The Curious Expedition - Hands On Early Alpha

There's a lot of back and for around here about what exactly constitutes an RPG. Upcoming roguelike The Curious Expedition -- which is exploration-based and as far as I can tell completely combat-free -- may push that boundary, but to me the player-directed story makes it qualify. Plus, wandering around on an 8-bit-looking world map. The feels.

My first few moments with The Curious Expedition were almost misleadingly delightful. Set in the 19th century, I was told to pick from a selection of charming pixel renderings of historical figures [you can play as Madame Curie] and dropped into the world, with the only stated goal of exploring the strange new randomly generated land I had found myself in. It was welcoming, colourful, and hiding a whole host of things that wanted to kill me.

The Curious Expedition is all about exploring a randomly generated set of hex tiles, finding villages, caves, people and roaming animals to interact with… This person wants payment if you’re going to stay the night, but do you want to stay in the cave full of human remains? Is it safe to eat these strange fruits?

When an expedition begins, you’ll know the location of a single native village and the area immediately around your party. The needle of your compass is swinging wildly, indicating that you have no idea which way to go … Every new tile that you uncover adds to you knowledge of the region and the more you learn, the more accurate your compass becomes.

The game just entered alpha -- privately the through its German developer, not on Steam for once -- so you can see if it falls off the edge of your own private map of the genre.


More information.

Sounds interesting, though for me its not a RPG, but an adventure. I like exploration, so I might give the game a try. The reviews will tell.

Looks awesome, looking forward to it. Hope the random factor isn't too high. Loved the balance in FTL between randomness and skill.