Curious Expedition 2 Review

Overview

Curious Expedition 2 is unique enough that it’s difficult to characterize in simple terms. It’s a mixture of rogue-lite, turn-based dice battler, RPG, board game, storytelling generator, and survival game.

You take on expeditions exploring mysterious islands that appear and disappear amid a strange purple fog. Your group can consist of a variety of individuals with a bunch of varied professions. You can even bring along animals, such as hunting dogs and pack mules, or try your hand at taming more fantastical beasts.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

The islands are procedurally generated. You have to find a way to navigate the various terrain, survive the challenges each island presents to you, and contend with its various hostile creatures in and out of combat. All while keeping your various crew members happy and loyal.

Various factors such as hunger or fatigue are all distilled down into a singular attribute, sanity. If your group’s sanity gets too low, bad things start to happen. Maybe the stress causes someone to simply drop some items, or maybe you wake up one morning to find that one crew member has turned to cannibalism and eaten one of your other companions.

Your choices and actions mixed with the random events and how you interact with the inhabitants of each island form the unique stories of your adventures. The highs and lows, your successes, and your failures. It’s all the result of the actions you choose to take.

There is a meaningful weight to your decisions. In how you choose to navigate the island, how greedy you choose to be, and the morality you embody.

I reviewed Curious Expedition 2 alongside its three DLCs. Highlands of Avalon, Shores of Tashi, and Robots of Lux. The full package turned out to be, not just one of my favorite games but one of my favorite games of all time.

Gideon’s Bias	Curious Expedition 2 Information
Review Copy Used: No	Publisher: Thunderful Publishing
Hours Played: 60+	Type: Full Game
Reviewed On: Xbox Series X	Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Turn-Based Rogue-lite Strategy & Survival
Mode Played: Normal and Hard	Price: $19.99 ($27.99 for the game and DLC bundle)

Let’s Talk Colonialism

As much as I’d like to dive right into why Curious Expedition 2 ignites my inner Indiana Jones. I’d be remiss to not address the potentially problematic aspects of that idea in the first place. The entire concept relies on meddling in lands that aren’t your own, and at times stealing from or screwing over the populace there. Hell, the basis for the game’s entire story begins with the tampering of a device that unleashes the purple fog and likely dooms the entire island it’s on.

I’m not super qualified to talk about this subject. But I can at least drop some facts and give my perspective on it. Every island you visit in Curious Expedition 2 is home to various and unique tribal factions, and yes, they do often have stereotypical depictions. You can be friendly to these tribes, hostile, or somewhere in between. You will interact with them in events, trade with them, perform quests for their chieftains, sleep in their villages, and, if relations go sour, fight them.

In addition to completing your objectives, you are also always trying to increase your fame. The best way to increase your fame is by bringing back treasure.

Each island is filled with burial grounds, temples, and other key locations that are usually important to these tribes. Naturally, these sites also have treasures that you can steal. There are several playstyles you can employ. Everything from a treasure-robbing plunderer, a big game hunter, a pacifistic negotiator, and anywhere in between.

The game depicts actions like stealing from the natives as both bad and good, and at this point, we have to make a distinction between gameplay and morality. Curious Expedition 2 depicts these acts as morally wrong. Stealing from a temple, for example, almost always causes an immediate consequence. Volcanos might erupt, or maybe a giant pit swallows the area.

From a gameplay standpoint, however, you are rewarded with more fame. It’s a risk versus reward decision. The things that make you richer, make the locals angry with you and trigger ecological disasters that can maim or even kill your crew members if you don’t escape from them. But knowing when to be greedy and when to play it safe is a large part of the game’s strategy. That is separate from the morality aspects of it.

Problematic content in games isn’t always a net negative. You aren’t going to shed a tear about mowing down a line of pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto, for example. But the difference is, that everyone knows that’s bad, and the games never try to paint it as a morally good thing. When it comes to native tribes that obviously mirror real-life people and history, it’s about whether or not the inclusion was respectfully done.

Is that the case in Curious Expedition 2? As a dude with skin so pale it nearly bursts into flames under five seconds of sunlight, that’s not for me to say. But what I can say is, that the allure of exploration is an attractive adventure aspect in fiction. There’s nothing wrong with that. The idea of exploring an uncharted land, surviving fantastical beasts, and bringing home that buried treasure is simply exciting.

You should just be self-aware about the reality of the situation. In real life, pretty much all “uncharted lands” were home to people who were there before anyone began charting them. In almost every single case, those people were screwed over badly by explorers, and colonizers. You are mirroring a lot of that history in the game.

Just like you know that gunning down people in a Bank in Grand Theft Auto is bad, so is what you doing in Curious Expedition 2. That doesn’t however, make the “You” holding the controller bad, just the in-universe actions of the characters you’re playing as.

I also want to note that from a diversity standpoint, I think the game does quite well. Your crew can come from many ethnicities, and the native islanders can even join your crew. Members can be male or female, and one of the leaders you can choose from a DLC is genderfluid. Sexism is a negative trait that crew members can have, but it’s depicted as a bad thing that will cause you gameplay problems down the road.

Fortune & Glory

Curious Expedition 2 has multiple layers to its gameplay, but the center of it all is the challenge of exploring dangerous islands to fulfill an objective without dying and while gaining as much fame as possible. This happens through a number of phases.

In the first phase, you’re safe and sound in Paris, and here is where you will start preparing for your trip. You can recruit new crew members at the bar, and visit an arms dealer as well as the various clubs.

The clubs sponsor your expeditions, and you choose one to sponsor you before every trip. The higher your reputation with a club, the more items, and special recruits they have available to purchase using tickets. Tickets are earned from your fame. The Royal Avalon society feels like your stereotypical high-class aristocrats. The Tashi Academy focuses more on the supernatural, while Lux Labs are more technological by nature.

Once you choose a mission, your sponsor offers you provisions to purchase from an allowance budget. These items can help in combat, aid in navigation, or simply feed your group to help refill your sanity. Many items are club-specific based on your reputation with your sponsor. For example, The Tashi Academy offers magic scrolls that allow you to alter the terrain.

Once you’re packed and prepped, your team lands on the shores of an unknown island. These islands can have many forms, but you do know the theme ahead of time. It could be a dense jungle island, a hot desert climate complete with roving sandworms, or even an island lost in time where dinosaurs still reign supreme.

Once your boots are on the ground, it’s up to you to combine your preparation with careful decision-making to get the job done. After which you return to Paris with a new perk, and hopefully more fame under your belt which means more tickets to spend on the next expedition.

The prep and planning make the game a satisfying strategic endeavor before you ever step foot on an island while also offering a great progression system. Your crew members level up over time, and you can purchase and upgrade all kinds of gear to try and complement your current playstyles.

The clubs offer incremental but exciting new additions as you build your reputation with each one of them and it really helps fine-tune the particular direction you want to go for a given group of explorers. It’s a lot of fun and forms a cohesive whole with the other part of the game, the actual exploration.

Walking a Thousand Miles

Once your team ventures into the great unknown, the game maintains its focus on planning and management but in a very different way. The most prominent threat you face is the group’s sanity. Sanity is an abstraction of your group’s well-being, be it hunger, stress, exhaustion, or whatever.

The islands take the form of a hexagonal board, and each hex your team traverses lowers your sanity. Difficult terrain, such as jungles or hills drains more than flat grasslands or beaches.

Not only that, each terrain type has a start movement cost, an amount of sanity you pay when your group first moves each “turn”. This means that you spend more sanity by repeatedly stopping and going than by taking one fluid path to a destination.

Planning your routes is pivotal to maintaining your sanity. At the same time, days tick by with every movement, and the purple fog draws ever closer to the island as time passes.

You have to carefully weigh your options between conserving your sanity, taking faster routes, traveling to lucrative points of interest, or avoiding danger. Perhaps one route is fast and easy on your group, but requires you to walk through a sulfuric river, carnivorous plants, or right by a hungry tiger.

The items you choose to bring, as well as your crew members’ professions, affect your sanity drain. A Donkey, for example, not only carries more items but helps ease some traversal costs. Equipping a machete allows you to carve a path through jungles while bringing some climbing picks makes it easier to climb plateaus.

If you run out of sanity, each hex your group moves can invite disaster. Maybe you end up sleeping on a nest of fire ants, or one of your companions ends up with a rather suspicious bite mark. You can regain sanity by resting in a safe location or native village, and by consuming certain items, like food. Hunting animals for meat is one such option if you have brought along a cook or field kitchen. Others can have risky effects, such as licking a psychedelic toad.

You are in a constant war of attrition. Planning, preparation, and well-measured decision-making can take you a long way. But your sanity will eventually give out if you take too long and the purple fog consumes the island. The unique focus on careful traversal is not something I’ve really seen before and works incredibly well, especially because the board isn’t completely static.

Predators roam the islands, volcanos erupt, and your own actions can trigger cataclysmic events that can alter your plans. Especially when you factor in the need to not only complete an objective but to bring back treasure to increase your fame. You also have the option to retreat, assuming you can make it back to your ship, however, your sponsor will take everything you bring back for no reward for failing the expedition.

It’s wonderfully cerebral in a different way from pretty much any other game I’ve played.

Skill Dice

Exploring the island is one thing, interacting with it is another and often requires you to make choices or skill checks. Skill checks will feel familiar to anyone who has played an adventure board game or TTRPG. Challenges such as searching for loot, avoiding traps, or being persuasive need a certain number of successes based on attributes such as strength, dexterity, or mental ability.

These attributes take the form of different colored dice faces, and the dice you have available to roll depend entirely on your group and the equipment you have outfitted them with. A Hunting dog, for example, offers a lot of green dexterity dice faces, in addition to granting a bonus when hunting.

Taking advantage of your group’s unique makeup while avoiding their weak points is a large strategic part of the game. Combat uses the same dice. But each face also has a combat effect, be it damage, shielding the party, or inflicting status ailments.

The types of people and beasts in your group and how you outfit them have a drastic effect on how you fight in combat. Some compositions might have a distinct advantage in skill challenges and traveling the islands but struggle in combat, and that’s intended. As the mere threat of combat is something you have to factor in.

Combat is dangerous, crew members aren’t killed outright if they are reduced to zero HP, but if you flee a fight while they are at 0 HP, they die. Even coming away victorious means wounds may become infected, and infections that aren’t dealt with swiftly turn lethal quickly.

At the same time, there’s a lot of depth and nuance to the combat. Higher-level characters or weapons can have their abilities boosted by sacrificing dice rolls of the same color, and it’s not limited by person. For example, I could boost a machete attack made by a big game hunter with the bite dice from a hunting dog.

The effects of the boost are based on the specific ability being boosted. So you always have to weigh the effects of boosting versus the ability offered by the dice you’re sacrificing.

I really enjoy the spectrum of threat levels that combat can encompass between runs. Sometimes I’m willing to dive headlong into battle for the loot and trophies that it offers because that’s the type of team I’ve nurtured. Other times I’m less combat-focused and have to get creative about how I avoid predators. Such as altering the terrain with a scroll, stunning them with a trap, or even turning the negative effects of my thievery against them.

A T-Rex is as vulnerable to a sudden flood of water as I am. As long as I can get myself to safety, stealing from a temple that floods the area when I do can offer me a strategic, but risky option. It’s all part of what makes Curious Expedition 2 so great. The breadth of tactical options to tackle unpredictable challenges.

Team Effort

As I’ve mentioned before. Your capabilities are a culmination of your crew and equipment. It all starts with your choice of a unique leader. Your leader not only determines your initial strengths and crew, but a distinct playstyle.

For example, the Cartographer gains extra fame for mapping out the islands. The more of an island you uncover, the more fame you earn. The Anthroplogist on the other hand, writes about the various tribes that inhabit the island. The more you interact with them, the more fame you earn. On the more nefarious side, the Plunderer can’t sleep in tribal villages at all but gets extra fame for stolen treasure and can split up extra treasure between the crew to gain sanity.

Beyond that, you can obtain all sorts of people and beasts for your crew. Each one comes with specific dice for combat and skill challenges and other inherent bonuses. These range from soldiers who are good with guns, street rats who can steal, cooks who make meals out of raw meat, translators who help you gain favor with the natives, and more.

Animals such as dogs, horses, and mules can join your party as well as tamed wild animals such as Elephants. Steal an egg from a dinosaur nest and you may end up with one on your team. The various natives can also join you, including the non-human ones such as lizardfolk, or moles. The sheer variety of crew members you can have, and the degree to which they affect the gameplay is really impressive.

Your crew can have or develop flaws, such as a fear of heights, or alcoholism. They can also gain or lose loyalty to you based on the events that occur as you play. These events slowly but surely, tell a story unique to your run.

I witnessed my nurse and sailor become lovers. Only for my nurse to turn cannibal and eat her partner a few expeditions later. I’ve had crew members get angry with me and leave, only to find them weeks later, sometimes in danger, and have them offer to rejoin my crew.

Nothing that happens is completely in a vacuum when looked at narratively. My decision to have my soldier search a shipwreck and get injured led to an infection that I only narrowly saved him from by negotiating with a tribe that I had wronged earlier.

I had to trade away a lot of valuable items to obtain the mushroom that would save his life. That same soldier later turned into an abomination when we had no choice but to enter the purple fog to get to safety, and we had to fight him to the death. If I still had the items I traded away, I could have avoided the fog altogether. As the expedition leader, there is a serious weight to your decisions, and no matter how random an event may be, the outcomes always feel like the result of a call you made.

While not to the level of a game like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, there is a degree of organic storytelling in Curious Expedition 2 that evolves based on the choices you make, even if those choices are made for purely gameplay-related reasons.

Verdict

One of the most interesting things about Curious Expedition 2 is how it’s nearly infinitely replayable. Even as events feel more familiar to you, no two expeditions feel the same, and that’s without factoring in the varied islands and the unique challenges and dangers found between them.

The gameplay is also centered in such a way that it never really gets tiresome within that replayability, largely due to its board game-centric design. Each trek is like facing down a challenge many adventure board games would pose to you. All without the physical setup or fiddliness that a detailed real-life board game would entail.

Adding to that replayable nature are multiple difficulty settings and modes. The story mode itself is already highly replayable and offers an endless mode for any crew you use to beat it. Then there is a director mode, that has no storyline and just lets you tackle increasingly challenging expeditions to acquire a high fame score.

There’s also a neat multiplayer competition where a weekly challenge is posted and players simply engage with it by completing optional objectives for the club they wish to support and are awarded hats for doing so.

Beyond the potentially icky representation of colonialism, there’s only one complaint I have. The fact the developers have moved on to other projects. The three DLCs that they released are fantastic. But Curious Expedition 2 is one hell of an expandable canvas, and it’s one of few games where I’d be happy to see numerous other DLCs released for it. Not because it feels incomplete, it absolutely doesn’t. But because it has a near-infinite number of directions it could expand in.

That’s not a true complaint, however, just me being a petulant baby. As nit-picky as I tend to be, the entire game gels with me to such a degree that I have next to nothing to nitpick.

Curious Expedition 2 offers such a satisfying level of strategic decision-making and replay value within the confines of a totally unique gameplay loop that it’s easily one of the most cerebrally enjoyable games I’ve ever played.

I’m giving it my Golden Shield Award.