Art Adventure: Atlantis 2: Puzzle Analysis

Atlantis 2: Puzzle Analysis

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Atlantis 2: Beyond Atlantis by Cryo Interactive is a point and click game which uses mythologies from various cultures to create an awesome experience. All the puzzles are related to the cultures that they take place in, but because the player most likely is not very familiar with the mythologies of these older cultures, they must learn more about the culture by walking about, interacting with the environment, and by observing their surroundings.

The one puzzle in particular is one that I think is most clever, because it is a simple concept everyone can understand, with a twist. The puzzle takes place in past of the Yucatan, where the player is playing as an Aztec scout. In order to explore the bowels of a temple, the player is faced with a simple puzzle. -

Okay, so more of a statement, but okay, it's just simple math. Of course, the player does not know the number of the bat right off the bat (see what I did there?) However, after playing through for awhile, and getting acquainted with some of the Aztec Gods, the player travels to the land of the dead and meets this fellow.

You get to talk to the Bat God for awhile, and have the option to come back and talk to him whenever you please... so, surely you can ask him his number? No? Well, darn, I guess we are stuck.

Back at the temple, if you look around it won't be long until you notice and look closer at the reliefs on the walls.

Huh, so dots for numbers, that's not hard at all. And now that I think of it, that Bat had three dots on it's wing! Interesting, let us go tell the guard the answer that the Jaguars number is three times three, or nine to be exact!

Erm, yes, I know. How can I tell you the number! In this game, when asking questions or giving answers, a sort of dialog box filled with symbols appears, but when talking to this man, he only gives this command, there is no options to respond. Hmm, oh, whats this?

Ah, here is our chalkboard! A bit old school, but not a problem, now let us just peg in the number nine!

That doesn't look right... Oh, we're Aztec's here! If we look around some more we can see how the Aztec number system works, it's sort of like a tally system, but it's based on 20's, rather than our base 10 number system. So we know how to count up to five and all, but does the placement on the grid matter? Yes it does! From another plaque we can see how bars symbolize fives, and adding dots or more bars on top simply adds.

Interesting, so with a bar on bottom for five, with four dots on top, we can symbolize nine!

Finally! Man, learning a whole new number system sure takes a bit of getting used to, but hey, now we are done and ... oh no.

Now we need the Snake's number? So we have to find a Jaguar and count the number of spots or something? Oh wait, we know that number is nine, so nine by nine is... 81! There's only enough room for 80 dots on the board! What do you want me to do?

Alright, so putting dots in the higher rows is kind of like saying what number is in the tens place, except we are using twenty instead of ten. So we'll need four dots for four times twenty on top, then add one dot on the bottom for our 81. Great! Finally, time for our prize...

Darn, there's still one more puzzle! And now we don't even have a nice guard to explain it to us. However, if you haven't picked up on the pattern, it seems like all the puzzles and plaques are connected. We started at 3 x 3 - then to 9 x 9, and the plaques illustrated the numbers 1 - 5, 19 - 21, and 39 - 41. We can go through the math and find out that this plaque reads 399, 400, 401. Those are some big numbers... something that would come in handy if we had to multiply 81 by itself... and what a fitting challenge for this room.

Using the knowledge you gained previously, and no doubt with a pad of paper and a pen... You'll figure out how to transcribe 6,561 in Aztec! And we are finally presented with our reward... the piece to one of the final puzzles of this chapter of the game.

I like this puzzle the best because it's informative, it teaches the player about Aztec culture, and also how to think outside the box when completing puzzles in the game, but the player is presented with a clear question and with a straightforward process.