Stranded
Decide alone. Decide together. See which is better.
A survival decision game for teams
Your team is stranded on a cold, high plateau, and help is days away. Each person ranks 15 items alone. Then the team ranks them together. The score shows whether the team beat its best member.
- 30 to 45 minuteswith the debrief
- 2 to 8 playersin a team
- 1 to 10 teamsin one session
Start a game
Free demo, or the full game with a codeFree demo: a short sample with six items and three computer teammates. The full game is paid. See pricing.
Several teams? Open a facilitator session or book one. For learning only, never for appraisal. Your data.
Four steps, in less than an hour
Everyone plays in a browser. The team talks on the same meeting call your organization already uses.
- 13 minRead the situation
Your group is stranded on a cold, high plateau. Help is one to three days away. You have 15 items.
- 210 minRank alone
Each player ranks the 15 items alone, from the most important for survival to the least important.
- 320 minRank together
The team talks on its call and builds one ranking. It is final when every player agrees.
- 410 minRead the debrief
Every ranking is compared with a reference ranking. The team sees how it decided, with facts.
A night on the plateau
A rock fall had blocked the road. The driver took an old side track to go around it. At 4:10 pm, 14 kilometers along that track, the 4x4 slid into a dry stream bed. Nobody is hurt. The front axle is broken and the engine will not start. Two windows on one side are smashed. There is no phone signal. The driver says there is none for at least 40 kilometers. The nearest village is about 45 kilometers back along the track. You have not seen a vehicle or a person since the rock fall. Tonight the temperature will fall to about minus 15 degrees Celsius. The group has 15 items. Some will keep it alive. Some only feel useful. One can make things worse.
If you know a classic survival ranking exercise, the format will feel familiar. The situation, the items and the reasons are new, so an answer from memory will not help.
Three comparisons that a team cannot argue with
Each ranking gets a score: its distance from a reference ranking. A lower score is better. The debrief then puts three pairs of numbers side by side.
One member always has the best ranking alone. Did the team do better than that person, or did it lose what that person knew?
Was deciding together better than deciding alone? For most teams it is. The size of the gain is what matters.
The debrief works out the ranking the team would get by only averaging its members. Did the discussion beat that, or did it make things worse?
The game is about how the team decides, not about survival
The plateau is only the setting. The debrief shows what happened in the discussion: who was heard, who gave in and what the team lost on the way.
The debrief shows whose ranking the team followed and who had the best ranking. They are often different people.
A vote is fast and leaves people behind. The team has to give reasons until every member can accept the ranking.
A firm voice can move a team away from a good answer. The scores show when that happened, item by item.
People who know a similar exercise bring its answers along. This situation has its own logic, and the cold comes first.
Any group that has to decide together
A shared experience in under an hour, with a result the team can talk about.
A clean case of how groups decide, with numbers to anchor the conversation.
People learn how their new colleagues argue, listen and give in, before real work depends on it.
A session on group decisions that fits one class and needs no preparation by students.
Six rules, and that is all
- Rank alone first. No talking and no looking things up while you rank alone.
- One team ranking. In the team round anyone can move an item. Everyone sees the same list.
- Reach real agreement. Do not vote, do not average and do not trade one item for another. Give reasons.
- Everyone must agree. The team ranking is final when every player has pressed "I agree". Any change clears the agreement.
- A lower score is better. A score is the distance from the reference ranking. A perfect match scores 0.
- The reference ranking is reasoned, not sacred. It follows standard survival priorities. Where your team disagrees with it, talk about why.
Run it with up to 10 teams at once
Open a session and share one link. You see every team's progress on one screen, you can pause all teams or send a message, and at the end you get a table that compares the teams.