Beware the whales, sharks & sea serpents as you try to save your 10 hero explorers from the sinking remains of Atlantis before the volcano erupts and destroys everything that is left behind!
Each player controls 10 explorer meeples, all of which have a different value (from 1-6) printed on the bottom. Your mission is to get as many of your explorers as possible safely to one of the four nearby islands, using the available ships or swimming if you have to, before Atlantis is no more - the player with the most points added together from the rescued explorers wins the game.
The island of Atlantis is made up of 40 hexagon tiles of beach, forest and mountain terrains, which are randomly placed in the specified area on the game board. Players take it in turns to place one of their explorers on a tile until all the meeples have been placed. Two ships per player are then placed on empty sea tiles surrounding the island and the deadly sea serpents take their place on their reserved printed sea tiles ready to pounce upon their prey!
On their turn, players take actions in a particular order. Firstly they may move their explorers and/or ships they control up to 3 spaces either on land or sea. They then remove a terrain tile form the island (beach first, followed by forest and then finally the mountain tiles) and follow the instructions on the reverse of the tile. These will either be instant (green) actions or play later actions (red) which will be used either at the beginning of your turns or defensively if another player plays a red action against you.
Green actions can introduce deadly sharks or whales into the game, whirlpools to destroy surrounding creatures, swimmers & ships or, if you are lucky, bring in an extra ship to help your mission. The red actions can enable you to move sea monsters to attack other players or move ships or dolphins to help your stranded explorers. They can also help you defend attacks from others and prevent you from being eaten by sharks or have your ship toppled into the sea by a whale.
Finally your turn ends by rolling the sea creature die to determine your opponents fate! Will the whale move towards their ships and topple the explorers into the sea to become swimmers…will the sharks attack and eat the swimmers to remove them from the game…or will the fatal sea serpent strike and take out anything in its path!
Play continues round and round in bloodthirsty action as Atlantis shrinks before you. Once the 8 mountain terrain tiles are left it will be a time-ticking bomb to rescue your remaining explorers until the volcano eruption tile is revealed that will wipe out anything left on the island and mean game over! Which of your heroes have survived? Have your top-scoring explorers made it to dry land or are they now fish food and your end of game score is as existent as Atlantis?
With endless entertainment and quality components this exciting family game is a must for your board game shelf. If you can cope with even more exhilarating fun and brutality then try the expansion with dolphins and squids and room for 2 more players to get stuck into - you won’t be disappointed!
