Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a beautiful and interesting graphical adventure game that was very popular among the adventure game fans during the MS-DOS era. The reason for its success is ultimately the thought-out story full of adventures, interesting characters and surprises that could be easily mistaken for an actual movie script. Fate of Atlantis was published in 1992 by Lucas Arts. It is not the first game in the series but unlike the predecessors this game does not share a plot that is based on any of the actual Indiana Jones films. However, the story is surprisingly very engaging, the puzzles are excellent and the graphics are very pleasing.
Like many other games created and published by LucasArts, the user interface, which is traditionally based on the SCUMM engine, is very intuitive and gives us the basic set of functions such as give, open, close, pick up, talk to, look at, use, push and pull. Those familiar with other Lucas Art classics will also recognize the interface and can readily jump into concentrating on the plot of the game and start solving puzzles. You also have an inventory where you store all of the objects you find along the way.
In
The Fate of Atlantis your mission is to save the Secret of Atlantis from the Nazi nuclear scientist named Dr. Ubermann. The Secret of Atlantis is a special metal, that, if discovered by the Nazi, could be used to produce devastating weapons. Your job is to get to Atlantis first. The timeline is slightly before the outbreak of World War II in the year 1939.
The game has a good replay factor and may fork out at a few certain points depending on the choices made by the player, so every time you play this game you might be able to see screens and puzzles you hadn't seen when you played it previously. To be more specific, the game has three different branches of gameplay, that the player chooses close to the beginning of the game. All three converge toward the main goal of the game - reaching Atlantis, but in different ways. At one point in the game you as the Indiana Jones will have to choose the path between The Wits Path (which means you will use your logic to complete puzzles), the Fists Path (less puzzles, and more situations in which player reaction plays role), and finally the Team Path (where you will be accompanied by Sophia Hapgood, an ex-collegue and a good friend).
The game features immersive music and well-done sound effects. The environments of the game have also undergone hours of meticulous work of the pixel-level artists. One of the interesting things about this game is that it is one of the few point-and-click games produced by LucasArts where the hero can actually die. (Others include Maniac Mansion and Last Crusade.) Of course this is understandable as the authors and the game designers of Fate of Atlantis were shooting for realism. The game features an alternate ending, but I wouldn't want to spoil the game for you.