WAVES OF THE ATLANTIDE Preview for Steam

I blinked when I first heard the concept for Waves of the Atlantide, developed and published by Metaphore Games SAS; I was – confused. The battle royale has been popping up everywhere, spreading from shooters to other genres, but Atlantide is the first to do it in an RTS. It feels and looks a little like a lower-res CIV 5 with itx hexagon tiles, and approximates the same sense of wonder that those tense few opening turns provide. Though there aren’t any turns in Atlantide, these first few minutes of cautiously scouting out the world and building up your city is tense, thoughtful, and explorative for those first five minutes.

This exploration is made a little bit underwhelming by the fact that, asides from other players and the coastline, there isn’t anything to discover – there are no resources in the game, no natural enemies besides the AI or other players. The only thing you can do is produce materials – food or iron – in cities and use those materials to either build soldiers or science. Science allows you to increase your resource production, the speed of your troops – but the tech tree is super limited right now. I get that these systems have been stripped so as not to complicate the simplified game style, but, some of the talents just aren’t very interesting – do I want my troops to enter a city 20% faster, or leave it 20%? What’s the difference?

What makes this a battle royale, and not just a fast paced multiplayer rts? Well, Waves replaces the storm/ring of fire mechanic with something a little more inevitable and ominous: rising sea level. After five minutes have passed, the sea begins to swallow the land, eroding one tile at a time to the accompaniment of declarative music. You can imagine my anxiety when I discovered that my capital was only 10 tiles away from coast. At first, this isn’t so bad, but once it was my coastline in jeopardy, the whole, abstract notion of rising sea levels became a much more real threat. It was an immediate, real threat.

Unfortunately, survival via cooperation with your fellow human is impossible – there is no diplomacy screen. For the first seven minutes or so there was peace, until i discovered another nations colonized tiles. Though once I encountered my closest neighbor I began spamming troops to smash his closest city. After all, only one of us was going to survive in this nightmarish new world, and by golly, that was going to be me. I sent my stacked armies north to attack my neighbor, but only took one of his cities before the ocean claimed the rest. With that issue dealt with, it was time to run, send my armies to the other side of the map and find new land. One of them – a full stack! – was eaten by the ocean when the tile they were standing on disappeared.

Waves of the Atlantide is a curious creature, and I’m not giving it a score yet – there’s still room for the systems to be polished and improved, the talents given a little more life. The excitement and fear I felt in the opening stages of the game were real, and there is a hook here, but there is a little bit to go in terms of replayability. The systems of tech and warfare are limited, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be more interesting – adding ranged units would give the combat more tension and tactical flexibility.  

Check Out the Waves of the Atlantide Video:

Waves of the Atlantide is available for PC via Steam Early Access for $4.99.

Related: WAVES OF THE ATLANTIDE Heading to Steam Early Access March 26