Also on: Nintendo Switch
Publisher: inkle
Developer: inkle
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E10+
inkle have shown time and again that when it comes to Choose Your Own Adventure-style games, they’re pretty much in a league of their own. 80 Days was a brilliant reimagining of a classic Jules Verne novel, while Overboard was a mischievous twist on mystery novels that saw you trying to help a murderer get away with her crime. Expelled! Is inkle’s latest outing, and it’s every bit as good as what we’ve come to expect from them.
In some respects, Expelled! is the more straightforward flip side to Overboard: where in Overboard you were trying to bluff your way out of a murder charge, in Expelled! you’re trying to prove your innocence. Your character, Verity Amersham, has been accused of the attempted murder of her school’s Head Girl on her last day of school, and she has only a few hours to prove she didn’t do it.
Of course, Expelled! being an inkle game, there’s a lot more to it than such a simple premise. You have the power to move the story forward as you see fit, while also having to be mindful of the clock that’s always ticking down towards your possible expulsion – and, what’s more, remembering that every choice you make impacts all your possible future choices, since all the other characters in the game are also moving around as the day progresses.
As such, Expelled! isn’t just a game of trying different branches and seeing what results from each one, it’s figuring out how to manage your time in a way that will help you solve the murder (and lots of other mysteries besides). It’s an intriguing twist on the traditional Choose Your Own Adventure genre, and, like 80 Days and Overboard before it, it works extremely well thanks to a good cast of characters, a great setting, and an appropriately twisty plot.
That said, Expelled! isn’t quite perfect. It can be awfully easy to get stuck on a path you know (from trial and error) is leading to ruin, and without saves or a reward button, you just have to let the story play out even though you know where it’s heading. There are also a few choices that don’t seem to have an obvious cause-and-effect, which means that the game can be a little frustrating when you’re sure you’ve finally figured things out, only for it to go sideways very quickly.
But Expelled!’s story is good enough that, even with those annoyances, you’ll always find yourself coming back for more. With a story that keeps you engaged and guessing to the end (whichever end you uncover), Expelled! is a worthy successor to inkle’s previous glories, and it’s the kind of game that every mystery fan needs to play.
inkle provided us with an Expelled! PC code for review purposes.
