Survive: Escape From Atlantis! Review

In the beginning there was a mass market board game called Survive! which enjoyed the distinction of actually being widely enjoyed by the hobby crowd. So, in order to confuse the masses of unwashed nerds baying for a copy, other publishers reprinted the game several times with marginally different components, board shapes, rules sets and titles that tended to include the word Atlantis and no-one knew which were worth playing and which were not. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And then some of the unwashed set up a publishing company of their own and sought to dissipate the confusion by getting the original designer on board and printing a definitive version which could be played with any one of the different rules sets that had come before, or any combination thereof, and there was much rejoicing. With great wisdom and foresight they chose to combine the titular variations of those that had gone before and called it Survive: Escape From Atlantis and the marketing people saw that it was good and gave it their dubious blessings. But the real question remains - is it any good?