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On the reverse of the terrain tiles are different actions which result in spawning sharks, whales or boats; alternatively they provide you with an additional action to be played later in the game (like bonus moves, or the ability to relocate a shark, whale or sea monster). Which leads us to now. Within moments of the announcement that The Escapement Broadstairs had not just one, but two new games, plus an outdoor adventure, we were sorting out the logistics for a trip to Kent with our friends, Amy and Ian of Brit of an Escape Habit, to discover just what new and wonderful things would await us in the lovely little seaside town. The question on many players’, and particularly enthusiasts’, minds will be “Can I play this as a team of two, or does it really need four?” The answer isn’t quite that straightforward, but practically, you really do need at least three, but the perfect team size is probably four. The challenges throughout Atlantis to some degree all incorporate teamwork, and while the bulk of them could easily be completed by a team of two, the finale… can’t be. Or, maybe it can, but I think it would be far more frustrating than fun with only two. But it is this finale that truly sets Atlantis apart from any other game we have played to date, so it is well worth the effort of finding some friends to drag along under the sea. While not exactly a puzzle, the conclusion to Atlantis was perfectly designed, fast-paced, and above all else – FUN. GM/CLUE SYSTEM Each explorer token has a number from 1 – 6 displayed underneath it which represents the amount of treasure they are carrying. Starting with the first player, you may look at the number of your explorer before placing it on an empty tile on the Atlantis landscape. It is important to note that this is the last time you can look at the number so you need to try and memorise where the high numbers are located. Taking it in turns, the explorers are placed one by one until all 10 are on the island. At the start of the game, the island tiles are shuffled, and the island of Atlantis is built at the centre of the game board.
Rules [ edit ] A remake of Escape of Atlantis to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Game start [ edit ]Although Mica was our captain, Lewis was our GM. If we had needed help, I have no doubt in my mind that it would have been delivered at exactly the right moment to avoid any frustration. I can say this with certainty because although we experienced a bit of glitchy tech, it was handled in such a smooth manner that we actually had no idea that there was a problem until the debrief after our game. In fact, Lewis was paying such close attention to our game that he could remember who did what to solve each puzzle when we received our mission debrief. This attention to detail isn’t unique to Lewis – every member of staff at The Escapement runs their games in the same fashion. It is impressive, and refreshing to have such a thorough explanation following a game not only of what happened but exactly how it happened in your game and really makes a difference to the player experience. ANYTHING ELSE The middle ground is a bit further away from the water, but there is usually time to race past other people and make it to the relative safety of a boat, even if you might have to wait a little longer to find your opportunity. At least, you’re not going to be one of the first to land in the water and have to fight off sharks and sea monsters with your bare hands – which is futile of course and you’ll die trying. Once the meeples have been moved and the tiles removed, the cutthroat action begins and you roll the sea creature dice. Depending on what it lands on, you can direct the allocated creature to do your bidding against your opponents. Be warned however, if you use a whale to crush an opponent boat one turn, they may well eat you with a shark later in the game. This action is not able to be taken on the first go but in subsequent turns this is the phase that you are able to play any special abilities that you have gained from tiles. You are able to play one tile per turn during this phase and take the appropriate action. Action 2 – Explorer / Ship movements Chunky, tactile, engaging, layered, cooperative – these are all words that I could use to describe the puzzles and tasks in Atlantis. The nature of the puzzles meant that the outside world truly does melt away as players become fully engaged in their undersea quest, with challenges that just felt like a perfect extension of the environment, and never like “puzzles” as they evolved naturally out of the surroundings and our situation. Each and every task followed a clear logic that made the whole experience feel perfectly intuitive.
Difficulty is always subjective when it comes to puzzles, but the challenges throughout Atlantis (mostly) fell on the easier side for us. This is in part due to experience, but mostly due to the fact that everything just made sense, with clear and clever signposting. At various points, Atlantis presented multiple puzzle paths that could be followed simultaneously, but even with this, the game still managed to flow effortlessly from one thing to the next, pushing the narrative. The puzzle design combined with the multilinear structure makes Atlantis achievable for newer teams, but still utterly enjoyable for escape room enthusiasts, and totally perfect for the necessary team size of 4+. In terms of villagers, each of a player's 10 pieces have a hidden numeric digit from 1 to 6 located on the bottom. This value represents the point value earned for rescuing the given villager. Once placed on the board, players are no longer able to reference which villager token has which number, even if the piece leaves play. As a result, it can become difficult to remember where the most valuable villagers are located, and furthermore, the values of other players pieces are never known. Strategy dictates that the most valuable villagers are often the ones leaving the island first (on boats), so they are typically the most valuable to go after with sea monsters. At the end of a game, the player with the highest surviving point total wins. The centre of the game's board, representing the mountainous island of Atlantis itself, is covered with several tiers of molded hexagon tiles (37 in total) giving the game a partly three-dimensional appearance. The island is made up of four different "rings", with a mountain peak at the centre, a ring of mountains around it, a ring of forest around that, and finally a ring of sandy beach at the outer edge. Each of the tiles has space to hold a maximum of 3 Atlanteans. The simplicity ofSurvive: Escape from Atlantis is that you only ever have three moves to perform per turn, each with the overarching aim to get your meeples off the island and to safety. You could move one of your land-based meeples, you could move a boat, you could even move one of your less fortunate meeples stranded in the sea. The winner is the player who, at the end of game, has succeeded in saving the most of their own villagers.When moving sea creatures, once they cross a sea space with a destroyable object, they stop. A red-edged tile played to negate the effects of a sea creature removes the sea creature from the board. End of Game & Scoring Survive: Escape from Atlantis pits you as a group of explorers attempting to escape from the sinking remains of Atlantis. You and up to three more players take it in turns moving your meeples to safety on one of the other adjacent islands. Sounds simple right? WRONG!
Survive: Escape from Atlantis: https://strongholdgames. com/ our-games/ survive-escape-from-atlantis/ Part of what allows players to remain fully immersed in the world created by The Escapement is the way in which they can receive help, should they need it, so I am intentionally going to be rather vague on this point as I would like to leave players to discover the magic of Atlantis for themselves. When teams are struggling, the games master has the ability to adjust the clues accordingly, but it begins with subtle changes that seem to emerge organically from within the game itself, gently guiding players along the correct path with whispered nudges, and things that could be interpreted as perhaps just slightly more blatant signposting. Of course, if subtle cues just aren’t cutting it, there is always the option for the GM to chime in with a more overt “clue,” but even those would be in keeping with the narrative. Whenever someone asks me what my favourite escape room is, although I struggle to actually come up with an answer, but, although our first visit to The Escapement’s Margate branch occurred just a week after we launched Review the Room in February 2019, the games there always come to mind at, or near, the top of the list, even three years later. Ever since that first visit we have been rather (im)patiently waiting for the grand opening of The Escapement Broadstairs. (Let’s be honest, I’ve been desperate for new games from The Escapement practically from the moment we stepped out of The Pit.)
Rule variations
Play a red-edged tile in your hand. At the beginning of the game this action is skipped since no one has any red-edged tiles. Locate the 5 sea serpent tokens and place one on each matching symbol. There is one in the centre and one at each corner of the board. Let me finish by saying that I always only played the game digitally, so I can’t attest to the quality of the components or how the experience changes when you remove physical island tiles and drop “real” meeples into the water, or have a shark meeple gobble up one of your opponent’s survivors. However, I can only imagine it heightens the experience even further, adding to the feeling of evil pleasure and sheer panic. Whirlpools destroy all moving objects (but not land) from the same space and adjacent spaces. The whirlpool is then discarded. As play progresses the land tiles are incrementally removed, simulating the ongoing sinking of the island. The objective of the game is for players to save their ten Atlanteans from the sinking island by transporting them to the safety of the coral islands. Game pieces
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