Curious Expedition Review on Xbox

Curious Expedition is a procedural generated roguelike strategy exploration game, set in the early Edwardian period. Together with famous personalities you will venture on unprecedented expeditions to regions never explored before for fame, science and treasures. This has been on the PC since 2016 and now has finally made its way to console.

The premise of the game is that you are a member of London’s Explorers Club, and the leader has decided they are building a statue to celebrate the most famous explorer. And if you want that statue to be you then you need to beat 4 other contestants as they explore the globe and bring back amazing treasures. The goal of the game is to get the highest score of fame at the end of 6 expeditions.

Gameplay

You start of choosing from a historical figure to take control of on your journey, and whilst some like Charles Darwin make sense, other characters Like HP Lovecraft or Rasputin, seem abit out there. Regardless, there is already a large selection of characters to choose from and this is only half of what can be unlocked. Each character has special traits and set collection of items/companions that will help you on your adventures. Some are more desirable that others , but each will provide a unique experience whomever you choose.

Once you have chosen, you get to see the other four characters you are up against before moving to the port to get ready to sail. Here you will be given a side mission, should you wish to take, which if completed will be an extra source of income. Also here is where you can recruit companions, buy supplies and upgrade animals carrying ability, if you have them.

You then get to choose from 2 random locations before setting sail, and the game then procedural generates the expedition, and from here, its time to do some exploring. To complete an expedition, you have to find the zones golden pyramid or you can just give up and sail/hot air balloon home, with the amazing artifacts you have already collected, which in turn will then be used to work out your fame score.

Exploration is key, as in doing so, you will find villages to rest and recruit more companions, shrines/tombs to loot those lovely artifacts and hopefully the mysterious golden pyramid. Now this may sound simple, but you will have to manage your companions, whilst avoiding/repelling enemy attacks and even worse, keep your sanity in check. You see sanity is a big thing in this game. Moving across the hexagonal tiled map, reduces your sanity meter and if it gets to zero, you and your companions will start to display some serious negative traits like madness, loss of items or even trying to eat each other. And that’s not even counting the general problems of wounds and accidents you can pick up as your moving in general. You soon learn to chart your movements wisely, using the games in built calculation tool, which will help you plot out the least amount of sanity inducing path. Be aware of your paths environments too, as thick jungle, deep snow and desert, will mean a slower pace, which in turn means a faster sanity drain.

Thankfully, this can all be managed by regularly sleeping in settlements/camps to regain your sanity back. Or if you are desperate, eat and drink a variety of items such as chocolate and whiskey to keep the insanity at bay. Items can be picked up from enemies or found at abandoned sites or bartered with at villages. Another important aspect is your carrying capacity, which is based on the number of companions you have. A loss of companion not only means a loss of extra slots to carry items, it also means a lots of attacks when you enemies turn up.

Enemies in general are best avoided if you have limited companions or weak attack, as often the enemies health bars dwarf yours two to one. If a battle does commence, you can flee, but if you do choose to fight, battles are turn-based and done by dice roles. A selection of dice based on your companions skills come in to play, and these can be carefully combined to produce some amazing attacks. Each companion has skills which show what they are good in, i.e attack, defense or precision skill and also a corresponding number of attack dice. As you progress, you can promote the companions to higher levels which in turn increase the number of attack dice and their general health bar. Now besides these there are also traits like alcoholic, barter expert or hates natives, which as you can imagine can widely effect conversations throughout the expedition.

When you do finally make your way to a shrine, temple or tomb, you will be able to pick up valuable artifacts that are worth a ton of fame and will help push you ahead of your competitors. However this will have a negative effect with your standing to the local natives, but worse is once you pick them up, you will get a curse! Map like events will happen like larva rising up around you, the land turning into an icy wasteland. Great chasms may open up or natives maybe cursed into horrific abominations. Regardless, there is always a reaction to you claiming artifacts to boost your fame, and in not doing, you may just end up coming last regardless of finding the golden pyramid.

To be honest this is only a tip of what you can do in Curious Expedition as there is so much more like maps with hidden treasure or scrolls that teleport you. Its is clear this was made for keyboard and mouse, however, the games control system is super smooth with a controller. This game has a huge amount of replay ability and a fantastic engaging strategy game play, i found this hard to put down, and I’m by no means a rogue-like fan.

Graphics

The games art style is very retro pixel art and reminds me of an early The secret of Monkey Island. It's simple yet effective looks kept me engaged and when it came to conversation between companions, helped me see them more than just staff. Battles was clearly defined yet scary, locations are pixelated and still convey beautiful artwork like quality. The game never suffered from frame rate issues, however I did get the odd, pause as if something was loading, but this was very rare.

Sound

The music here is perfect and has a lovely retro feel that ramps up and gives you a boost whenever there is a battle. Noise mostly comprises of background environment sounds, which is dependent of the location your in. Now the game doesn't come with any voice work, with the narrative being told by conversation boxes, and its here the writing shines beyond what i could have hoped for. The writers have easily been taken inspiration out of any Ian Livingstone type of story telling, with simple descriptions giving you a over the shoulder like view of the characters emotions.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-

Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Curious Expedition is actually "Must Own".

This is because the game is great fun, and it is the first game that actually made me want to spend time playing rogue likes. It’s not often a game come along and helps you understand a genre, but this game does that.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £11.99 or approx $15, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 6 -10 hours worth of gameplay to potentially clear the story, however it will give you easily treble that with collectibles and new characters to try out.

The games loop never gets boring thanks to the procedural generation, but also because of the fantastic game play and superb writing.  If you ever want to see why people like rogue likes games, this is one for you to check out.