On thin ice | Polar Quest

The Challenge | Polar Quest

Design a quest-like game to teach others about polar environments and how they are changing. Use NASA data to help adventurers plan their quest and present them with challenges along the way.

On thin ice

On Thin Ice is a browser based polar expedition planning game

On thin ice

We decided to make a game to demonstrate the difficulty and variability in planning and executing polar exploration.

The game consists of the polar regions, gridded into hexagonal tiles. Each of these tiles starts off hidden with no information known about it.

The first explorer selects their "load-out" (number of explorers, how much equipment to take, how much food to take) and sets out into the wilderness. When an explorer submits a plan, our server runs the route, exploring the wilderness and uncovering the terrain and challenges of each tile.

As more of the world is revealed, you can plan your route more carefully and make further progress into the wilderness and towards the north pole!

TODO:

Fix tile selection and route planning

Add interesting events along the way to discover, selecting a tile should reveal interesting information about it. That might be previous (real) expeditions that took place in that area, climate, terrain and satellite imagery.


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