HEROES OF THE ANTARCTIC

A TURN-BASED ROGUELIKE SIMULATION OF HISTORICAL EVENTS

A Unique Take on the Roguelike Experience

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Similar to most roguelike games, Heroes of the Antarctic has random events and permanent death. There is no option to load a checkpoint and try again. But unlike most roguelikes, the events of your expedition carry over into future trips to the Pole.  
  • Explorers that die can no longer be chosen as crewmates in subsequent expeditions.
  • Cruelly, if all your crew dies on an expedition then all their discoveries and progress is lost.
  • But so long as one crew member makes it home alive, the deeds of your adventure will be saved.  

Begin Your Journey

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Choose from dozens of famous Antarctic explorers and assemble your dream team. Send them on an open-ended journey to the Antarctic.  Help them survive the harsh conditions and manage their resources.
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Explore your own way.  Trek across the snow and ice using dogs, ponies, motor sledges, or old-fashioned man power. Each method has its pros and cons.

Choose Your Own Objectives

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Race to the Pole and etch your name and nation into the history books as the first to reach the last unexplored area on Earth.
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Discover new flora and fauna as your crew scours the Antarctic coastline.  There are countless ways to advance science in the fields of biology, geology, and physics.
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Explore the continent and chart new islands, mountains, glaciers, and valleys.  Identify the landmarks that have now become famous elements of Antarctic history.
  • Compete against history and see if you can get there faster than Amundsen, Scott, or even one of your own earlier expeditions.
  • Pick the correct path and avoid dangerous terrain.
  • Select a crew of biologists and discover new species.
  • Capture, kill, or dissect wildlife to improve your score.
  • Run experiments to measure ice and wind changes.
  • Map Antarctica's important landmarks and add them to your in-game map.
  • Use your discoveries to improve your odds of survival in a second or third expedition.

Make Gamechanging Decisions

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Take solace in the knowledge that the crises your crew faces are identical to those documented by explorers.  If it's happening to you, it happened in history.
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The choices you make affect the lives of your crew as they deal with the extreme conditions of the Antarctic.

These are the choices explorers of the early 1900's had to face, and so will you.

  • An explorer falls into a crevasse. How will you save him?
  • Your crew has spotted a landmark, but are you sure it's not a mirage?
  • How are you going to treat trenchfoot? Or frostbite? Or scurvy?
  • Will you watch helplessly as your crewmate's clothing wears down or will you skin one of your dogs to protect him?
  • Your crew has run out of food.  Do you eat your dogs - your primary mode of travel - or continue on hoping to find another food source?
  • There's a complainer among you and he's lowering morale. How would a leader handle this? How would you?
  • A crew mate has gangrene in both feet.  Do you amputate now, making him a burden, or force him to continue on an risk the spread of the infection?
  • What comes first - the expedition or the crew?

Experience an Emergent Story

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Experience a story of early twentieth-century exploration that unfolds based on random events and the choices you make. No two people will play the same game.


Learn the toll leadership takes. Decisions will cost lives, and sometimes the wisest choice will be turning back.


Get immersed in history. Read what great explorers wrote about the experiences your crew is facing. Learn how they survived (or didn't) from the choices they made. And yes, you can even die of dysentery.

Unbridled Scientific and Historical Accuracy

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The scenarios, events, and choices the player makes are taken directly from the diaries of Antarctic explorers from the turn of the twentieth century. 


Further gameplay content has been researched with the help of historians at the Dulwich College Archives.
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Travel across a hyper-accurate satellite map of the Antarctic.  With the aid of the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) your crew of explorers will travel over high resolution images of Antarctic terrain. Maps are so detailed that one pixel represents approximately half a basketball court in distance.


Scientific and geographic information is included in the game thanks to the consulting efforts of scientists at the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation.  Ice conditions and their effect on the continent have been provided with the generous aid of scientists like Stephanie Pfirman at Columbia University.