Finding Atlantis Review - Is The Magic Lost?

hey I'm Alex R from board game Co and today I'm reviewing finding Atlantis from synapsis games finding Atlantis is a one to4 player deduction and hidden movement game although I'd argue more than deduction than hidden movement but there is a little bit of both going on the general idea of the game and I will remove the player screen this is helpful when you actually have multiple people at the table but right now it's just you and I so uh we don't need this but otherwise it helps protect prying eyes protect from prying eyes in the game the general idea is you are trying to find Atlantis now Atlantis is going to be somewhere on the this grid you can play a short box game or a larger box game there's also a few game modes and variants which we won't heavily get into but you're trying to find Atlantis now there's certain rules that play all those rules are listed on your little riddle card the riddle card basically says that Atlantis is a grouping of four tiles so let me go and show it to you and zoom in a drop over here so basically we have Atlantis over here you can see a grouping of 1 2 3 4 Atlantis is always going to be a grouping of four spots that are connected orthogonally or diagonally to each other each of those is going to be on a sea mount so you can see over here there's little mountainous areas each spot of Atlantis is going to be not just on a sea mount but on a spot of a sea mount that is surrounded orthogonally by other sea mounts you can see a big part of the map map over there is seamounts with a few spaces of deep water which is basically just empty spots entirely there's also going to be artifacts artifacts are going to be also similar rules to Atlantis same exact General concept and both artifacts and Atlantis are referred to as traces in the game so if you see a trace you know that it's either Atlantis or an artifact that's basically the rules you need to know so what you're going to be doing next there is you're going to be playing cards on your turn you see you're going to start the game you're going to be given a spot for your sub your sub goes on the board wherever it is and then from there you're going to be playing cards on your turn now this is an app driven game there's going to be an app that scans the cards I'm not going to bother showing you that for this but basically you're going to run the app you're going to choose the game type choose the map size all those various things and then you're going to go ahead and be giv your assigned position secretly and you're going to start scanning cards so what's going to happen is if I want to go ahead for example let's pretend I go ahead I'm over here I know I'm over there I'm going to go ahead and play this card on the app long Silent Running I'm going to secretly move one space in One Direction so everyone knows I've played this card but they don't know which direction I've moved so they all get to see the card I played but they don't get to see that I chose to move this way but that means the importance of that is now I'm going to go ahead and reveal my Sona over here which is going to check the eight spaces surrounding me for sea mounts and deep oceans and maybe the app says hey you know this spot has a mountain this spot has a mountain this spot has a mountain this spot has a mountain this spot has a mountain and that's it those three over here those those uh six spot five spots over there have mountains now players will be able to know some degree of information but they don't know exactly where I am but they can start piecing together some degrees of logical assumptions based on what they know if they're kind of trying to track me as much as possible but your turn basically consists of playing a card that card will often be used to move and there's also by the way most cards even this card for example can be flipped to go ahead and move so you can always discard any card to be able to move just on the board the difference is if you don't use an official movement card then players see which direction you moved which means if they know where you started they know where you are so it's not the worst to do that but it's often better to do that after after you've already played some sort of secret movement card now you're going to keep doing this playing cards cards will give you different degrees of information they'll allow you to explore different areas there's a specifically uh I think explore is the right card over here so explore specifically lets you find out exactly what's underneath you which means if you find Atlantis you actually have a choice to try to pinpoint the entire Atlantis area to see if you won the game if it's an artifact you have to draw an artifact card which are these ability cards you'll gather from this deck over here and so you're trying to use the various logical puzzles to figure out what's what I can go ahead and play jelly Rod over here and pick an orientation and and say hey I want to know whether this Trace is on either side of my submarine and maybe there is a trace so I go ahead and just Mark that corner however I know I don't know what it is but maybe next turn I go ahead and play a card to just you know I discard this card to uh move up one or whatever and then I go ahead and use the explore card I find out what's there and I get an artifact and I pull that into my board but you're basically just trying to move around the grid you're trying to go ahead and figure out where the various seamounts are to that end where various traces are and then where Atlantis are using artifacts along the way to help you out by using their abilities and then depending which mode you're playing as you don't have to play as this you can also start dropping mines mines are going to be one of the more not Advanced game modes but alternate game modes where you can start dropping mines around the board where if other players run into them they're going to have to either discard cards or give you an artifact if they have one so they can get the way and obstruct other players and again they'll know You' dropped a mine but they don't necessarily know where you dropped a mine and that's basically the game you also have a unique player role so for example over here I have the Navy but there's a whole host of player roles over here they all give you a different way to give something else it's going be an action for your turn so for example in the case of the Navy the Navy again similar to the uh similar to the Jelly Rod let you pick two sides and you can go ahead and choose where you can see the distance to each trace on either side of you so it's a stronger jelly Rod which gives you a lot of information but all the rules are all powerful in what they do and how they operate giving you some degree of extra something that you can do or find out on your turn and that's basically it you're wandering on the board you're reducing where the seamounts are you're reducing where the tracers are eventually you're going to try to make a claim and figure out if you found Atlantis and if you did so you win the game that's it that's that's all you need to know there's hidden movement there's deduction and that's it which brings us to the the ease of play Let's Start let brings us to the review starting off with EAS of play uh EAS of play on this one is a little bit of a mixed bag on the one hand the rules are fairly short very easy to uh well as far as shortness of it very easy to read I did find them a little more confusing than I'd like given how short they were I did not find everything in the rule book intuitive and also the rule book at one point says well go ahead and just learn from the app while playing but the app doesn't really teach you the things so you're kind of in this weird spot where you are semile learning through the app but not actually learning just kind of doing stuff and then occasionally it feeds your information in a way that actually isn't helpful enough to be considered learning so my process for learning this game was reading the rule book until I said used the app using the app not getting information going back to the rulebook figuring all that out and again not the easiest it was not the worst but not the easiest and then going back to the app and occasionally being spoonfed pieces of information that sometimes were relevant only after something happened so the F at the very beginning they let you drop off and sit down in the middle of the board somewhere and then you can move and you can move off the Ed Edge but the game doesn't really track that for you just move off the edge and then later it tells you hey if you move off the edge we're not going to tell you that so it's not to mess up the other players and find out where you are but that's information given after the fact I'm not want to get too much into it I will say not the hardest game to learn but it was made harder than it needed to be both between the rules and the app as far as the review itself as far as what I like don't like and can see is not liking starting off with what I like which is this is a deduction game I like deduction in general I like the process of piecing together piece of information to figure things out I also like the various roles in the game there's a degree of replayability just in the roles themselves because they all feel fairly powerful these these roles give you strong abilities and it's fun to try different ones and combinations that's kind of where what I like Taps out it's not that this is a bad game there are elements I'm going to complain about shortly but there is not a lot that really stands out on the positive side I think the main positives is this is a deduction game where you're trying to figure out a puzzle there's various cards and economy of actions as you go along the way but nothing strongly stands out so it's not that it's that bad it's just that the things it does well are okay and I think the thing that I like the most were the various roles and how powerful those felt past that as a deduction game as far as what I don't like on the other hand there are more things to complain about there I'll say that the deduction itself was not too impressive there are so many deduction games out nowadays they all have multiple intering elements as far as how things operate this felt very very basic it felt like intro to deduction it felt and it's not neily a bad thing just it doesn't feel like it's marketed as such it just it really felt like there were like three rules and that's it giving you very little like ways to extrapolate extra interesting pieces of information or be able to read from this to that you're kind of just finding C mounts and then finding traces and then that that's really it you know if you find a trace on a c Mount well if you find a SE Mount that's next to an empty space you know there's not a trace in that that's kind of the only element of actual deduction past literally being told information in the game so I felt the deduction puzzle at play was not too impressive I felt the app slowed down the game and the in the game experience scanning the cars just felt like a slow way to play the game that just offis skated things things didn't always scan right away either but it was fine as far as the app went it just slowed down the game experience the rules in the app as I mentioned already weren't the best the tracking of the other players felt a little weird and out of place in general in tracking games if you're playing like a hidden roll game or something like Captain sonar where you really have this whole like same kind of idea if you're playing games like that you're often only tracking one other element which makes it a lot easier because even when you're dealing with states of the unknown even if I'm like okay you moved you move to but I don't know which direction you move to I can still chart it out because there's one other player if you're playing this as a three or four player game and you have to track the possible Mayes of multiple other players you may as well just give up and granted I'm sure there people who are like no I've got this and I've handled it fine I'm going to give up I'm not going to try to track the Mayes of multiple players tracking the maybe of one player is already enough tracking the May of multiple players is just not worth the cost of whatever and when you eventually surface I didn't cover this but when you eventually get your cars back by surfacing but surfacing shows everyone where you are so you're revealed again which might mean that if you did something right away right after that we might be able to read into your information or what you're trying to do or figure out but overall the tracking just didn't feel the hidden Ro element didn't feel like an integral part of the game so much as a very complicated part of the game especially at higher player accounts with very little payoff for that complication to actually follow and go through on so a bunch of things that kind of got in the way of me enjoying this experience as far as things as far as I can see others not liking and this is an interesting one the game says it's a solo game it's a one to four player game but from what I can see in the rules and in the app and it's possible of missing something it is absolutely possible missing something I just in the rules and in the app the solo mode from what I can see is just you playing action cards until you find Atlantis there's no race there's no reward there's no aspect of you know uh if you do it in seven rounds it's a good score or there's no AI opponent and and maybe there is maybe something maybe there's a setting in the app I didn't see it but it wasn't in the rule book and it wasn't clear in the app so if there's something I missed there I'll I'll attach a pin comment if someone says something I don't know but I didn't see it and so that's a weird thing to put on your box that it's a solo game if the solo game isn't a game so much as a just keep doing stuff until you find things I guess I don't I don't feel that's an ideal solo experience so I disagree with the one on the box at least as of now as far as final thoughts on this game I I don't even think this is a bad game I don't I think it's an unimpressive game I think that in the world of great games this was an okay experience that did nothing really really strong to stand on in any way again I like these abilities these abilities are very fun going through them I I haven't played with all of them yet but even the ones I haven't played with I still kind of want to use cuz they're fun they're they're cool they're powerful but that's kind of the only thing that really stood out the rest of it was a game system that's been done before many times and they are usually good or great and this one was just possibly okay for me this is a 2.5 out of five there just wasn't a lot to be impressed by here it still wasn't the worst game I've played but it is one that I'm inclined to not play again because it's time I have to spend playing it and very little elements of the game were rewarding enough to dive back in So a 2.5 out of five as far as other game recommendations in the deduction Department I'm going to recommend the Quest for Planet 9 or the search for Planet 9 as I was called this the Quest for I can't remember all the names the search for Planet X no the Quest for my gosh I'm mixing up the crew I'm mixing up the crew the search for Planet X I think that's the name of the game uh from Renegade games it's a deduction game involving searching for a planet has similar deductive elements to it but I thought a lot more interesting and a lot more rewarding as far as deduction goes and if you are looking for that hidden roll kind of element a game that kind of does what it's doing over here is Captain sonar Captain sonar is a hard game to table you really want eight people two teams of four going head-to-head operating Subs taking pot shots at each other trying to move around the board as hidden as possible but it really encapsulated all the hidden elements this game is doing but in a way and structure that's actually really rewarding and worth the payoff of all that tracking in any case and until next time I'm Alex rad from board game Co I hope you enjoy this video and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

Views: 647

Keywords: review

Id: 5ehAsW51URU

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024