About Atlantheos

Atlantheos is a browser game about a clan of Atlanteans who go to war with forty-four gods. It is turn-based and one-on-one: your champion against one god, a choice of where to strike and where to guard, made blind, every round. There is nothing to download and nothing to install. The game is in Early Access and it is playable now.

Atlantis Refused

Four things happened, in this order, and nothing about the game makes sense until you know them.

Atlantis stopped needing the gods. Every nation on earth paid them tribute, because every nation needed something only a god could give. Not Atlantis: its smiths forged edges that cut the immortal, its healers mended what others could only pray over.

So Atlantis stopped paying. The gods answered with a flood.

You are a Clan, not a hero. You never fight yourself. You recruit Atlanteans, raise them, arm them, and send them through the Meridian to face the gods one at a time.

The city goes under and does not die. The flood the gods meant as an execution is the last step of the Ascension. Beating the gods is only half of the law: the power passes to the one Clan that outlasts every other Clan as well. That Clan ascends and becomes Atlantheos — Atlanteans who are gods.

Fifty Atlanteans, and none of them is enough

Fifty Atlanteans exist — five classes, ten ranks each, from Initiate to Divine. Each one breaks a different kind of god, and each one pays for it:

• the Warrior answers gods of war, and cannot heal itself;
• the Mage answers magic, and fits the most gods of any class while hitting them the least;
• the Smith answers armour, and fits only five gods of forty — but hits those five harder than anyone;
• the Healer answers death and curses, and deals low damage;
• the Seer answers tricksters, and depends on landing crits.

No single Atlantean beats all forty-four. That is what a Clan is for.

Atlanteans never wear out — they tire. Vitality falls after every fight, and a spent Atlantean is stopped at the door rather than sent in weakened. Vitality returns on its own, or at once for Crystals. Rest one champion, send another.

The Meridian, and the order its doors open in

At the centre of the city stands the Meridian, a gate to the five pantheons. It does not open all at once, and it does not open for money.

Four Gatekeepers come first — the First Body, the First Breath, the First Eye, the First Silence. Until all four are broken, no pantheon is open at all. Nhal, the last of them, opens the Greek Pantheon. After that each pantheon is opened by the fall of the one before it: Zeus opens the Egyptian Pantheon, Ra opens the Norse Pantheon, Odin opens the Mexica Pantheon.

The Celestial Pantheon has a second lock that no other pantheon has: Tezcatlipoca must fall and all sixteen Artifacts of the first four pantheons must be in your hands.

Pangu is not a door. He is the last god behind the fifth one, and he stays locked until all twenty Artifacts are gathered. He split heaven from earth. There is nothing after him.

A round is two guesses

Each round you pick one zone to strike and one to guard — Head, Chest, Belt or Legs. The god picks at the same moment, and neither of you sees the other. Strike an open zone and it lands in full. Guard the zone they chose and you take nothing.

Your Atlantean carries three skills of its class. They cost no money and, with two exceptions, no turn either, but you get only rank + 1 presses for the whole fight, and each skill has its own cooldown.

Tending a wound costs you the strike: a flask or a healing skill means no blow that round. Two things heal without spending it: the Tidecrystal, bought with Pearls, and the Healer's Sap.

Gods fight with your own tools — stun, armour-pierce, weaken — and the same tools answer back: a snare takes a god's turn just as theirs takes yours. But a god never heals, and a god never rises again.

Four coins, four jobs

• Shells — the everyday coin, paid out by every god. Starter gear, supplies, healing.
• Pearls — bought, never dropped. Every tiered piece of gear, and every Atlantean you recruit.
• Crystals — taken from beaten gods and nowhere else. They buy one thing: rest.
• Essence — the currency of legends, spent on the Artifact Market between clans.

If the gods will not drop what your champion needs, Essence buys it from someone the gods were kinder to.

Twenty Artifacts, and a market between clans

There are twenty Artifacts, four to each pantheon, and every one of them is taken off a god. Sixteen open the Celestial Pantheon; all twenty open Pangu.

They can change hands. The Artifact Market lets clans trade them for Essence, under the platform's rules and eligibility requirements — which is how a clan the gods were unkind to can still finish its collection.

An Artifact does nothing sitting in a collection. It counts when it is equipped, and it counts in Rivals and against Pangu.

The Law of Ascension

The strength of a fallen pantheon passes to one clan only. So the Council set the Law of Ascension: the next pantheon is not the first clan to beat the gods, but the last one still standing.

That is Rivals. Clan against clan — your champion against the one another house has been raising all this time. A win adds up to 5 Ascent; a defeat costs 1 or 2 and drops your rank a place or three. Rivals pays no Shells and no Crystals — it pays in standing, and it still spends Vitality and wears your gear.

Five leagues are climbed in order: Tidebound, Contenders, Elite, Meridian, Ascendancy. The sixth is not a step on that ladder but a separate road — equip an Artifact and you leave for the Artifact League — where the rivals are far stronger and no longer matched to your strength at all, and every win is worth double Ascent.

Rules we do not bend

• No tier before its god. No armour tier is for sale until the god who opens it has fallen. Nobody buys the last set on day one. Money buys the gear; the god decides when it may be bought.
• No repair, anywhere. Gear wears down, and then it is gone. There is no repair anywhere in Atlantis.
• What you beat stays beaten. A god never heals and never rises again.
• Nothing to install. Atlantheos is a browser game and it stays one.

Where the game stands today

Atlantheos is in Early Access. Everything described on this page exists and is playable: forty-four gods, five pantheons, fifty Atlanteans, twenty Artifacts, Rivals and the Artifact Market. Balance is re-measured against real fights rather than guessed, and the world is still being drawn.