The Department of Canadian Heritage recently released a choose-your-own-adventure YouTube game, called “Journey into the Arctic.”
The Oregon Trail it is not, but it’s pretty entertaining nonetheless. The premise is simple: you play as the British commander of an expedition in the “early 19th century,” and you’re heading to northern Canada to try to find the Northwest Passage.
According to Canadian Heritage, the game was created “to give a sense to Canadians of the challenges an explorer had to face when trying to find the Northwest Passage.” Historians were consulted at each stage of production to ensure the game’s accuracy, said the department.
The gameplay is simple too – you watch a short video and are presented with a choice, which takes you to the next video. It’s a basic choose-your-own-adventure model. Unfortunately, there’s a very limited number of choices and only one path to victory – which I eventually found.
Here’s how my Arctic expedition went:
At the beginning of the game, a narrator with an over-the-top, vaguely British accent informs me that, “You have been chosen to lead a mission to find the fabled Northwest Passage.” Nice.
I’m then offered a choice: go through the Atlantic, or swing around South America and approach from the Pacific. Seeing as how Magellan and Drake did Cape Horn a couple of hundred years earlier, I figure I’ve got this: I choose the Pacific.
Wrong choice, apparently. I’m dead – drowned in a storm off of Cape Horn. That was quick. So, I go back to the beginning and take the Atlantic route. I stop for supplies in Greenland and eventually arrive in the Canadian Arctic. I see a promising-looking channel and explore it, but it turns out to be a dead end, so I have to go back and watch the same video over again.
It’s cold, and ice surrounds my ship. But I’m a tough, 19th century explorer, so onward, I say!
And I die in the ice. Or at least I think I died. The narrator tells me, “You underestimated the power of ice.”
The ice entraps me and slowly crushes my ship, I hear, so I sort of assume that I froze or starved to death, though it’s unclear. At any rate, I’m offered a chance to go back and seek shelter, like I should have earlier.
When I make the correct choice, I still get stuck, though my crew is able to drag my ship to safety.
While we sit in the cold, some Inuit people from a nearby community drop by for a visit. I can welcome them or ask them to leave.
Okay, I know what the right decision is here – the game isn’t exactly subtle. But just to see what happens, I politely ask my potential Inuit friends to take a hike.
Scurvy. Scurvy happens. Although by the beginning of the 19th century, Royal Navy sailors were taking daily doses of citrus juice to prevent the disease, and even John Franklin took along 930 gallons of lemon juice on his disastrous expedition, I guess I ran out of juice or didn’t think to bring any.
“Maybe the Inuit could have helped,” suggests the prompt. Indeed.
In exchange for what looks like an ornamental ladies’ hand mirror, the Inuit supply my crew with fresh meat and fish.
They then offer me a dogsled ride. This time, I decide to trust them and leave behind my European-style sled.
My team heads out on dogsleds, and charts some of the land. They bring back maps, and now the narrator tells me that my mission was a great success.
Cool! But now the game is over. What?
“You have contributed to a great legacy of Arctic discovery and helped to define one of our most valuable treasures: the Great Canadian North,” says the narrator.
So, I charted a small channel and whatever land could be reached on a short dogsled trip. Good for me. Sounds like a failure though, as I was originally tasked with finding the Northwest Passage. I guess we have to leave that to the Norwegians.
All in all, fairly entertaining, though I’m not sure what I learned. I already knew that Arctic exploration was dangerous, and that early explorers should have listened more to the native peoples of whatever region they were in.
“We want viewers to experience their very own Arctic adventure, learn about the hardship of exploring the north and increase their awareness and knowledge of the history and heritage of Canada’s North,” wrote the Department of Canadian Heritage in an emailed statement.
“The internet has become the medium of choice for Canadians to seek information and we wanted to create an innovative and fun way for people to learn about the perils of exploring the arctic during the 19th century.”
The government is focusing a lot on Arctic exploration lately. For example, the searches to find Franklin’s lost ship, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, were ultimately successful and generated lots of media coverage and international interest – though the discovery is back in the news again, for other reasons.
I asked Canadian Heritage why they are focusing so much on Arctic exploration and the Northwest Passage. They replied, “The Franklin expedition paved the way to many more expeditions that made the Canadian North what we know today. Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.”
I also asked how much the game, which was produced by an outside studio, cost. They wouldn’t say, though they said that the amount will be reported in “the usual manner” – the 2015-16 Annual Report on Government of Canada Advertising Activities, which probably won’t be released until the spring of 2017.
So is a choose-your-own-adventure YouTube game about the 19th century Arctic worth spending government money on? Maybe. Though I may go play The Yukon Trail again instead.
You can try the game here:
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