World B. Free, George Karl, Harry Weltman, and the 1984 Cleveland Cavaliers: Reliving Yesteryear
January 23, 2015After Lockout and Winter Olympics, 2015 NHL All-Star Weekend Tickets Fall since Last Events in 2012
January 23, 2015The island is sinking all around you. In the water are sharks and sea monsters that are after you. Grab a spot in a lifeboat and paddle towards the closest beach, but watch out for whales- they capsize your boat and then you are a swimmer.
Theme: Tropical island survival
Number of Players: 2-4 (more interesting with 3 or 4)
Game Time: about an hour
Age Appropriateness: 8 and up
Game Type: Tough to nail this one down. It’s kind of a racing game with some sabotage.
Each player tries to get their own meeples from the sinking island to the nearby shores to safety. Each meeple has a point value on the bottom. The winner is the player that has the most survivor points at the end of the game.
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Game Play: Players take turns placing their meeples on the island during the set-up. This is the last time a player may see what point value their meeples are worth until the scoring at the end of the game.
Each player’s turn is comprised of removing a tile from the island and playing it (preferably forcing an opponent into the water), taking three actions with their meeples (moving one on land, swimming to the next hex or moving a boat containing your meeple towards the shore) and finally rolling the creature die and moving one of the whales, sharks or sea monsters. Sharks eat swimmers. Whales destroy boats, but leave the meeples in the water. Sea monsters eat boats and meeples.
Boats hold up to three meeples at a time. The player with the most meeples on a boat is the captain of that boat (meaning it moves on that player’s turn.)
Component Quality: (I have the 30th anniversary edition, which is the latest edition.) Excellent components. Wooden meepels and creatues. Solid cardboard tiles for the island. Beautifully colored board.
My Take: Survive: Escape from Atlantis is a good family weight game. However, the game has the potential to be mean. Players are forced to make decisions in the game about which other player’s meeples get eaten or their boat smashed or even just a tile taken from under their player on the island making them a swimmer.
If you try to avoid causing harm to other players, well everyone ends up with all their meeples safe, and the game is really boring. Being cut-throat is what the game was designed for. If your group is good with that, you will have a ball with this one. If you want an object lesson in ‘life isn’t always fair’ then this might be a good one for you as well.
I haven’t been able to get this to the table with a group of hard core gamers to experience a really cut-throat game. That would be interesting to me.
The game can be explained fairly easily once you know and understand how everything works together.
Affordability: Right around $30
Expansions and Replay-ability: There are a few expansions for Survive: Escape from Atlantis. There is a 5 and 6 player expansion, a giant squid expansion and a dolphin and dive dice expansion. The latter two simply add more creatures to hurt or help you along the way. Dolphins help protect meeples. The squid can grab boats or meeples and sink them.
This is one game that I think might have a limited number of plays in it for me. I’m not there yet, but I could see that day happening. There are many other family weight games that I like better, but this is certainly not the worst I’ve played.
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Board Game News and Notes:
– Mayfair Games announced that the Settlers of Catan will now be called just Catan. Which is funny, as most people I know called it ‘settlers’ for short instead of Catan.
– Speaking of Mayfair games, they have announced a new worker placement game to be released in March called Extra, Extra! Read all about it. In the game players are rival newspaper publishers attempting to scoop each other and build the best newspaper.
This one gets me excited. First, I really like worker placement games. Second, that is a theme that sounds really interesting to me. It’s different than another zombie or space or civilization building game. Mayfair Games has put out some winners in the past as well.
– Forgive me for burying the lede in this edition of news and notes however.
The Oatmeal has a game on Kickstarter. It is called Exploding Kittens—and it looks like way too much fun. The project asked for $10,000 to fund. It hit that goal in 20 minutes. It hit $100,000 in a couple hours. As of today, the project has been backed for over $3 million dollars.
For a $20 pledge you get the game, and for $35 you get the game plus bonus cards that they called NSFW. There are 27 days left on the Kickstarter. You owe it to yourself to at least watch the video.
3 Comments
Escape sounds interesting and one that my kids would likely enjoy (they love the classics of Sorry and Trouble where they can gang up on Dad and I have to try to figure out a way to win with that handicap).
Will try to remember this one after the Math Pentathlon season winds up.
Throw it on your amazon wishlist (if you have one). That is how I remember stuff like this
I may have purchased an “extra” game before. We opened it and looked at it, and it didn’t seem all that intriguing.