The game The Curious Expedition was overall for me not that enjoyable. I loved the pixel art, the story adventuring was great, the combat system used a fresh and interesting mechanic. The major problem was that the game lacked my desired level of strategic depth and instead relied (I felt) overly on RNG which could ruin a playthrough far too often. The secondary issue was also RNG related in the generated levels and encounters lacked a certain spark, after just a few sessions they became bland and again the RNG nature of the game jerked me out of immersion.

I’ve been working casually on game design and pixel art for decades now. After finishing my Mechanical Engineering degree I have had some time to kill while job hunting. I had previously worked on a very simple platformer outline using cavesofgallet by Adam Saltsman, it was fun and interesting enough, but had no combat and lacked meaningful gameplay. I had also had a dabbled in a physical dice-based game similar to The Curious Expedition’s combat, basically RPG Yahtzee, the idea was strong but it lacked a compelling background. It dawned on me one day that using the platformer outline system I had made as a Metroidvania style progression system for the dice-combat game might make a kind of good-gameplay Frankenstein. It was also well within the scope of my abilities, unlike many other similar attempts (see Hated Space).

I have been working hard since then to get all the mechanics, lore, art, and content together for a playtest demo. I am always open to changing or adding mechanics of the game, within reason. The next few updates will contain some thoughts I have on major Game Design decision and problems related to the game. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them.