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I stare helplessly at the little boat packed with yellow meeples. They look so sweet tucked away, so unaware of what’s about to happen to them as they row towards the shore ever so close, but ever so far. But the die has been cast and the player across from me flashes a wicked and knowing smile.

I should have known better to shuttle so many of my meeples on a single boat. It was an arrogant move on my part. Now my naïve little meeples would pay for my sins. The player across from me grabs hold of a nearby whale token, and slides it into the little ship. He says he’s sorry, but he isn’t. I know he isn’t. I wouldn’t be sorry if I was him and his smile says as much. My little yellow meeples are now shipless having been spilt into the deep blue.

Close by are hungry sharks, and off in the distance is a sea monster wreaking havoc upon anything it comes across. Not all hope is lost though – they are still alive, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t look good. My head slumps down and I smile, because as tragic as it is it’s still kind of funny, and everyone else at the table starts to giggle at my misfortune.

Survive: Escape from Atlantis is a mean “take that!” kind of game, but in the best kind of way. As a player you’re charged with getting your group of meeples off of the doomed, sinking island of Atlantis to the safety of one of the beaches tucked away in the corners of the board, all while trying to avoid being eaten by sharks, devoured by sea monsters, or sucked into whirlpools. You see, while you’re trying to get your little folks to safety your friends, with little meeples of their own, are actively trying to make sure you fail in your charge.

A typical turn works like this: You move some of your meeples across the board, attempting to get them to the safety of the corner beaches either via boats or having them bravely swim the distance. You only have three movements you can make on any given turn though, and you’ll find that you’ll end up wanting to do much more than you’re able to.

After you’ve moved your meeples you’ll sink a tile on the island. As part of the initial setup of the game you’ll place tiles in a random configuration to make up the island of Atlantis. Each tile is represented as a beach, forest, or mountain type. Beaches sink first, and when they’re all gone, forests go, and then the mountains in that order.

This is where you’ll get your first chance to stick it to one of your fellow players as you can absolutely sink a tile that has another player’s meeple on it. Once a meeple has been dunked in the water they cannot get back onto the island and are now forced to swim unless they can get to the (relative) safety of a boat.

The bottom of each tile allows you to conduct a special action. Some will produce creatures (the aforementioned whales and sharks), some will produce whirlpools, and some may even surface a lifesaving boat. Others still can be saved and used later by the player as a one-time power such as having a swimmer hitch a ride on a friendly dolphin to move farther than normally possible on a turn.

Once the tile is removed, the player rolls a die that determines what kind of creature they can move across the board. This is where the game truly gets mean as players navigate little shark, whale, and sea monster tokens across the board to destroy their opponents. Each creature has it’s own “specialty” in terms of destructive power: whales destroy boats, sharks devour swimmers, and sea monsters do both.

Play then continues to the next player, and so on and so forth until either all meeples are safe/dead, or someone flips the volcano tile which kills all meeples not yet on the safe beaches and ends the game. Then you score your safe meeples. The player with the highest score wins.

Scoring is another area where Survive gets interesting. You don’t just get a point for each meeple you saved. Under each meeple is a value from 1 to 6. That’s how many points that particular meeple is worth at the end of the game. Seems simple enough, but there’s a twist. As part of the setup players take turns placing their meeples on the board. Once placed the player may NEVER look at the value under their meeples again, even the ones that are killed. This is both brilliant and maddening as you try to remember the values under each of your little dudes placed on the board.

“Was that a 1 that just got killed or a 6?”

“Did I just save my 5 or was that a 2?”

This memory element to the game adds a fantastic wrinkle and helps to keep things interesting since it's difficult to know how well you’re doing.

The differing values of each meeple also serves as a balancing mechanism. You can still win by only saving a single meeple if it’s worth enough points. The opposite side of that coin? You could still lose a game if all you do is save your lowest valued pieces. The hardcore strategists out there may find these elements too random for their liking, but for all the chaos this game encourages there’s a fair share of social deduction going on too. You’ll find yourself trying to dissuade people from destroying your higher value meeples, steering them towards the ones and twos, acting like your game has been ruined when a low value piece is eaten up by a shark. Or you can can align your higher values in such a way to make a mad dash for the beach as soon as the game begins, attempting to get them ashore before anyone has a chance to even start to move against you.

But the real joy of Survive: Escape from Atlantis is the laughs in produces and the stories it tells. One of my favorite things to do while playing is to give my little meeples personalities. How thrilling and terrifying their journey must be - how tragic their ends are.  But mostly it’s simply funny as everyone, and I mean everyone, will get screwed over at some point. I wouldn’t say you need a thick skin to play this game as its chaotic nature means that everyone gets a bit of pain, but if you’re the type to take things very personally then I’d perhaps stay away. That said, every person I’ve ever played this game with has loved it and, several of those folks have gone off to buy the game for themselves afterwards.

TL;DR: If you’re looking for a fun, thematic board game with a good dose of “Take That!” then you can’t go wrong with Survive: Escape from Atlantis.

Specs:

Players: 2-4 (plays best with 3-4)

Play Time: ~45-60 minutes

Recommended Age: 8+

Expansions: If you end up loving this game (and chances are you will) there are three mini-expansions that have been collected into a single package. Each expansion introduces a modular element, so you can play with some or all of the modules. There are:

The 5-6 Player Mini Expansion - Includes orange and white meeples to support up to 6 players. 

Dolphins and Dive Dice - Includes dolphin meeples to assist swimmers, and replacement dice to allow creatures to go a variable amount of spaces.

Giant Squid - Includes giant squid meeples to add more terror to the seas. Giant Squid can pull meeples off of the shore and from boats.