Survive: Escape from Atlantis!

My first impression of Survive: Escape from Atlantis was, “wow, that’s some awesomely thick cardboard!” My second impression was that this is quite a fun little game for kids and adults alike. There is ample opportunity to play relatively nicely with the younger ones, coupled with many chances to play brutal, laugh-as-you-sink-your-opponent’s-boat-amidst-a-pool-of-circling-sharks, high stakes competition with older players. This game has a little something for the whole family.

Stronghold Games has done an excellent job with the components for this game. The wonderfully decorated gameboard and the thick, chunky cardboard combine with the great wooden pieces to produce a game that’s as fun to look at as it is to play. My 5 year-old daughter, although she doesn’t quite get all the nuances of play, still thoroughly enjoys moving the wooden people, boats, and monsters around the board.

The game is a blast to play. It is extremely easy to learn and to teach, and you can be playing within 15-20 minutes of opening the box. Turns move quickly and can affect any player on the board, so even the youngest players will stay engaged. There is a fun sense of tension throughout, as the island sinks piece by piece each turn, and you never know when your boat that’s on the way to safety may end up capsized by a whale, dumping your helpless passengers in the ocean to face circling sharks or sea monsters. There is also great opportunity to do unto others, as each turn you control one of the ocean denizens and can guide it to where it will do the most damage to your opponent. The chance to mess with the other players can really result in a good-natured game of sabotage and backstabbing, particularly if you play with the right group of people.

Overall, this is a great family game that can be a lot of fun for adults as well. The simple rules combined with the fast gameplay make it ideal for a quick game night or as an entertaining filler. The engaging mechanics and multiple opportunities to hose your opponent may make this a filler that gets repeated multiple times. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a light game that can be enjoyed by a variety of players.

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.

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.

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

The game is easy to teach. Every body has a set of villagers with the same range of values. The object is to get your villagers off the sinking island in the middle of the board and to one of the beaches on the edge of the board by the time the island sinks. The winner is the person who got the highest total value of villagers to safety. Every piece of island that sinks can unleash a new threat(whirlpools,sharks, whales, etc…), or occasionally a new boat. Each boat can hold 3 villagers, and there are more villagers in the lower values(more value 1s than 4s, etc…) Boats can only be moved by players who have pieces in that boat, and some pieces start on the interior of the island so you must decidewhether to wait on the island partially sinking or scramble madly for boats erly on.

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.

In the beginning was Klaus Teuber. And Klaus Teuber did look down and see that gaming was stagnant, and that Free Parking Jackpot was killing Monopoly, and he said, “Let there be Catan!” And it was so. And Klaus did rejoice, seeing that what he had made was good. And he said, “Let Catan be broken into pieces, and let those pieces be as hexagons, with which others can also create Catan anew.” And it was so – Catan was broken into pieces, and those pieces were as hexagons, and there was much rejoicing around gaming tables everywhere. Except for a few curmudgeons who hate dice, and they were cast outside into the darkness, where there is perfect information and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And the children of Klaus-Jürgen Wrede looked out upon Catan, and they saw that it was very good, and they said unto themselves, “We should go out to Catan, and take it for our own. It’s way nicer than Carcassonne.” And as they landed upon Catan and began to build roads and settlements, the first Klaus said unto them, “From whence have you come to disturb my island?” And the children of the second Klaus said, “We have seen this land, and it is a good land, fit for the building of roads and settlements. Plus, we have wood for sheep.” And the first Klaus burned with anger at their insolence, and said unto them, “Canst thou not make an original Catan joke? I shall smite thee with a mighty smiting. Hey, that rhymes.” And the first Klaus caused the sea to rise up against the children of the second Klaus, so that the island was consumed, and they were forced to take to boats or to swim for it. And the first Klaus caused the sea to be filled with all manner of vicious critters with nasty, big, pointy teeth. And the boats were wrecked, and the swimmers were made into tasty meals, and amongst the whales and the sharks and the sea serpents, there was much rejoicing.
Thus was born Survive! Escape from Atlantis – and it was very good.
Ok, so maybe the game doesn’t really have anything at all to do with Catan or Carcassonne, besides a superficial resemblance. The original actually predates them both by a significant margin, coming from Parker Brothers of all places in 1982. Now, in 2011, the game has been reprinted by Stronghold Games with great new bits that are somewhat evocative of those more recent classics. The game is played on a board on which an island of hexagonal tiles is constructed. Each player also places ten people figures (seaples perhaps?) on the island, with values varying from one to six. The numbers are printed on the bottom of the piece and are hidden until the end of the game. The object of the game, at least in the base scenario, is to get people with the highest total value off the main island and onto one of the four smaller islands in the corners of the board before the main island sinks. Moving is very simple – each turn, a player moves his or her pieces a total of three spaces. Boats can hold three people and move as one action. People may move off the island into either a boat or a sea space, but once they’ve left the island, there’s no turning back – they have to make a break for the smaller islands.
Unfortunately, while the players are in the process of evacuating the island, it’s sinking beneath the waves. Each player must, during his or her turn, remove one of the island’s tiles, revealing the sea space below. Any people on the tile are dumped into the ocean. Each tile also contains an action on the bottom. These actions come in two flavors: resolve now (generally bad and nasty) or hold for play at the beginning of a future turn (generally helpful). Actions that go into the player’s hand might include move a boat or swimmer up to three extra spaces or cancel an attack by a critter. Resolve now actions include things like placing sharks or whales into the space from which the tile came or revealing a whirlpool that sucks everything nearby into a watery grave. The game ends when one of two conditions is met: either the Volcano tile is drawn, or all figures have either made it to safety or met their demise thanks to some of the friendly neighborhood wildlife.
Creatures come in three flavors (four with variant) and are generally of the nasty variety. Whales smash any boats in the same space, sending the occupants into the water. Sharks devour swimmers already in the water but ignore boats; sea serpents are the nastiest, eating all boats and swimmers in the same space. Creatures move by roll of the die at the end of a player’s turn. In the base game, one die is rolled that determines what type of creature moves, with each creature moving a set number of hexes. In the variant game, two dice are rolled; one determines the creature type, while the other determines distance. This variant also introduces dolphins, which can aid swimmers in the same space by protecting against hostile creatures.
The gameplay is quite simple and can be learned in ten minutes. What’s not apparent from a cursory review of the rules is how unbelievably nasty this game is. This game is a forty-five minute exercise in schadenfreude. There’s very little randomness in the game – most of the player misfortune happens as a result of a deliberate choice of another player. Even simple decisions like which tile to pull are influenced by which of your opponent’s pieces you can place in mortal danger. Although what creatures move is determined by the die, where they move (and who they eat) is determined by the current player. It doesn’t take long before each player is actively at the throat of each of the other players, doing his or her best to send their dudes down into a watery grave. One turn might see a figure sprint across several hexes to steal a boat that another player was in position to occupy, leaving the remaining dudes to swim for it. On the next turn, that same boat might meet its demise under the fins of an ill-tempered whale. It’s a vicious, nasty little game full of backstabbery and screwage that really brings out the worst in people (in the best possible way).
The game is high in chaos, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no strategy. Most of the strategic choices happen at the beginning of the game – because the value of each figure is hidden information, the game opens up a lot of possibilities for bluffing and feinting. Placement of figures becomes an interesting shell game. A player might position his or her high value figures near a boat so that they can claim it on the first turn and make a run for safety – but the classic eggs-in-one-basket tactic can lead to disastrous consequences if the boat happens to meet up with a nearby sea serpent. On the other hand, placing a high value figure in the middle of a bunch of opponent’s dudes opens up the choice to jump into an occupied boat, giving at least one opponent an incentive to send hostiles elsewhere. Once the figures are down on the table, though, the game becomes highly tactical, with priorities changing each turn as the map loses tiles, monsters shift positions, and figures meet their doom.
I don’t want to overstate the depth of this game – Twilight Imperium it’s not. But it’s a ton of fun, well-produced with great bits, easy-to-follow rules, and a lot of replayability. It’s a game that plays well above the table with meaningful interaction and good metagame decisions. There will be yelling, there will be threats, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth – but in the end, it’s a great game that brings out the vengeful deity in all of us.

Survive! has been around for years and years, but the new Stronghold Games version brings the intense family sea monster battles right back into our homes… and in a solid new way.

In Survive! you must move as many of your people off of a sinking island, as quickly as possible. Eventually a volcano will bust it’s top and the game is over. But escaping isn’t that easy. The sea is filled with vicious creatures that your vicious opponents will send right into you. The game can be brutal, but it’s all presented in a fun bright, family friendly way.

The components are similar to the original, but even better. There are the same Sea Serpents, Whales and Sharks, but now it comes with much-improved boats, and meeples! The game is also a mix of the Euro version of the original and the old USA version, including the rules for hidden point values at the bottom of the meeples.

This was my favorite game as a child, and I’m so glad to see it again. The recognizable parts were improved, while staying very true to the original. Stronghold went all out with this release and it shows.

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!

This is my favorite game on the market today. For four players it plays quickly. It is entertaining. The revenge factor makes this game a true winner. The best payed plans can be sunk by a shark or sea serpent very quickly.

Number of players: 2 is meh, 3 hmmm, 4 now your talking!

Time: 30 min. for four players. The game ends in 31-40 turns

Strategy: When playing, others were saying there is no strategy, so just go for it. That is completely wrong. If you are smart, you can maximize your 8-10 turns to make others help you, and not want to sink you. 😉

Replay value: There are no two games alike. I can see myself playing this for a long time to come.