Asmodee | Survive: Escape from Atlantis! - 30th Anniversary Edition | Board Game| Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | 45 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

The first thing to note is that the artwork on the box is lovely, always a good start. Inside, everything is neatly organised and can be kept neat even once you’ve got everything out of the little bags. The components are great: from the board all the way to the meeples. Whirlpools destroy all moving objects (but not land) from the same space and adjacent spaces. The whirlpool is then discarded. As I mentioned, the game ends when volcano tile is revealed. Players then tally up the points indicated on the bottom of their explorers who made it safely to shore at the corners of the board. Your turn ends with you rolling the sea monster die, and you then move the appropriate creature (away from your stranded swimmers, presumably, and towards your opponents)! During this phase in Survive – Escape from Atlantis , you have three spaces of movement to take with your explorers and the ships. You can use your three moves in any combination, for example, you can move the same explorer three spaces, three different explorers one space each or move an explorer one space and a ship two spaces etc. Action 3 – Removing A Landscape Tile From Atlantis

In June 2012, Stronghold Games relaunched a new edition, "Survive: Escape From Atlantis! - 30th Anniversary Edition". It included refreshed artwork and a slightly revised theme (Explorers finding and escaping from Atlantis). Simultaneously, French publisher, Asmodee, licensed the EU languages and launched "The Island", which is the same game as Stronghold's version, but with a rebranded name for EU trademark purposely only. The US retail date of this edition of "Survive" was June 6, 2012.Survive: Escape From Atlantis is a 30th year anniversary reprint of that ’80s classic. On the whole it’s the same game, but this has received both some TLC on component quality, and some rules tweaks. Each player places 10 stranded people on the island of Atlantis (made up of terrain hexes in a modular fashion), and they have to try to get them off to the safety of neighbouring isles before Atlantis sinks. 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.

When travelling by boat, the player can also move a boat with villagers from other tribes on it, provided the player's tribe holds a non-minority position (in other words, no other tribe has more members in the same boat). This creates a tactical element by allowing players to transport other players' villagers. Sinking phase 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. You then take it in turns to covertly place your different value meeples onto an unoccupied terrain tile around the island. Once your meeples are in place you may place two boats into the surrounding waters of Atlantis. Think hard about where the boats go, because you don’t want your highest value meeple hanging around waiting for a lift. 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.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 It sounds terrifying and is almost as if you’re watching a disaster film – and it sort of is. In Survive, as I’m going to call this game for short, everyone has a group of people that are on an island that’s slowly sinking and it’s your job to get as many of your people to the mainland as possible. Your best bet is to reach a boat and steer it to safety, but you can also take your life into your own hands and try to swim across the sea, and more often than not, that’s your only option. Throughout the game players attempt to ferry their explorers to safety while avoiding whales and krakens. But, you don’t necessarily have to rely on the boats. Explorers can attempt to swim to safety. Numbered Explorers & Memorization 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.)

Sea serpents can only move one space at a time, if they move into a space with a boat or a swimmer then they are completely removed from the game. Shark 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.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. 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 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. The winner is the player who, at the end of game, has succeeded in saving the most of their own villagers. Rule variations

I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.

There are a limited number of boats, the island shrinks each turn, there are sharks, whales and sea monsters lurking in the depths and all the while you have got to try and remember who in your team is worth saving and who is best left to drown. First Impressions Starting with the first player, each player will take turns to place a ship token on an empty sea space that is adjacent to a landscape tile of any type. Gameplay Actions 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. The island is surrounded by open water, and in each of the four corners of the board are four coral islands.