Finding Atlantis: cAPP or not cAPP?
💡 Underwater exploration
⚙ Deduction
The world of board games is constantly trying to reinvent itself, and for good reason: every year, nearly 3,500 new games enter the market around the world. It's jostling for position on the Ace's shelves! If you were planning on trying them all, you can forget about it. And if you sometimes had the impression that the games end up looking the same, well that's not an impression! Among these thousands of new releases, there are still quite a few rehash games.
The reason I bring this up is simply to point out that due to this fierce competition and the need to stand out, designers have tried to diversify the gaming experience. I'm looking at you, yes, my old copy of Atmosfear on VHS that I can no longer play! And with the omnipresence of smartphones in our lives, one of the "natural" avenues to explore has been the integration of technology into the game mechanics. This allows, for some games, to obtain a more immersive and less predictable experience, or to automate components of the game that would be painful to physically manipulate. To name a few, we can think of Mansions of Madness where the application narrates the adventure and manages the behavior of the enemies, Loup-Garou Pour Une Nuit (FR) where the application replaces the need for a game master, or the very popular Hitster ! which uses Spotify to create a fluid and animated trivia game experience. And with the very rapid development of generative artificial intelligence, we can only glimpse with fascination what the games of tomorrow will be like.
That said, the advent of technology in the world of board games does not always arouse enthusiasm (I myself am quite divided on the question). For some, board games are a way to escape for a few hours from the tyranny of screens, and the need to use a phone to play can be seen as counterproductive in this regard. For others, the use of technology irremediably puts an expiration date on a product that should be almost eternal (I say almost , because I do not put plastic protectors on my cards, sacrilege! But my chess set from the last century is still very much on the road). What to do if the application disappears? If it is not compatible with the latest damned update from Apple? These are very legitimate questions, and the fears they raise are entirely founded. And with thousands of games released each year, there will always be choices for those who refuse to bring technology into their gaming experience.
This long preamble (as usual, you might say) is rooted in the thoughts I had after a few games of the last game I tried for you: Finding Atlantis . It is a hidden movement and deduction game that uses a mobile application, and in which you have to be the first player to find the location of Atlantis at the bottom of the water.
It immediately reminded me of a game I played a lot when I was younger: Lost Treasure (1982), where you traveled the ocean in search of sunken treasure, guided by an electronic thing that made lots of weird noises. (And to confirm the fears mentioned above, my brother, who kept the copy of the game, tells me that the electronic thing no longer works!)
But let's talk about Finding Atlantis ; it's time to dive (!) into the heart of the matter.
How does it work?
In a game of Finding Atlantis, 1 to 4 players play as submarine captains searching for the legendary sunken city. Each player has a nice little screen in their color, behind which they hide their personal nautical chart on which they can note the clues found and the last known position of their opponents. They also have eight Action cards in their hand in their color (all players have the same actions).
Once the app is downloaded and opened, place your phone in the center of the table and start. The app generates a new nautical chart for each game.
In turn, each player performs two actions using the cards in their hand. To perform the action, they simply scan the back of the chosen card using their phone, and the application transmits the results to them, which they can then note on their nautical chart.
Some cards allow you to move your submarine secretly, others to probe the seabed in search of clues or artifacts. These clues are essential, because when you find a first part of Atlantis, you know you are getting closer to victory since the other three parts are always adjacent to each other!
When he has no other action available, the player must play his "Surface" card, which allows him to regain all the cards played during the previous turns. But this comes with a drawback, since by surfacing, he reveals the location of his submarine to the other players, who can use this information to follow him, or even to throw underwater mines at him!
When a player believes they have located the exact location of the four squares where Atlantis is located, they must perform a final exploration action and declare to the application (and the other players) that they think they have solved the riddle. The application then asks them to validate their answer. If the latter is correct, the game is won! But if they are wrong, they are teleported randomly somewhere on the map, and the game continues.
So… what do we think?
Finding Atlantis offers variability and replayability, notably thanks to the Captain cards, which are asymmetrical (each player chooses one of these cards at the beginning of the game). You can also choose (or not) to integrate offensive action cards into the game, depending on the degree of competition desired in the game. The application's algorithm can technically generate an almost infinite number of different game cards, while respecting certain rules that facilitate deduction (for example, the pieces of Atlantis are always in an area of underwater mountains, and are always adjacent to each other).
The app is fairly easy to use and works very well, although I did misspell my submarine's movements once or twice.
Even with the integration of the "pirate" mode with the offensive cards, Finding Atlantis remains first and foremost a somewhat solitary race against time, where we interact more with the application than with our opponents. The game also offers a solo mode where we can play against virtual opponents. This mode reproduces the multiplayer gaming experience quite well and does not require any additional manipulation. We can also add virtual opponents in a two- or three-player game in order to create more competition.
While deduction remains the main mechanic of the game (it is also important that all players are aware of how the nautical charts are generated by the application, in order to be able to deduce where Atlantis is), there is also a good deal of luck in this little exploration game. If you discover that an opponent is lingering for a long time in a sector of the map, you can assume that he has probably found clues as to the location of Atlantis; however, by the time you move to search the same place, it is often too late to catch up. Also, it happens that, on a stroke of luck, you quickly come across Atlantis at the beginning of the game, which can be a bit frustrating for the other players!
On the hardware side, despite the limited number of components (a deck of cards, a handful of pawns and a block of sea charts), everything is of good quality (but the box is unnecessarily big). The illustrations are honest and respect the theme of underwater exploration well. The rulebook is short, relatively well written (and the application can also guide us through the first part).
Overall, Finding Atlantis is a good solitaire game, best played alone or with a partner, if you don't mind interacting with a smartphone in your gaming sessions.
We like…
Single player mode very faithful to the multiplayer experience;
The easy-to-use application and the possibilities it offers;
We like less…
The mandatory use of the application, which does not please everyone;
Limited interactions
-Mast
Synapses Games
1-4 players
14 years and over
30-45 min per game
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