That's the interesting thing about Castaway - although people enjoy playing it, they tend to develop an animosity towards the setting they're trying to escape. I suppose I could have made a game in which you have a Robinson Crusoe / Swiss Family Robinson / Gilligan style island, where food is plentiful, you can build nifty treehouses, and the local monkeys can be easily trained to do household chores. I wanted a more realistic take on being marooned, though, something that inherently motivates you towards the end goal of escaping back to civilization.

(Because I made the minis at the typical 1"=5' scale, that means the island is, necessarily, only 100 feet across - certainly not enough to support a group of adult humans, regardless of how efficiently they farm the banana trees.)

True story: the first time I played this game with my Mom, she picked up a token - based on my advice - and died of thirst. That's right - I created a simulation wherein my mother was stranded on an island smaller than a typical city block, and I instructed her to make the choice that resulted in her perishing of dehydration. It was a little awkward.