just gonna tell them where the treasure is But if you give players these mini treasures when they search Right, then what you can do is if you've given enough tiny treasures to the players Not the big treasure that makes you win the game But the tiny ones that gives you access to these other clues that are weaker clues and using the weaker clues is much easier Because now that you won't have to basically give the whole game away with your giant lousy clues But now you've given players very powerful tools to use yes those tiny treasures give the players Abilities that they can now use during the game So it's like I can either give them TMI or I can give them less info But more abilities to make their search easier and you have to sort of figure out what you want to do Meanwhile players know this they know that's how the game works So what players can do which I learned after the first game is don't use your searching ability early in the game And thus long John is forced to give the big clues Yeah Can't give the little clues if you haven't searched because then he can't give you the little treasures then again You're also not searching you're just walking around using other forms of clues and other actions besides the search action So you got this balancing act going on. That's the cool part of the game What I think is the problem with this game is that with intelligent players I do not think long John can win So I played I was long John the first time ever played the game two of the people at the table had already played this game multiple times and All three of the pirates were very smart people. Yep. I Was literally one turn from winning I busted out of prison and I got right next to my fucking treasure You would have gotten it next turn you were definitely even rain I Then they had narrowed down but at the by the end of the game like they couldn't find the Like I said one person at on that to previous turn had searched as less than a centimeter away from the treasure They collectively narrowed it down to maybe six square centimeters on the entire map Yep, like they were so close and then I got I couldn't get because I hosted myself by my own Because I drew my treasure dot as such a precise pixel. I was literally Less than half a centimeter away from being able to just win Mm-hmm, and then I lost in the last last possible round Yeah, I think I mean that's what I think is I think it's it's calibrated in such a way I think if the players are not that good at searching or are less skilled I think a skill John just wins a skilled long John would just dominate But I think a poor quality long John will lose immediately poor quality long John will lose immediately and give everything away But amongst all skilled players where everyone is is up on up I think that the long John they can they can take the game into the late stages But I don't think they can get away with it It's you know, I think what would be good is if you just kept exactly the same everything Don't change a thing except make the map just maybe like six inches larger in both directions That way with the same exact clues, right? You're making it a little harder to narrow it down and maybe at the end You know, it might also be a problem But at least the players might have two choices and have to pick one Right, and it's like okay. Well the game comes down to luck then well Maybe it does but at least it's not just sort of like this locked-in thing That's also feel like if you get really fine tipped strier a smarkers You can make the game more interesting because I would love to see a digital version of this game Oh, hell, yeah That was pixel perfect with zooming in and zooming out I would play I would play it a lot where you had to literally click the exact pixel I'm like a you know like you get like a like you do your search radius 2000 by 2000 jpeg and you must click that would be what 40,000 pixels Well, you got to search the area around your character right include some number right Your search must include that pixel specifically if it is what if that pixel is just outside the edge of your radius You didn't get it But the moral is like in the end this game is way fun and worth owning Yeah, if you want to have a searching finding game, I would rather play this than the scotland yard Well, because scotland yard uh Slash mr. X or whatever you're a computer scientist or even computer science adjacent You can easily determine an algorithm that guarantees mr. X will lose Yes, I would rather play this inferior of dracula because even though I like the hidden card movement and and searching inferior dracula A little bit better than the treasure island. I do not like any of the parts of inferior dracula Dude busting out the compass and drawing a giant fucking circle on this map is really really satisfying Oh, yeah, especially when the treasure is like A millimeter outside of that circle and you're just like nope stone face. Yep Uh, there is a game I played that you did not play called cryptid which as a hex map And you're trying to find a chupacabra Or or equivalent, right? And it's and there's rule and there's clues like uh, like you know different information than the player is like, okay I know it's not in a mountain hex. I know it's too away from a forest hex that kind of thing And you sort of narrow it down and see who can find it first I played that game once and I won because I narrowed it down to three hexes and guessed and I guessed right Uh, but you know, it's it's it's similar, but Cryptid is while perfectly fine It does not have the fun of drawing with the sexton to the compass and all that biz the drawing makes it real fun Yeah, uh, so in terms of while it is not perfect and has some flaws in terms of one versus many Hide and seek games. I think treasure island may be the current number one of ones that I have played This has been geek nights with rim and scott special. Thanks to dj pretzel for the opening