Curious Expedition -- 19th C. Pulp FTL

Send historical adventurers like Richard Burton, Charles Darwin, and Freya Stark on expeditions through randomly generated landscapes populated with native villages, mysterious ruins, and motherlovin’ dinosaurs.

Watch the video.

Now repeat after me… IT’S ONLY IN ALPHA. THE GAME IS NOT FINISHED. I SHOULD REALLY WAIT TO BUY THIS.

But if you choke on those words, you can get the early access for $12 and be playing on Nov 27.

Pocket Tactics has good things to say about the alpha version and reports that it will come to tablet sometime in 2015.

I do really want to buy this. A lot.

That looks super intriguing, very excited to see how it comes along, but the description on their website makes it sound really early.

Probably the biggest missing feature is a dedicated skill-check mechanic.

Maybe that’s not as important as it sounds, but from the outside it seems like a pretty central part of the gameplay.

Boughtinated. Love it. Here’s an account of my first curious expedition, led by Charles Darwin himself!

Sounds a bit like Sunless Sea except for the sea part.

This is free to play for the weekend! Really f-ing excited to try it.

It’s weird, FTL gives me anxiety due to crew deaths, buy Curious Expedition doesn’t, and it’s AWESOME to boot.

That’s because you’ve always pictures yourself as more of a Jean-Luc Picard and less of a Marie Curie.

Exaaaaaaaaactly!

Thanks for the heads up! This is really neat. I love that the focus isn’t combat yet still seems quite interesting. Excited to see where this ends up.

Wow, this is a fun little game, but does anyone know what to do when surrounded by mountains and you don’t have any dynamite? The Golden Pyramid must lie beyond the mountains, but I don’t see a way to quit the expedition.

I like the premise a lot (very close to a game that I plan to do on Android some day). The balance is still very much off, though. Some expeditions are laughably easy, others are pretty much impossible. Has potential, though. Definitely has potential.

Very annoying that there isn’t any tutorial for the combat, though.

Seriously are some of the sounds in the intro music out of key?

The EA releases on Steam today. The developer claims it’s almost cooked. Any thoughts on the latest build?

I think the balance is much better than it was a couple of months ago.

I saw on Twitter that Tom is playing this. I guess Sunless Sea isn’t the only game he’ll break his Early Access taboo for…

What’s the scoop on combat? The tutorial doesn’t cover it and I feel I’m just randomly clicking on dice.

Mr. 123, they patched in new tutorial tooltips to explain combat. Basically, you need certain combos for attacks and defensive moves. When you roll the dice, any dice that are jittering can be part of a combo. Click the jittering dice and they’ll move to the right side of the screen. When you have dice eligible for a combo, the name of the combo appears along with how much damage/defense it gives you. Click the name to execute it.

I wish they listed the combos somewhere. It’s like trying to craft in an MMO with no recipes. A lot of it is intuitive, though. For instance, a sword needs a hand. A gun can combine with bullets. I’m not sure what the eyes and brains represent. Some of my leveled up party members get gold bordered dice that obviously mean something, but I have no idea what.

I seriously love what this game is trying to do, but that makes some of the weird decision all the more frustrating. Why do I start an expedition smack dab in the middle of land? Why isn’t there some sort of time management with supplies or food? Why can’t I bail on a struggling expedition rather than wandering around until my characters start going mad and eating each other? Why can’t I get tooltips when I need to make certain important decisions? So I finally decided “fuck it” and just uninstalled the game. I’m going to wait until it’s done, because right now I’m not sure what annoyances are just a matter of the game being in alpha and what annoyances I’m going to have to learn to live with.

It’s funny that you mention Sunless Sea, because I think I prefer the gameplay in this to the gameplay in Sunless Sea. Why can’t Sunless Sea with its superlative atmosphere, writing, and world-building be this snappy and addictive?

-Tom

Yeah, I found Sunless Sea, for lack of a better term, to just be a drag. I like challenging, but Sunless Sea makes it very difficult to even get started. This thread brings to mind a game I have fond memories of, Seven Cities of Gold. I’d love for this to turn out great.