Rediscovering the brilliance of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Few adventure games actually feature much adventure. It’s a curious name for this, the most languid and cerebral of genres. But Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a rare exception. Like the movies that inspired it—and the adventure serials that inspired them—it’s an exciting adventure in the truest sense. And it’s remarkable how they managed to squeeze this much energy out of a pretty standard point-and-click adventure game.

The myth at the heart of this original Indiana Jones story is, as the title suggests, the fabled lost city of Atlantis. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Indy finds a mysterious Atlantean artefact in the vast, unorganised collection of the college he teaches at between expeditions. The discovery of the object serves as the game’s comical prologue, where a bumbling Indy stumbles through the college archives and leaves a trail of destruction behind him.

But, as is often the case at the beginning of an Indiana Jones story, the artefact is cruelly snatched away from him by Klaus Kerner, a pistol-wielding agent of the Third Reich. The Nazis have taken a special interest in the Atlantis myth, in particular a mystery metal called orichalchum that is said to generate an incredible amount of energy—energy the Nazis want to turn into a nuclear weapon. And so Indy embarks on a dangerous quest to stop them, because as we know from The Last Crusade, he really hates Nazis.

Despite coming out well before some of LucasArts’ most famous games, Fate of Atlantis is one of the most innovative point-and-click adventures it ever released. There’s the IQ scoring system, which awards you bonus points if your solution to a puzzle is particularly imaginative. And some of the puzzle solutions are randomised too, making the game surprisingly replayable. But my favourite feature, which also adds to its replayability, is how the game is split into three distinctly flavoured paths: Fists, Wits, and Team.

Early in the game Indy teams up with Sophia Hapgood, a selfprofessed psychic medium who claims to be in contact with the spirit of an Atlantean king. The pair were romantically involved once upon a time, and their relationship is similar to those of his female companions in the movies—more playful and sarcastic than romantic. Sophia has definite echoes of Marion Ravenwood. She’s tough, resourceful, and quick-witted, regularly putting Indy in his place. It’s refreshing (and surprising) to see a strong female character like this in a game, especially one from the early 1990s.

If you choose the Team path you’ll spend the rest of the game with Sophia, solving puzzles together, trading barbs, and occasionally taking control of her. For me this is the most enjoyable way to play the game, simply because the interactions between the two characters are so much fun. The dialogue is sharp and funny and some of the puzzles involving both characters are well designed. But if you’d prefer to go solo, the Wits path sees Indy chasing Atlantis on his own, with trickier puzzles and, of course, less dialogue. You’ll visit many of the same locations in both paths, but they feel quite different.

One of the most entertaining puzzles is found on the Team path, where Indy and Sophia try to steal an artefact from a snooty French professor by staging a séance. While Sophia conjures up the spirit of her Atlantean king, Indy combines a bedsheet, a flashlight, and a creepy mask to scare the professor out of the room, leaving the