Survive: Escape from Atlantis!

First of all: the components are truly great. Sure, they’re not plastic figures with great detail, but they are sturdy and of good quality. Now to the game.

You build up a random island consisting of three types of tiles. Beach, forest and mountains. Since this is Atlantis, it’s gonna sink. And it starts with the beach tiles and goes upwards to the mountains. On the tiles are your people. You have to get them to safety to one of the four surrounding islands. But much peril awaits, as sharks, whales, squids (expansion) and sea monsters are there to eat you.

But during your turn you have the ability to move one of these monsters. Of course you will try to eat your opponents, or move them away from your people. There’s a lot of interaction and pleading going on. You have to convince the other players why you’re not a good target, but another one is. It’s a ton of fun, and the actions are mercyless.

When the volcano tile is revealed, the game is over, and eveyone still swimming or on Atlantis will die. Then you can take all your surviving people and look under them. There’s a scoring number below which everyone counts up, and the one with the highest score wins. Of course you can look at these numbers when you place the figure, but never again until the game is over.

Game for kids? Sure. But it’s also great fun for adults. Don’t underestimate this game. At least give it a shot.

Survive: Escape from Atlantis is a cut-throat, take no prisoners board game full of boat smashing, island sinking, your friend just got eaten by a shark fun. Originally published in 1982 as Survive by Parker Brothers, it has recently been republished by Stronghold Games, and includes the pieces needed in order to play Escape from Atlantis (1986). This is a game that has people divided on either never having heard of it when it was originally published in 1982, or this being the coolest game they ever played growing up.

In a nutshell, you and your fellow players are residents of Atlantis and its starting to sink. You must do everything in your power to get your people off the main island to safety while avoiding sharks, whales, sea monsters, and your friends backstabbing scheming ways. Get more of your people to safety, you win.

In the box you will find a beautiful 4-part board covered in hexes, island tiles (beach, forest, and mountains), wooden Atlanteans, wooden boats for the wooden Atlanteans to ride, wooden whales to destroy your wooden boats, wooden sharks to eat your wooden Atlanteans, wooden sea serpents to destroy your wooden boats and eat your wooden Atlanteans, wooden dolphins to help your wooden Atlanteans swim, and some dice (these are not wood).

To begin, players will randomly draw island tiles and place them on the board to form the island of Atlantis, followed by populating the island one person at a time, alternating players as they go. The placement of a players Atlantians can be strategic, as each one has a value ranging from 1-6, which will score the player points if they can get them safely off the island. Some boats are placed out on the board, and the sea serpents take their places. Then, Atlantis falls.

The board, right before it starts to sink

During a players turn, they will get up to three actions that can be used to either move their pieces across the island, onto boats, move boats (empty ones or ones they control), or swim. In a perfect world, a player will move their pieces with the end goal of getting them to one of the four surrounding islands. Unfortunately, evacuating a sinking island is not as easy as you would think.

After they have moved their people, the island will start to sink, and the player will remove one of the island tiles from the board. In order, beach tiles are removed first, followed by forest tiles, then mountains. On the flip side of these tiles, players will trigger events that will either immediately take place or may be saved for them to use later in the game. Some of these immediate effects may be adding sharks or whales to the game board (thats bad), or maybe some extra boats to get people to safety (thats good), or maybe a whirlpool that will suck any Atlanteans, boats, or sea creatures to the bottom of the ocean (thats bad too).

Once a player has sunk a part of the island, they then roll the sea creature dice and will move them accordingly. By rolling the dice, the player will have to move either a whale, a shark, or a sea serpent on the board, most likely into the same hex where another player has a piece, eating their Atlantean or destroying the boat they were on or even both.

Oh Noes, He’s swimming!

When the sea creatures actions are resolved, play moves on to the next player, and the cycle repeats. The game will go on until the volcano is revealed once the players get down to removing the mountain tiles from play. Players will add up the points scored from their surviving Atlanteans who made it to safety, the one with the highest score wins.

The game is fast paced and fun, and is best played with friends who don’t mind screwing you over, and vice versa. Having never played the game when if originally came out, I was hesitant to play it now 30 years later since games of the era of being a kid don’t always hold up/in no way hold your interest. But this game is just fun. Very easy to pick up and learn, and within a turn all of us had a solid grasp on how to play, and were strategizing and plotting each others demise (3 of the 4 had never played).

Everything adjacent to the whirlpool will be removed from the game

Out of the box, it plays up to 4 players, but there are plans to release an expansion that will allow for up to 6 to play all at once. While dolphins are not used in the basic game, they are in the advanced game, which adds some additional rules allowing for a different gameplay. An expansion ot the game is available now, adding giant squids to the mix (ie, more ways to kill your friends).

The game allows for some strategy, as well as making alliances (if you like) but those do not last forever because in the end, its all about you surviving more than anyone else.

Arr.

More Pictures

Overview and Components

Hello readers and welcome once again to an InD20 Group review. Its time to review yet another game from Stronghold Games line of classic reprints, for those that are unfamiliar with this game, Survive: Escape from Atlantis was published as family games almost 30 years ago and have recently been picked up by Stronghold Games. During the game, players will try to rescue all their islanders or Atlanteans from the sinking island while also controlling the way the island sinks and the dangerous sea creatures in order to stop the other players from escaping.

Lets jump right into the components of the game. Stronghold Games has released this game with the classic euro style pieces. The player pieces, boats, plus the various sea monsters are all represented by bright colored wood figurines.

At the very start of the game, you set up the island in the middle of the board with randomly selected land tiles. The tiles are all cardboard pieces of different thickness, each thickness representing a type of land such as beaches, forests, and mountains. The different thickness levels give a wonderful 3D feel to the game. The way this formation influences the game is amazing and very effective.

During the second setup phase, players take their turns to place their islanders on the island one at a time. Its actually a race to claim the pieces of the island that are most convenient for the purpose of being close to the water, easy to escape, and not susceptible to sinking into the sea immediately. After the final islander is placed, each player has an opportunity to place two boats next to the edge of the island. There will be enough boats around the island that the initial moves will most likely be mad dashes to grab any boat near you, regardless of who placed them.

Each turn is four phases or steps. Choose whether or not to play a tile from your hand, move your islanders and boats, sink one part of the island, and then roll the sea creature dice and move that monster around the board. Some of the land tiles, after being revealed are taken up in your hand and can be played on your turn. These tiles are boat or swimmer bonus tiles and creature teleports.

Each player has three moves to spend each turn. On land each piece can freely move. Boats can move in water, but can only be controlled by a player if they are empty or they have control of it (meaning they have majority of occupants). Hitching a ride in someone else’s boat is always helpful, and boats are shark proof unlike swimming. But be careful of the whales.

Pieces can also end up swimming in the water by having their boat destroyed, the island sinking under them, or by jumping off the island (notice I said jumping not voted…this isn’t survivor its survive). This doesn’t necessarily mean you are screwed, it does increase your chances of being a snack to the sea creatures, and you can only move 1 space per turn towards safety. It’s still possible to be overlooked and swim the long open waters to safety, perhaps that sea monster thought the boat with 3 people would be more appetizing then you….even though you did just eat a peanut butter snickers.

If you can make it to one of the four corner islands, then you can get out of the water or step off that boat to safety. These islanders or Atlanteans are safe until the end of the game and are the only way to score points.

After moving their pieces, players must choose one of the pieces of the island to remove. This can be occupied (in which case any pieces on it are dropped violently into the ocean). The lowest-lying beach tiles must be removed first, followed by forest then mountain, and a tile touching the ocean must be chosen if possible. From this, you can have a pretty good idea of which parts of the island will still be around the longest, and probably also start to develop a phobia of sandy beaches..

Each removed landscape tile has a picture on its back. These come in several forms, good for you, bad, or bad for someone else.

Some tiles are kept until later, some have immediate effect. They’re all quite clearly laid out with easy to read icons as you can see from the picture below.

There are good, bad, and comical moments to these event tiles, so the decision of which part of the island to sink is an interesting one. I absolutely loved it when I sunk a piece of island my wife was on to find out that sharks were waiting right there. (Insert Jaws theme music here)

At the end of each player turn, the creature dice is rolled. It has two faces for each of the sea-creatures. Once a creature is rolled, the player may choose to move one of the creatures of that type that is already on the board. Each creature moves a different amount, whales move 3 spaces and destroy occupied boats, sharks move 2 and eat swimmers, while the Great Purple Sea Monster is slow and only moves 1 space, but both destroys boats and the occupants on them. (yell “Unleash the Kraken” when this happens)
Remember as the game progresses the island gets smaller, causing more and more panic. The game ends immediately when the Volcano tile is drawn, with all people still in boats or the water lost.

I apologize but I gots squids in this picture which is a mini expansion not included

At the end of the game, the players reveal which of their pieces actually made it to safety on the islands. The numbers on the bases report how many points each of them is worth, and the player with the most points wins. During the game, players have to keep in mind where their most valuable tokens are because they remain secret until the end of the game.

In addition to the base rules, the Survive box contains extension pieces to play the variant Escape from Atlantis as well as several other scoring variants which mostly make the game more forgiving or easier.

My Opinion

Overall, this is a huge hit and a great choice of a game for Stronghold Games to re-release. And like I have said before on games that I have reviewed from this company, I believe that Stronghold Games will be a force to be reckoned with if they keep up what they are doing. This game is a great family game, and can be easily enjoyed by every one. When I say everyone, I mean everyone, whether your hardcore and love the competition or you just want something casually fun. Get this game and check it out

Larry Fettinger and InD20 Group approve this review and give it 7.5 out of 10.

I heard everyone talking about how great this game was, and they were not lying. The Game plays great for gamers and non-gamers. It is easy to learn and quick to play (under an hour). The concept is simple get your ten meeples to the four corners of the board before the island of Atlantis sinks. But be careful. The sea is filled with monsters, sharks, whales, and other fighting to survive.

The game is light, so if you are looking for a deep game experience you won’t find it here. However, this game is very enjoyable. Especially if no one at the table takes the game too seriously.

The components are top notch. All the pieces are made of wood. And the game board and box are made of solid cardboard. The box also has plenty of room and has space for the coming expansions. The only issue I had with them is that the meeples have numbers written on the bottom of them and the blue pieces can be difficult to read.

I can see our family and friends playing this one for years to come. Great fun for kids of all ages.

I had wanted to try this game out for a long time and I was so glad I did.

The replay value is extremely high for several reasons. One, the terrain tiles can be placed in all sorts of configurations, so the island is never the same. Two, each game is different because of the tiles being picked up and the creatures being rolled. You could have shark infested waters right away in one game with highly aggressive sharks (you keep rolling sharks), or you could have a fast moving serpent (you keep rolling serpents), or you could have dangerous whales AND fast moving serpents. The possibilities, and dangers, are endless.

The game pieces are excellent quality and will last a very long time.

The game is somewhat easy to learn. The first game I played was very stop and go, with constantly reading the rule book to make sure we were playing correctly. However, once we played a second time, it was much smoother.

Overall, this is a fun game with so many different things going on in it. I would say it’s 60% strategy and 40% luck. This is a must-play game!