Review by: Brian Pipa
Published: September 16, 1997

There are plenty of different stories of the civilization known as Atlantis. I had always heard that it was a great and mighty underwater civilization, similar to the Romans or Greeks in their hey-day. In Atlantis: The Lost Tales, the Atlantean civilization is very similar to the Greeks or Romans, but this civilization is on land, not underwater as I had always heard, and it is full of treachery, treason, and murder.

You are Seth, a young man who has just been chosen to be a Companion for the lovely and fair Queen Rhea. No, a Companion is not anything sordid; from what I can tell, a Companion is one of a select band of followers of the Queen and exists solely to support her in her works and look out for her best interests. Only loyal, faithful, devoted followers of the Queen are chosen to be Companions.

After a short flight (on a flyer — a cool flying boat) to the island of Atlantis, you set off to find your place in the Atlantean palace. Shortly after arrival, you discover that the Queen has been kidnapped. Was she kidnapped by barbarians from another island, as most seem to want you to believe, or was it an inside job? Seth, being the loyal acolyte that he is, sets out to solve the mystery of the Queen’s disappearance, and bring Queen Rhea back to the throne, at all costs.

In the grand tradition of Myst clones, you wander around a beautifully rendered 3D environment, interacting with over 50 characters and solving the many puzzles you’ll stumble upon. Atlantis uses a technology called OMNI 3D to provide a panoramic 360 degree first-person view on both the vertical and horizontal axes — it reminds me very much of the VRML viewers that were (are?) all the rage. With OMNI 3D, though, the graphics are much better and the scrolling is super-smooth. I was very impressed by this 3D interface into Atlantis.

A golden forward arrow will appear in the middle of the screen when you are able to walk in that direction. Left-click and away you go. Despite the OMNI 3D giving a very good illusion of being in Atlantis, you are not able to walk to any spot in the world — you can only walk to points the game allows. I got a little frustrated not being able to explore the whole world and go anywhere I wanted like in a 3D game like Quake.

As you walk through this virtual world, you’ll meet characters that you can talk to with full speech or on-screen text (sub-titles are optional). You simply left-click when pointing at a character (and the rotating arrows appear) and if you can talk to him/her, icons are shown which represent topics to discuss like the Queen, the Queen’s consort, or even the bully, Meljanz.

You access your inventory by simply right-clicking at any time, then left-clicking on the item you wish to use. Your cursor then becomes the chosen inventory item, and you can left-click on the person or thing you want to use it on or with. It’s very easy to use. Besides the wandering around and talking with characters, there are numerous puzzles to solve. Puzzles are of the “line-up-the-planets-in-a-certain-way” and “assemble-the-snakes” variety and there is even a chess-like puzzle for you to muddle over.