Expelled! is the visual novel I've been craving
Expelled!, the latest narrative mystery game from inkle studios, makers of other fine products with exclamation marks in the titles, such as Overboard! and Sorcery!, is the epitome of their visual novel turned rogue-like style. It’s a little bit Clue, a little bit visual novel, and a lot bit adventure game.
In Expelled!, you play as Verity Amersham, a young girl in Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls. You begin the game by allegedly pushing Louisa Hardcastle, champion field hockey player and unintelligible dolt, out a 15th century stained glass window. You have until the end of the school day to prove your innocence…or find a more compelling scapegoat.
The school is an elaborate piece of clockwork, each student and teacher has a pre-defined routine: assembly in the morning, geometry, followed by gym class, lunch, then Latin. You’ll explore the grounds, pick up items and clues, then talk to your classmates to learn more about what’s going on. The day ends with the end-of-term prize-giving ceremony where Verity will most likely receive the rarest of prizes: expulsion.
Like Overboard!, Expelled! is meant to be played over and over again; there are just too many people to talk to, too many places to visit, and too many mysteries to uncover in a single run. You’ll need to appear in locations at different times or use prior knowledge to have conversations earlier, slowly discovering the weird schedules of students and revealing the motives of the people around you. Each run can last around 30-45 minutes and you’ll end up learning something new most of the time.
I mentioned earlier that Expelled! is a narrative rogue-like and I only meant that half-jokingly. The game is a choice-based visual novel. You choose rooms of the school to visit, then chat with the people there or interact with the environment in some way. The people and items you can pick up are always in the same places at the same time, unless you do something to change that, so the real puzzle of Expelled! is figuring out how to manipulate the world to offer you new information. So long as you find your “Filth Book”, Verity’s secret book of rumors, you can record all the new information you discover and store it for your next run. Everything else will reset at the end of the day.
You’re managing the schedules of Verity and more than ten additional characters, so things can get hectic, but the game has a series of hint-like goals that coax you along the path to reveal new information. For the most part, I’ve found the goals to be just enough of a hint to make me sit and think about how to achieve it without getting frustrated, though I’ve certainly struggled to achieve some of them. None of the goals required an excessive amount of steps to achieve, but there were two particular ones that caused me some trouble.
And, if the goal system isn’t working for you, you should probably lean into your devilish side and select the dialogue options that most remind me of Mass Effect 2’s renegade interrupt system. The game keeps track of the awful stuff you’ve done in pursuit of your crime with a morality meter in the upper left; the only way to get ahead in Expelled! is to lie, swear, and practice witchcraft to a better ending.
I’ve spent close to seven hours playing during my commutes and evening couch time and I’ve found the pacing to be pretty solid. There’ve been a few wasted runs, but for the most part I’ve poked around and started being less precious about restarting, which has helped.
Expelled! feels like inkle took every gripe I had about Overboard! (the constant repetition and mostly unchanging narrative) and found a unique solution. Halfway through my playtime I stumbled on something that completely changed my perspective on what this game is trying to do; let’s just say your morality meter can go beyond 100. By your third run, it becomes clear that Verity isn't the sweet, innocent girl you start the game as, and her unreliability allows the game to reframe and reposition events. As you tick off your goals, you'll discover new dialogue options or see the intro cutscene through a slightly different lens, revealing a new mystery to solve.
My favorite thing about Expelled! is how everything becomes a mystery because, like a good Sherlock story, you know everything has a use. I’m not just playing to figure out how to avoid being expelled, I’m figuring out what to do with my compact mirror and hairbrush: items I still don’t know what do with, even after finishing the game. Those tiny, satisfying mysteries also help soften the need for the grand conclusion to pay off like Knives Out, while also making me more and more confident it’ll stick the landing (it does).
inkle really nailed it with Expelled!; the mystery is compelling and filled with exciting twists and turns, the gameplay is Overboard! perfected, and the game is beautiful to look at. You may have a few blips of frustration solving a goal or two, but you always end up learning something so it never feels like a loss. I honestly never expected Bully 2 to come out, but here it is: a mobile-friendly narrative rogue-like. Now if only I could figure out where to hide this bloody hockey stick.
