Toko Island by Marie & Wilfried Fort

Can you introduce yourself in a few words and explain how you decided to become game authors?

Happy parents of 3 children. We live in the west of France, near Nantes. We have a lot of ideas and we decided a dozen years ago to put these ideas into concret actions... together! We experimented this creativity on many different supports, then one day, our first game idea came quite naturally. We then worked a lot on this idea. We loved this experience, other ideas came little by little. And, a few years later, our first game were published. Today, we have the chance to work as boardgame authors, together and full time.

Where did the idea for Toko Island come from?

The triggering element was the material idea: several trays glued one on top of the other, pierced with several smaller and smaller holes. In these holes, we put chips one on top of the other, smaller and smaller too. In order to access the deepest chips, you have to remove the larger chips that cover them! It is around this idea that we imagined Toko Island.

Can you explain the principle in a few words?

Toko Island is a cooperative and evolving game. The action takes place in the early 19th century, in the Pacific Ocean. Players play as a team of treasure hunters who lead expeditions commanded by different famous scientists. Each scientist corresponds to a different game mode, and each game mode offers different levels of difficulty. If you win, the corresponding scientist will give you a reward that you can hang on your «trophy booklet». Collecting these rewards will allow you to obtain special tokens that can greatly help you in your future games! To win a game, you’ll have a limited amount of tools, a «cabinet of curiosities» sheet, and you’ll have to find all the requested treasures buried somewhere on the three different areas of an island before you run out of tools! You’ll have to use your memory, organization and analysis skills!

A word for future players?

A tip for playing, no, excelling at Toko Island: don’t neglect the deduction aspect of the «cabinet of curiosities» sheet, it should help you win some moves! Thanks to it, you can visualize more easily the treasures not yet discovered and thus direct your research more specifically towards a size of token.

Any particular anecdote you’d like to share?

For our presentations of game projects to publishers, we are used to direct presentations at festivals. However, with the Covid epidemic and the festival cancellations, we had to adapt our way of working. It was during this period that we presented our prototype of Toko Island to Chloé and Hadi from the Helvetiq editorial team. We made a short presentation of the game in video conference, followed by a game... quite epic! We let you imagine the «Do you want me to flip this chip?» «No, the other one right next to it» .... «This one?» ... «Yes! Yes!». We hope that Toko Island will make you travel and that it will offer you great moments of sharing with your family or friends!