(Or How I Became The World's Greatest Explorer)
Pictured: Me, explorin'
PreambleWhat is this game?The Curious Expedition, developed by Maschinen-Mensch! Alpha Version 0.29.1.0 "The End is Nigh."
What's it about?It's a turn-based exploration Roguelike, with a dice-based combat system and Choose Your Own Adventure-style vignettes, done in the pixel art fashion. It's got the feel of a board game. You play an explorer of the 19th century and journey to distant lands in search of fame, fortune and anthropological and cartographical glory! You navigate across procedurally-generated jungles, wastelands and deserts meeting the locals, fighting off the wildlife (or the locals), exploring ruins, admiring (or looting...) their treasures and more. You race against other explorers over the course of several expeditions, always striving to be the first to discover the Golden Pyramid in your region. Graciously donate the priceless cultural relics of indigenous people to the British Museum and become the most famous, written-about and beloved explorer of all!
But woe betide any explorer who isn't prepared for the rigors of their quest for fame....and knowledge, I guess? Starvation, madness, death and maybe even worse await them.
Is this a historically accurate game?In case the "Golden Pyramids" bit didn't answer this question already, no. Not unless Nikola Tesla spent a year or so of his life running around the Dark Continent with a sci-fi laser pistol, or Marie Curie had enough time between discovering radioactivity and winning Nobel Prizes to fight off a pack of hyenas in South America, or Charles Darwin's explorations consisted of chewing a shit ton of Coca Leaves and hanging out with a Shaman who cast actual magic at his enemies. (Well, maybe he did at that, I dunno, he WAS pretty badass.) This is a somewhat silly, fun game about adventure, exploration, cannibalism and dinosaurs.
Pictured: Not TECHNICALLY a pyramid. Also not golden. Still awesome though.
What can I expect from this Let's Play?Hopefully a good story and enjoyable blow-by-blow of my playthrough. I've already played the game and taken all my screenshots. Each post will be one of my expeditions.
Are there Cliffs Notes, TLDR?Actually, there is of a sorts. The game outputs a log to a website when you play your game. If you wanna read ahead, you can find it
here.Anything I should know about this playthrough?A few things. One is that screen shots did not capture my cursor at any point. So it can sometimes be hard to tell what I'm indicating at. The info boxes that show on the screen and the brown color of the selected text should get you by. Secondly, this is a normal difficulty playthrough so excuse the bombast, it's all in character. Thirdly, this is an Early Access game on Steam that is due to release soon (hence the version name) but a couple bugs occurred for a pretty critical event which, had they actually worked as expected, would have drastically changed this playthrough. Not sure why they didn't occur, maybe there's some game element I'm missing still. I've played several games of this now but I'm still fairly new to it. So there is some potential buginess in my playthrough I think. And a couple stupid mistakes by me.
When I interject with green text, it's to talk /OOC and mechanics. Lastly, some of the humor might get a little ethnocentric on rare occasion. It's all meant in jest.
Anything you'd like help with?I'm all about period-correct dialog where I know it. So if something would blantantly not be called "X" in the 19th century, by all means, mention it.
Any recommended listening?I think the game's OST is quite good and for the most part thematic.