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Did you know that the earliest mention of Babylon is in the form of a dated stone table from the reign of Sargon of Akkad circa 3800 B.C.? I surely did not. Not until I played The Rise of Atlantis, that is. I had expected a simple Match Three game — a game where you line up three similar icons or more to gain points. That's the basis of The Rise of Atlantis, except that it has been beautifully packaged with lovely graphics, sound and trivia tidbits fed to you at the end of each game stage. You don't just match three. You are traveling around the Mediterranean and stopping at seven famous cities of ancient history - Phoenicia, Babylon, Egypt, Carthage, Rome, Greece and Troy before heading back to Phoenicia again.

Game play in a Match Three game is simple. Swap the positions of two adjacent tiles to line up three or more of the same. They fall off the board, you gain points and tiles above them fall into the vacated spaces. That is, if they aren't blocked by something, like a locked tile. Ah yes, a little more than just a Match Three game, is our title here. You are on a journey to collect the seven ancient powers of the lost city of Atlantis to fill the empty gem that will have the power to raise Atlantis again (your prize is an animated screen-saver)!

The game starts out simply enough and you find pieces of each artifact on the game board that you have to release by moving to the bottom of the board. As you move along, it slowly ramps up in difficulty. The game boards change in shape and you may find your artifact piece trapped. Power-up pieces that you can collect are also found in some game boards; bombs to destroy tiles or the locks on tiles in an area, lightning to zap away all tiles of one kind, an hour-glass to extend time, a swap tile to exchange the positions of any two free tiles area, and a beating heart for an extra life. You will find however, that the most useful tool (apart from the swap tile — but we'll get to that later) may be the Sun power-up.

The Sun power-up is charged by creating lines of four or more similar tiles, or two lines of three in one move. Once it is full, activate it by clicking on it and it will blast out random tiles — but always a locked tile or two, and always one of the tiles under your artifact pieces and power-up pieces that are ready to be freed — rather like a smart-bomb.

One aspect of The Rise of Atlantis I liked was that it awarded more points for matching up four and more, than for "cascades" which are luck created chain-reaction matches when tiles fill in blank spaces. The game did give you nice compliments like "great," "excellent" and "fantastic" though.

Match Three games are rather formulaic, and there are many similar games out there. What sets The Rise of Atlantis apart from its rivals is its stunning graphics and audio track. The menu screen consisted of an underwater scene where the ancient gem lay on the sea bed. Fishes swam across the screen and lights held by ancient statues glowed. Not just a simple colorful background and a single set of four different icons, and your progress across the map is animated. The icons change as you move into different areas to reflect the themes of the area. You start off with roman helmets, gold coins, red gems and a green round smiling face in Phoenicia. In Babylon, the gems are replaced by a blue shield over crossed swords. In Egypt, the gems came back, but the roman helmets and coins were replaced by ankhs and seashells. The music changes as you journey through the different nations, again each reflecting the culture of the land.

Another nicely done aspect of this game is that the difficulty scales smoothly and very comfortably. As you move along, the game board changes. From the very simple rectangle to more difficult shapes where your artifact or power-up piece could be trapped and you have to either employ your bomb, lightning piece or sun power-up to free them. From that, you went to locked or frozen tiles — a tile that could be unlocked (with accompanying sound of shattering glass) when you made it part of a matched set of three or more. Then you got more locked tiles and tougher locked tiles that required more than one match to unlock it completely.

Finally, you reach the walls. Those are immovable stone-filled tiles, and invariably, at least one artifact piece resided above it. There is only one way to get your artifact piece out since your swap power-up will only affect ordinary tiles. That is to arrange your tiles in such a way that a swap with the artifact piece moves a tile into a match. This is where you start finding your hour-glass and your swap power-ups invaluable. You may even use up a life or two trying to preserve your power-ups and getting a game-board re-set to try figuring it out. You can also mouse over the stages of your journey to see if you left any power-ups behind and play it again to pick them up.

Invariably, you come to the most difficult levels, and they will have a combination of locked tiles, nastily shaped boards, stone walls and all your artifact pieces piled on top of one another. I'm a power-gamer. Even in my casual games, I'm a power-gamer — and it was that addictive. I raised Atlantis in two evenings by flying through all 77 levels of the game (and losing sleep). After all, the goal here is to gain all seven powers and raising Atlantis, not getting a high score.

But! Yes, there is a "but." A very nice one. You're not done with a single journey. You may get the animated screen-saver at the end of the first journey, but there are other journeys to take. In the second journey around the Mediterranean, black blasted tiles show up on your game board. These are annoyances. Matching them up does nothing for you. They are just in the way to take up space and valuable tiles, hence making the game just that little bit more difficult. I love it!

The time bar. I think I forgot to mention it at all. I never paid it any attention until I had crossed over the Mediterranean to Sicily and enough stone walls began to crop up in the game boards that the time bar actually ran down low enough that I needed to deploy an hour-glass power-up or two. There was also a single game board that was deceptively simple but had a fast moving time bar. Sneaky, sneaky. But I enjoyed it, burning through two hour-glass power-ups to complete it. A pity there wasn't more of those variations.

I found The Rise of Atlantis simple and fun from Phoenicia through Carthage, then more compelling in Rome. Greece and Troy I found totally absorbing and challenging and could not walk away. I even tried to cheat by deliberately shutting the game down ungracefully to see if I could get to the previous save (and hence regain the power-ups I had ineffectively used up). No, I'm not telling if it worked. *smirk*

To sum up, The Rise of Atlantis is a well crafted, polished example of the Match Three genre, a lovely gem of a game. Oh, by the way, did you know? Two harbors were built in Carthage, one for its navy, the other for mercantile trade. By legend, it was founded by Princess Elissa of Tyre when her brother, King Pygmalion murdered her husband and forced her to flee.