SpongeBob's Atlantis Squarepantis: Atlantis Treasures

Puzzle games: the never-ending frontier. They launched the portable games market with Tetris on the original Game Boy and have since made a splash on Game Gear, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PSP, and mobile phones. Whether using blocks, spheres, or tiny ant-shaped creatures named Pikmin, puzzle games are the only universally appealing genre. For several years they were the only games you could convince a non-gamer to play.

Given the genre’s popularity, publishers were once eager to turn their existing franchises into puzzle games. Everything from Mario to Mortal Kombat has received the puzzle game treatment. Though their success has not spawned sequels (who here thought we’d see another Dr. Mario by now?), they have a lasting place in our gaming collections.

Now it’s SpongeBob’s turn to find a permanent place in our life via SpongeBob’s Atlantis Squarepantis: Atlantis Treasures. The game is short and without any multiplayer features, which would have been an excellent, replay value-enhancing edition. But aside from a slight control issue, Atlantis Treasures is a great game.

Drop, Flip and Spin

Standing in the dark, Mr. Krabs gets a whiff of something. “I’d know that smell anywhere,” he says. His nose was picking up on the Atlantean Treasure Room, the place where hundreds of gold coins are stored, among other valuables. “If only I had known!” he says excitedly. “I would have had me tailor put 10 more pockets on me pants!”

Mr. Krabs’ obsession with money has taken him to a strange place. Right in the middle of all that gold is a large pillar surrounded by 10 indentations, which are there to hold up to 10 lines of the orbs that will soon fall from the sky. These orbs come in many different colors: green, yellow, blue, red, pink. Power-ups let you wipe out one line or column of orbs.

The standard route to elimination, of course, is to combine three or more orbs of the same color – vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. With a circular, semi-3D platform, the game feels different from the flatter, more traditional puzzle games. Technically you don’t move the pieces except to change the order of the falling orb cluster (three connected orbs drop simultaneously, and their colors may be rearranged as needed). You do, however, have control over the pillar, which swivels left and right, a la Pokemon Puzzle League.

Story and Free Play – the only two modes available – contain five different challenges that are built around the context of the game. In Treasure Room, the objective is to make 50 or more orb clusters disappear. But you don’t have to stop once the goal has been reached. You can play continually until one line reaches the ceiling, which causes the game to end. This is true of all the challenges. Their goals don’t take long to complete, but like Tetris, Columns, and other great puzzlers, these stages have the potential to last forever.

Story bits are introduced before each challenge, attempting to capture the essence of SpongeBob’s trademark hilarity. They don’t succeed too greatly – while the lines are amusing, it just isn’t the same without a voice track. But you should still get a smirk after seeing the excited look on Plankton’s face when he discovers the Atlanteans have left a room full of tanks unguarded.

The Weapons Room level changes the objective from matches to bursts. The game begins by dropping a colored bomb into the stage. Your goal is to eliminate that bomb by connecting it with two other orbs of the same color, creating a burst.

The Science Room challenge is easy but doesn’t make much sense. Basically, you have to score a point multiplier by eliminating an unspecified number of orbs. Or is it by creating an unspecified number of chains (one orb elimination that leads to another)? Or combos (two or more orb clusters that are eliminated simultaneously)? I’m not sure. But I was able to win on the first try.

The Art Room is a more challenging version of the Weapons Room. Here you have to eliminate the colored blobs of paint. Finally there is the Bubble Room, which is a variation of the other challenges that includes one notable difference: you can’t have lines stacking more than six orbs. Normally you can stack nine without losing. The orbs in the Bubble Room, however, are made of bubbles and can burst when stacked too high.

While Atlantis Treasures is a repetitive puzzler, it is also very addictive. These stages are worth revisiting multiple times to top your high score.

On the downside, the controls are good but mistakenly different. I think it’s safe to say that all gamers are used to one thing: when we press down in a puzzle game, we expect the orbs, blocks or whatever to go down. That isn’t what happens in this game. Pushing down causes the orb colors to cycle through the available positions. To bring the orbs down faster, you’ll have to push the OK/select button. This isn’t a huge deal, but it’s certainly an odd one that will take some adjusting. And although the entire game runs in endless mode, the base objectives can be finished much too quickly.

Gameplay: 7.9
Released exclusively in mobile format, Atlantis Treasures is a little bit Tetris, a little bit Columns, and a tad reminiscent of Pokemon Puzzle League’s 3D playing field.

Graphics: 6.0
Your basic array of 2D shapes, 16-bit colors, and a slight 3D view.

Sound: 1.0
Sound is still the area where mobile games suck the most. There is hope in the form of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. But that’s the only mobile game whose audio actually sounds like audio.

Difficulty: Easy
You won’t have to fight much to beat the Story mode.

Concept: 7.0
Atlantis Treasures isn’t a new idea, but it does bring together the concepts of some of the genre’s best games.

Multiplayer: N/A
If only…

Overall: 7.4
Puzzle games derive most of their replay value from player-to-player competition, a feature that is not yet possible on the average mobile phone. Because of this, Atlantis Treasures must rely on its single-player experience to keep gamers interested. That’s cool for some players but could be a deal breaker for others.