The Curious Expedition
Plunder mysterious continents a move at a time
DEVELOPER MASCHINEN- MENSCH PUBLISHER MASCHINEN- MENSCH PRICE $ 14.99 USD AVAILABLE AT STEAM curious-expedition.com
The intrepid team of explorers, desperate in their search for fame and fortune, finally made it to the golden pyramid at the centre of this strange, foreboding land. Their numbers were diminished – one of the porters took his own life and the cook ironically wound up as dinner for a cannibal tribe – but the drive to succeed where others had failed was still strong. Well, strong until fire started to rain from the sky…
The Curious Expedition is a game almost purpose made for anecdotes. Each playthrough is quick but packed with great moments and exposition, making each individual trek memorable and serving to draw you into the next. A turn based Rogue-like game of exploration, The Curious Expedition comes across as part Around the World in 80 Days and part King Solomon’s Mines with a dash of In the Mountains of Madness for good measure (and not just because Lovecraft can be one of the explorers).
Although the exploration in the game is more of the pith helmet, “What ho!” Bernie Wooster variety and not Lovecraftian existential dread, Sanity still plays a very important role in how the game plays. Sanity is the key resource in the game, with each tile crossed costing an amount of Sanity based on terrain type or other hardships faced. Equipment carried by the explorers can mitigate the Sanity cost of exploration – machetes can cut through jungle reducing the Sanity cost of travel. These calculations are done behind the scenes. It’s a testament to how solid the game is mechanically. Players don’t have to equip different gear to progress but instead use
You could cause a massive sinkhole to drag everything down into the void
what is most applicable for any given situation, ensuring that you’re always progressing and finding fun things to do rather than fiddle with minutia. Lose too much sanity and you’ll escape via hot air balloon, leaving your treasure behind and subsequently making your next expedition more difficult as you will have few funds to buy new gear or gain extra fame.
Alongside the terrain there are other threats that challenge the explorers, from hostile tribes to wild animals to dinosaurs and more, but none are as impressive as the cataclysms wrought by shrines. Activate a shrine and something good might happen, but it seems more likely that a cataclysmic event will reshape the area. You could cause a massive sinkhole to drag everything down into the void, or a Genesis-level flood that creates an inland sea, or call fire from the sky. In many ways, the experience of The Curious Expedition is one of a sequence of disasters, but they’re so thrilling that you look forward to the next one.
Put simply, The Curious Expedition is an absolute love letter to exploration and a perfect example of how to do Early Access right. Throughout the Early Access period, the developers constantly added new features and tweaked them to be all but perfect, keeping in constant contact with players. The result is a fantastic, deeply enjoyable game that you will keep coming back to. DANIEL WILKS