We Love It's Guide to…
Lead a stranded polar expedition, assigning crew and rationing supplies as your choices shape morale, survival, and the journey.
Released 24 Feb 2023
Ration the Crew
Assign Crew Duties
Scout the Ice
You didn’t ask to lead this expedition, but here you are. Stuck in the ice, Captain missing, miles from civilisation. Someone has to take charge. Manage your meagre resources, balance safety and morale, make the hard calls, and head in the only direction you can - through The Pale Beyond.
Developed by Saltstone Studios · Published by Fellow Traveller
The Temperance follows the route of the lost Viscount, an earlier polar expedition that vanished in the ice. When the ship becomes stranded and its captain is missing, you take charge of the crew and continue into the frozen wilderness.
Each week, assign crew members to jobs, manage food, fuel, warmth, and health, and respond to changing dangers on the ice. You also make decisions in conversations and disputes, balancing crew morale and loyalty with the expedition’s needs.
Scouting and exploration bring new events and choices, while the crew’s condition and your decisions influence how the story unfolds. The journey combines resource management with branching narrative outcomes.
Players who enjoy the game often praise its character-focused writing and the way crew relationships make leadership decisions feel consequential. Many also value the isolated polar atmosphere, distinctive artwork, and music, while some find the management systems light or frustrating rather than a deep survival simulation.
Five years ago, The Viscount and its crew set sail through The Pale Passage in search of absolute magnetic South. The ship and its crew were tragically lost to the ice, never to be seen again. Her sister ship, The Temperance shall follow in her path, hoping to find answers where The Viscount failed.
A polar exploration game set in an unforgiving frozen wasteland where you embark on a treacherous voyage across the ice and through the Pale Beyond. It’s a stunning yet harsh landscape that can change at any moment.
Every decision matters and the ice doesn’t care.
As the expedition unfolds and the Polar Winter approaches, every decision you make will have a meaningful impact on the story as you navigate your way across the ice.
You didn’t ask to lead this expedition, but here you are. Stuck in the ice, Captain missing, miles from civilisation. Someone has to take charge.
Manage your meagre resources, balance safety and morale, make the hard calls, and head in the only direction you can - through The Pale Beyond.
Keeping the crew (and sled dogs) safe, fed, and warm during the expedition is imperative. Surviving the ice will matter little in the face of a mutiny. Every vote will count. So keep the crew on your side.
Featuring original musical compositions, shanties and accordion tunes that will dynamically evolve alongside your journey.
Saltstone Studios is located in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Their first game was The Pale Beyond, a story-driven survival management game.
The team is interested in exploring novel systems-based narrative games that combine the kind of deep choice and consequence narratives you find in interactive fiction, with extensive systems more common from other genres - all designed to bring in-depth worlds and characters to life.
Each title draws direct influences from the complex history of Ireland and Britain, with extensive literary and historical research. Every pixel, sentence, and musical note, is hand crafted in house with care and attention.
| Platforms | Windows, macOS |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 47 |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller support | Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
| DLC / extras | 3 listed on Steam |
| Metacritic | 77/100 View on Metacritic |
| Website | Official website |
