Announced way back in June 2021, CreativeForge Games released a new trailer for a game that would rapidly gain traction with gamers around the world. The city-builder genre is a perpetual favorite, but City of Atlantis looks to be one of the first fully-fledged outings that combine grand city-building mechanics with the famed mythical setting of Atlantis.
Being able to build the now-sunken city and attempting to survive the cataclysm is an incredibly gripping premise, especially as the story of Atlantis is so well-known and popular in other forms of media. For a start, one of the best animated non-musical movies from the 00s, Atlantis, sends a bunch of explorers to discover its secrets and those who still dwell beneath it. Most tales focus on its discovery, which only increases the desire to see or even save the city in its full glory.
Amping up the intrigue in Atlantis
Plato once penned that the island of Atlantis was the home of a naval empire, one that attempted to conquer Ancient Athens, but to no avail. As a result, the Greek pantheon decided to sink the city in the Atlantic Ocean, punishing the mighty empire’s hubris. The tale from ancient Greece is the clear inspiration for Numenor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works of Middle-earth and has much more overtly been deployed because of how significant the city has become in modern times.
Delving beneath the waves to find the sunken city has inspired whole hosts of deep-sea explorers – especially as a sunken city would have taken with it a whole host of treasures. This is the angle that progressive jackpot slots, naturally, like to play into. Atlantean Treasures: Mega Moolah, on the casino rewards network, is a prime example of this, being set on the seafloor amidst the seahorses, starfish, and progressive prizes. With special bonuses to play the Mega Moolah games, it’s not a surprise that many casino spinners choose to dive down to Atlantis.
Beyond iGaming and fantasy novels, Atlantis has made many appearances in the video game industry, too. Except for the puzzle adventure Atlantis: Lost Tales, the fictional city tends to pop up as an individual level or stage, combining underwater and ancient Greek aesthetics. It occurred in video games like Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta. In the expansive sci-fi role-playing game Starfield, the developers altered the approach, creating an underground “utopia” filled with the underclass known as New Atlantis.
Save the City of Atlantis from the gods
The Greek deities sank Atlantis, but in City of Atlantis, you get to play as the god that not only builds it into its legendary former state but also tries to save it from tsunamis. The isometric city builder is as much about creating a functioning and resource-garnering civilization, but also one that can protect itself this time around. Atlantis has risen from the depths, and it’s your task to keep it above the waves.
While the trailer, which has been viewed over 949,000 times since it premiered on June 4, 2021, on the official CreativeForge Games YouTube channel – which has a mere 1,330 subscribers – is most replayed for its defense systems clip, it’s the city building that looks to be its greatest strength. Construction looks smooth and versatile, the UI isn’t overcrowded, and options and upgrades look very easy to navigate.
Efficiency is the name of the game, per its Steam page. You’ll need to plan the construction so that production and transportation chains are operating at their maximums. This way, your economic state increases, giving you a greater chance of building up and being ready for the doom days to come. The doom doesn’t just come from tsunamis, though. The armies of ancient Greece and Egypt seek to send Atlantis back to the sea floor too.
As it stands, City of Atlantis is one of many games listed as “coming soon” by CreativeForge. It sits alongside Builders of Egypt, House Flipper City, and Black Gold, while Orc Warchief and Monsters Domain have 2024 release dates. So, the arrival of the Atlantean city builder isn’t known yet, but the developers will certainly be looking to capitalize on its hype sooner rather than later.