Endurance

About this board game

Endurance is a solitaire Antarctic survival game for one player, designed to take about 60 minutes. Based on Ernest Shackleton’s famous 1914 expedition, it follows the crew of the Endurance through eighteen months of extraordinary hardship.

This is a bleak and grueling game about suffering and perseverance. Stranded in a hostile and unpredictable environment, you must make the best choices possible while facing circumstances beyond your control. The game’s focus is not on reproducing the expedition, but on evoking the miraculous nature of its outcome through its absence.

Your decisions center on the crew’s immediate needs and their dwindling prospects. You will be hunting for food, managing supplies, and using distractions to buoy the men’s spirits. Each challenge adds pressure as you try to keep the crew going until rescue—or until rescue is no longer possible.

• Solo survival: Experience a game designed for a single player.
• Antarctic hardship: Face an unpredictable and hostile environment.
• Resource management: Hunt for food and manage ever-dwindling supplies.
• Crew morale: Use distractions to help sustain the men’s spirits.
• Open-ended outcome: The game has no victory or loss condition.

Endurance ends when the men are rescued or when rescue becomes impossible. There is no conventional win or loss to pursue; instead, the result is measured by how many men survived and what that survival means to you.

Released in 2023, Endurance presents a distinctive solo experience shaped by uncertainty, scarcity, and endurance itself. It asks you to persevere through impossible challenges and live with the consequences of every choice.