Welcome to Gaia! ::

Survive! - Parker Brothers (1982)

A cool game, sadly long out of print in the U.S. For 2-4 players.




Premise: Rescue as many of your people as possible from a volcanic island before it explodes. The island is made up of beach, jungle, and mountain pieces, which are scrambled up by the players (making the island different each time you play, like in Settlers of Catan). Each turn one of the tiles is removed, sometimes revealing sea creatures (bad) or whirlpools (very bad). The mountain pieces are removed last; one contains the volcano on the reverse side. Once it's revealed, the game ends, and everyone not safely on a neighboring island dies a tragic death. cry


The best thing about the game is the way it lets you try to screw your opponents. Each turn you roll a die, which allows you to move a whale (destroys boats), shark (eats swimmers), or sea serpent (destroys boats and eats anyone swimming in the water). I heart sea serpents!




The UK version of the game was first released by Waddingtons in 1986, where it was renamed Escape from Atlantis. There are several differences: in Survive! each human had a different point value, whereas in Escape... all the pieces are worth the same. In Escape... the whales are replaced with octopi, and you can also control friendly dolphins (rescued by Flipper... how lame).

I managed to pick up a copy of this game on eBay once, and had a lot of fun playing it. Sadly I had to sell my copy when I moved abroad in 2003.

Definitely recommended... if you can pick it up cheap (ha ha, good luck with that... I see a copy on eBay going for $40+ at the moment).

Combining Escape from Atlantis with Payday?! Err... okay. "Oh no, our boat is surrounded by sea serpents! The good news is, I just won the lottery!" confused

Anyway, I always considered Survive! to be one of the better board games I've played. Though some of the people I've played with hate it because they dislike the idea of the players actively trying to kill off each others' people. Which, to me, is the best thing about the game.

Because I'm CE. twisted

It was more like this:

Win money to buy ships, sea creatures and replace island pieces. Can also buy out your opponents dudes xd

Needless to say again, it didn't work.

Scrabble's a good one. Though sometimes you've got the letters to spell a rude word, and you're just not sure if you should put it down.

Like when you're playing an 8-year-old cousin and you spell "PENS" even though you know you could have thrown in that "I" you were holding... whee

Well, i remade Payday from atlantis (i needs a better name) and my 8-year old brother was coming up from behind and had a good chance of winning...

So i got a piece from one fo my other favourite board games, and let dizzy dizzy dinosaur loose on the sinking island of atlantis!

Dizzy>(whirlpool+island+sea serpents+sharks+octopi+dolphins+humans)

I hate Monopoly. It is probably the only board game that I really don't like to play (of the ones I know about...). First I'm not very good at it (that doesn't bother me so much), Second my friends always take it WAY too seriously (and get angry at me because - since I have nothing to lose, being a bad player - always mess around and make jokes) and Third EVERY SINGLE BLOOMIN' GAME ENDS IN AN ARGUMENT! Even when you play The Simpsons version.

My fav games are the ones that involve a little strategy but move quickly. I like chess played fast, when you don't have long to think about the moves. I used to like Boggle (it's a lot like Word Bump now that I think about it...) and I like the funny little game they brought out with the Da Vinci Code which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with the book. It's a lot like Mastermind only with numbers not coloured pins. You have a handful of random number tiles chosen from a pile in the middle. There are two sets - black and white - ranging from 0 to 11 plus the '?' tiles that are called scramble tiles. You have to arrange them in an ordered line, 0 to 11 (with '?'s anywhere you like) with the blacks to the left of the whites (I think... have to check that...). Then you take it in turns to guess each others tiles. Each turn you also pick up a tile from the pile in the middle. You can keep guessing for as long as you like as long as you guess right but if you guess wrong you have to put the new tile you picked up in it's place in the line and turn it down so your opponents can see. Then it's the next person's turn. If you guess right you can place it in the line without turning it down and then pass your turn on if you want. Or you can guess again - but as mentioned, if you get it wrong you still turn the new tile down and pass on your go.

You can't take notes. But you build up a picture in your head of what tiles the other people must have. I think it's great and the games are quite short so you can play several games quite quickly. The only draw back is if someone gets their tiles in the wrong order - that completely messes up your guesses. And it's only fair to let everyone know how many tiles there are to begin with... as we found out.

Yeah.. I noticed that too. I didn't even realise the auction thing until I played the computer version..