Survive! Escape from Atlantis

Overall Rating: 10/10
Replay Value: 10
D20 Roll for Non-Nerds: 20
Playtime: It took a group of 4 about 40 minutes to complete a game

When Adam and I were at Origins this past June, we kept walking by the Stronghold Games table and seeing this game.  It's hard to miss, as it can end up being extremely colorful once you've got all the people down, along with the adorable pieces in the shapes of sharks, whales, and sea serpents.

But the table was always full!  On the last day of the convention, we FINALLY got to play, and boy, was our perseverance worth it!  Who knows whether it is a result of the country's obsession with LOST, but island survival games are fast becoming a trope in new games. 

This game stands out among them as one of the funnest, easiest games I've ever introduced to my non-gamer friends.

Who put a river full of monsters in my island?

The premise is that you are on an island that is sinking, and you've got 10 people to try and evacuate before the whole island explodes-- and you get only 2 boats that hold 3 people each. DEATH IS COMING!

There are 40 hexagonal landtiles, much like Settlers, arranged randomly and comprised of beach, forest, and mountain. Each person must take a land tile (starting with only beach tiles) during each turn, so it's not long before the island is looking patchy and supremely unsafe. The land tiles have a dual purpose, as they also serve as the cards of the game, dictating whether more sea creatures or boats are added to the board and where.

A whale-capsized boat has left this band of people as monster chum!

The pace of this game is a bit manic. While it may start methodically, piling  people into available boats, before long you are just trying to navigate through a perilous sea toward any nearby safe zone.

To add to the strategy, your 10 people have an array of "values" (Atlantis didn't practice communism) that you are only allowed to look at before placing them on the board, so you might want to keep track of your 6-point doctor/teacher more carefully than your 1-point politician/lawyer. Actually remembering which person is which when they're all swimming next to a shark is another story!

 

This game isn't about baking cookies for friends, as we laughed about all last night.  It's a Salad Game. As in, you don't want to focus on winning friends. On each turn, you roll the MONSTER DIE and get to control one of the Sea Terrors, and if you don't use these opportunities to EAT YOUR FRIENDS, they will win and YOU WILL LOSE.

And that's one of the funnest parts -- seeing what alliances form and smash apart (WILL husbands refuse to let the sea monsters eat their wives' citizens??)

This game was so easy to play and pick up that two of my girlfriends, neither of whom are game aficionados, were quick converts by the end of the evening, eager to play again.

A multicolored world!

I will mention too that we played the expansion for 5-6 players, and having five players in the game not only makes the board a LOT busier and more colorful, but makes it go super fast!  It was difficult to save more than 10 points of characters, and, in a game where End Game Slowness is not ever a problem thanks to Whirlpool Tiles (that consume everything in the sea around them), oftentimes you don't even get a chance to save your imperiled citizens because too much happens between turns!

Really, though, this game moves fast, is fun and easy to play, and made for 2 nights of raucous fun this weekend.  A playing tutorial will be posted later this week too!  Well done, Stronghold Games!