Developer: Metaphore Games SAS
Publisher: Metaphore Games SAS
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Waves of the Atlantide – Preview
Waves of the Atlantide is another shot at creating a unique Battle Royale experience. This time, it’s a combination of a board game, RTS and Battle Royale. Battle Royale seems to be one of the most popular game modes that is being played, so why not try combining this with an RTS? The game is currently still in Early Access on Steam.
The ancestors that lived a thousand years ago discovered the continent of Atlantide. As the place became renowned for its riches and beauty, a significant stream of sailors came to this extraordinary place, and soon this shattered its magnificence. A decision was taken, and in a desperate attempt, word had spread out of a tidal wave that destroyed it, and so, the legend of Atlantide began. Without the influence of travelers and merchants, the inhabitants were living simple, peaceful lives. But then the legend has turned on them, and a tide is coming. Will you be the one to survive this battle against your opponents and nature itself? At this point, the game’s mainly focused on gameplay, so you’ll find no story content outside of the intro trailer.
The game looks a bit like the popular strategic board game Catan. This is mainly because of the field shaped with hexagonal tiles. The trees, water and environment look good but isn’t all that stunning. When you start the game, the sea will be the first thing you’ll see and it looks awesome for a game in Early Access. But this is also the best it’ll get. Each town is composed of one tile surrounded with another six tiles. This doesn’t even look a little bit like a town so don’t expect houses or anything like that. For this type of game, these graphics are okay but it also looks quite dull.
There’s not much to say about the music in Waves of the Atlantide. At the menus, you’ll hear some war instigating music that you can find in many other similar RTS games. Mostly you’ll hear some low-key music. The music in-game isn’t that much different from that in the menu.
Waves of the Atlantide is a mix of a board game, an RTS and Battle Royale. A tutorial is available that will explain the basics of gameplay. The purpose is to expand your own territory so that you will be the last survivor on the playing field. Each match is filled with four players battling for survival.
This game has a single player mode in which you fight against bots and a multiplayer mode for online battles. After a certain amount of time, the island will begin to get smaller by the tide coming up. This will consume more and more of the playing field until only one player is left. So it’s not only a battle against the other players, but also against time. It will be game over when your last town has been sucked up by the tide, or when it gets destroyed by your opponents.
When you start the game, you’ll have one town at your disposal. Each town you own will have its own material production, and every thirty seconds, it will gain its amount of materials. Each town will have a standard of one production material per second. You can expand this by upgrading. Each upgrade costs an amount of said material. Then you have food, which is needed for the creation of your army. Each town has six other tiles around it on which crops, science towers or defensive towers can be built. These can be unlocked by spending science points that can be created in your town by the cost of some production material. We noticed that after unlocking the defensive towers, we couldn’t place them at all, which could be a current bug inside the game. We’ve also noticed that the game isn’t all that stable as in the first hours of play, it already crashed to desktop several times or it freezes when you press Escape and you have to restart the game and losing your progress by doing so. Science points can also increase the speed of generation of production materials, food and creation time of units. Find the best mix of point investment to overcome your opponents.
Your army is the key to expanding your territory. You can send them to claim new territory directly adjacent to your own. This means you can expand your territory step by step. Your army can get as big as twenty soldiers. After having an army that’s big enough, you can send them out to try to attack your opponent. It’s also important to have some soldiers around your towns for defensive purposes. Soldiers can be set in attacking or defensive mode. In defensive mode, they’ll have double the strength at the cost of move impairment. They are stuck on that tile until you switch to attacking mode so they can walk again. Having a lot of territory is important to survive as the tidal wave will consume all terrain around you.
In most Battle Royale games, there’s an achievement system or a ranking system that will earn you some rewards. This game lacks this kind of rewarding system as it won’t give you any targets to achieve or let you earn things. For example in Fortnite, one of the most popular Battle Royale games up till now, there you will unlock outfits after getting higher in ranks or achieving certain objectives. This gives you some extra motivation to keep on playing to achieve your goals. Certainly after purchasing a Battle Pass that lasts for specific period of time, you need to achieve the last rank to unlock everything available at that time, so players feel obligated to their selves to keep on playing to reach it. Currently Waves of the Atlantide lacks this kind of incentive, but we can’t judge the game’s plans in its current state.
Conclusion
Waves of Atlantide is a good try at combining Battle Royale with a board game and RTS gameplay. One of the biggest downsides is that the graphics of the game aren’t that good. A town doesn’t look like a town at all. The soldiers on the field aren’t that impressive either. If you’ve mastered the controls and have practiced a bit, then this could be a lot of fun, but only if you like this combination of genres. The game also lacks a rewarding system that entices players to keep on playing at this current stage of development. If you’re into RTS and the Battle Royale concept, this game could be a great game for its price, while keeping in mind this game is still in Early Access. It definitely needs some work done for it to be a really good game, but it can already be enjoyed if you are into this type of game.
Waves of the Atlantide - Preview,
No Comments