Survive! Escape from Atlantis (or how my daughter learned there are no family members in competitive board games)

They look so happy! Little do they know what horrors await on the island.

So yesterday I picked up Survive! Escape from Atlantis after hearing how much fun it was as a family game. I showed my kids the video from The Dice Tower and they were excited, so we went out after dinner to Armored Gopher Games in Urbana to pick up a copy.

My innocent daughter....she's never experienced the wrath of my wife in full effect board game mode.

Survive! is a pretty simple game to understand and is very straight forward in its setup and rules. The goal is simple, get off the island and get to shore. But apparently earthquakes and volcanic activity cause things like sharks, whales, and sea monsters to feel the need to PAR-TAY, so getting to shore becomes a fight to, well, survive.

First things first, you build the island. The island is built from hexagon tiles that are two sided. One side is the type of land it is (also denoted by its thickness) and the bottom of the tile has an effect printed on it. The tiles are shuffles then randomly placed on the marked location of the board. Players then take turns placing their islanders on the island. Each islander has a point total printed on the bottom. At the end of the game, the amount of survivors that have gotten to safety have their point total added up and the highest point total wins the game. To get off the island, players either swim to safety or, more effectively, use boats which are also placed by them to get to shore.

Our island, ready to start crumbling

I need to say that the components are great. This game looks fantastic in play. Some people have mentioned issues with their meeples and the numbers on the bottom, but ours were all just fine.

A players turn is very straight-forward for the most part. They can play a tile they have, then they make up to three legal moves, then they pull another tile from the island. This is where the first bit of "mean" comes in. Since all tiles start off full, the likelihood of someone going into the drink is high. Movement is limited while your bobbing about the sea, so it is annoying. But being in the drink isn't terrible at first, since there are no sharks. Oh but they'll appear...don't worry. Finally players roll a die that tells them what type of sea beast to move.

Tiles have three types of effects. Some are instant and do things like place a shark or whale on the board. Others are usable at the beginning of your turn to move a shark or a have a dolphin save a swimmer of yours. The last types can cancel the effects of either sharks or whales. 

My son contemplating his move

Now is as good a time as any to talk about the evils of the seas. If this game were set on land, it would have lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) But we're stuck with sharks, whales, and sea monsters; which are all awesome in their own right. These start to appear on the board because of the instant effects of tiles removed and one of them gets moved based on what is rolled by a player at the end of their turn.

• Sea Monsters can move once and devour both the boat and the islanders on that hex if any
• Sharks can move twice and devour any swimmers on the hex if any
• Whales can move three times and just knock islanders off of their boats. 

For the record, I will not be wearing a Save the Whales t-shirt any time I play Survive! Seriously, boo the whales ...Anyway. This is where things get really cutthroat. Players are knocking other players off of boats, playing Jaws as the shark and eating others islanders. It gets pretty nasty. But it's also extremely fun.

Shortly after I got married, I was playing cards with my wife and in-laws. We were playing Contract Rum, and it was not a nice game either. At one point, after calling for a card out of turn myself, my wife who was sitting to my right decided to take it out of turn, despite not really needing it. I said, "That was mean." And my mother-in-law looks at me and says, "There are no mothers or grandmothers in card games." Which is to say, you play for fun, but play to win, no matter who you are playing against. Survive! exemplifies this. It is, in fact, one of the most "TAKE THAT" games that I've played. But that is why the game really works.

The beach is GONE

I've made it a point to never really take it easy on my kids when we play competitive games anyway, because if I do that, they don't learn. It also helps with them not being sore losers. My son uses it as an opportunity to understand the strategies of a game and then beings to employ them himself in subsequent plays. My daughter, being only 6, has to this point needed help, so when we've played games like Kings of Tokyo and Small World, someone was generally helping her. With Survive! it was really the first time she did it all on her own. We weren't playing nice either (nor was she, to be fair) and with the only real help being the reminder of rules a time or two during play, she managed to be the winner.

I really enjoyed this game and it was a big hit with the family. My kids loved it so much, in fact, that they've played it twice more themselves in the two days that we've owned it. The theme really works for them and they would run up after their plays and tell me about how one of their guys jumped off the mountain into the water to try to make it to a boat or how the sharks were circling around only to get swallowed up by a whirlpool. I'm kind of sad that I never got to play this game as a kid, but honestly its just as fun now as an adult. The few things that would be turnoffs for some (not incredibly deep, some amount of randomness with the tile drawing) are the same reasons why it is a perfect game for the family or as a filler game. What matters for me is if I had fun playing it and without a doubt, Survive! was fun from the beginning to the end for all of us.

Featuring the aptly named WHALEBOAT

UNCHARTED BOARD GAME

So if you told me this board game existed, I'd probably tell you that it likely sucked without having played it. Terrible, I know...but a video game to board game translation can generally end up in the same territory that movie games end up in. However, BanDai somehow manages to overcome this with:

Not "Uncharted: The Board Game" but, "UNCHARTED BOARD GAME." 

Theme

You're a Treasure Hunter, Drake! In UNCHARTED VIDEO GAME (not actually called that) your goals are simple. Nathan Drake wants treasure. He goes to find treasure. He fights bad guys along the way and inevitably gets double-crossed once or twice or more as well. Sorry if I've spoiled the plots to all the games, but in a nutshell, that is what happens in all of them. In UNCHARTED BOARD GAME (last time I'm doing this, I'll just say Uncharted from now on) the goals are the same. Get the treasure, kill some bad guys, get backstabbed. How the game actually wraps in this theme is very interesting though.

Components

Uncharted is a card game. It isn't actually a board game. Sure, it comes with a board, but the game is played with cards.

Behold! Nathan Drakes' starting play area! Each player starts with these four cards.

Cards in the game are split up into two main types: Action cards and Adventure cards. Action cards are used to interact with the Adventure cards currently on the board.The cards are of decent quality and there are quite a few of them. Sorry I don't have the exact number of each, but the action cards outnumber the adventure cards.

Board set up and ready to go

Playing the Game

The goal of the game is to have the most victory points at the end, and you gain victory points by taking treasure or defeating enemies. There are a few cards that can add to your point total at the end of the game, but generally you are taking Adventure cards from the board in order to move up the victory track. Players both choose a character from the game and place their life token at 12.

Each turn you are able to do two things.

1. Play a card from your hand into your play area (shown in the above picture)
2. Rest (tap for all intents and purposes) a card to use its effect
3. Attack an enemy
4. Use a color-based special ability (more on this later)
5. Pass

You are able to do the same thing twice. Except pass...you can't pass twice; that'd be stupid.

Part of what makes this game interesting is the way that cards are played. To play a card, you have to discard cards from your hand equal to its cost. Now, you don't play cards as "instants" or in response to something, you pay the cost and put them into your play area. In your play area, you can have up to three cards of each color. To play another card of that color, you must get rid of one that already exists. Once in your play area, you are able to "Rest" the card in order to use its effect. There are some pretty powerful cards too that can really mess with your opponent if you keep using them, and while they generally cost more to play, the effect for the rest of the game can be pretty drastic.

As mentioned, you interact with the Adventure cards by using your Action cards that are in play. In order to win a treasure card, and therein its victory points, you have to place search tokens on it. To put a search token on something, you'd "Rest" a card in your play area that let you place one or more, using one of your "things to do" and then put it on a treasure card. Once there are a cumulative amount of tokens equal to that treasures cost, whoever has the most tokens on it wins the treasure. Sometimes treasure cards have effects that are valid only while they are on the board. For example, one of the treasure cards in play let players who had at least one search token on it player Yellow color cards for one less than their cost. Other times they have effects that apply once the treasure is won. For example, once a particular treasure card was won (my wife and I tied, so we both go the effect as stated on the card) we each named a color and drew a card from the Action deck. If the card was the color named, we showed it to the other, and got to draw another card. In my case, my wife got an extra card due to her excellent guessing powers and I did not. In either case, treasures are always worth a certain number of victory points.

You also use the cards in your play area to attack the enemy. Killing an enemy gets you the stated victory points as well. To attack, you "Rest" any number of weapons you have played or effects you have available to get your Attack Power equal to or over the enemies health value. If you do this, you defeat the enemy and gain the victory points. 

When a treasure or enemy card is removed from the adventure area, it is replaced with one from the adventure deck.

The special color abilities allow you to discard a card of a particular color to do one of three things.

• Yellow - Place a search token
• Blue - Gain two life
• Green - Take two more "things to do"

After all players have taken their turns, it's time for the enemies on the board to attack. They attack all players simultaneously with their added Attack Power. Players are able to defend by "Resting" a card that isn't rested yet or by using effects on cards in their play area that may add to their defense. For each point that isn't defended, you lose a life. After this, cards are "stood up" (untapped) and the round begins again.

The game ends when:

• The end of the round after the last adventure card is played
• Only one player remains

What Works

What stood out for me in the first play of the game was the multiple paths to victory. In some games of this ilk, you don't have a lot of player interaction and are simply trying to win by amassing your own treasures. I almost won by setting up the board to kill my wife. Her character, that is. She only had enough cards to defend, and therefore couldn't "Rest" any of her cards unless she wanted to take damage. I had two cards in play that added to my defense during the enemy attack phase. I refused to attack enemies and instead went after the remaining treasures actually hoping that it would get replaced with another enemy to further put her in a bind. Unfortunately, a "special" treasure came out that read, "As long as a player has a search token on this treasure, they take no damage." So she then used that to her advantage to win. So you can see the themes I mentioned at the beginning actually working here in the actual mechanics and strategies. I appreciate this.

What Doesn't Work

I wish that the characters had a bit more flavor. I could easily add a starting ability for each and I don't think that would break that balancing and would actually help make it more "Uncharted" in feeling. UPDATE! It turns out that there are abilities on each character card. They are just never mentioned in the manual and are on the back of the cards. Since the game only ever shows the front side, I assumed the back was just a solid back. MY BAD. As mentioned, cards are decent, but they could be a bit better in quality. I'll be sleeving this game for sure. The included holding tray in the box BARELY holds all the card without some spilling out of the top, so I'll likely remove that and just bag the cards.

Summary

My wife and I really enjoyed this game. I was ready to laugh at it, but came away very surprised. Some of my turns took a few minutes simply because the options available can change so much or have a drastic effect for the opposing player. It's easy to teach while still providing a decent amount of strategy based on what comes up. It also has rules for a "Deathmatch" style game and a "Survival co-op" style. The themes of Uncharted are woven into the game play and I feel they work really well. I'm not going to give a number score, because numbers are arbitrary. Suffice to say, this will get played again soon and its a relatively cheap investment, so I easily recommend it for purchase.

My wife's hand and play area at the end of the game.

My play area at the end of the game. Drake got beat up.

Bloggin' Fer Real

OK, guys. For real this time. I've stopped and started this blogging thing many times before, but I never really had a clear idea exactly what I wanted to do. This time, however, I have a clear goal in mind. Sure you'll hear my opinions on various games or theory on Game Design or why I'm angry about my favorite sports team, but mainly I'm going to focus on my families willing (trust me, they want this!) escapades into my rather ridiculous board game collection. Similar to tribbles, they tend to multiply in my basement game room. If a week goes by and I haven't added something to my collection, something feels off. In the same respect, something feels off that I add a game to my collection ever week as well. That may be my wife continuously punching me though.