While everyone includes other reviewers on the blog were getting hyped about 'Darkest Dungeon' I was getting excited about Renowned Explorers. The two games are light and dark versions of one another actually and I just happened to fall on this side of the coin when both games finally published.
Renowned Explorers is an indie game developed and published by Abbey Games and is exclusively only playable on a PC, but it is available of all of the three major operating systems.
The art style in the game is fantastic in my opinion. It just drips this really strong sense of whimsy, casual fun and slightly racist undertones. All the characters and expeditions are quite distinct from one another and really bring a sense of scale and variation to the game. The same can't really be said for the sound design or the music of the game, its not that its bad, it is that its kind of irrelevant to what is going on in the game. To illustrate this, I just randomly muted the game one day and just never unmated it ever again and didn't notice a single change in my enjoyment of the game itself.
The meat of the game as is to expected in its mechanics, under that casual looking exterior is a really deep and complex game that allows a player to really try and leverage all the various systems at play. The whole purpose of the game is to become the most famous explorer and this is easier said than done as you've got a limit of five expeditions to do that in.
I don't really want to bog you down explaining the entirety of the mechanics to you, but I'll try and gloss over it all just so that you get a sense of how complex the game really is. The first mechanic is that of the party that you assemble, you've got four different classes of explorers to pick from in order to assemble you're team of three and you can be damn sure that not all parties are created equal. After that you've got the combat itself which you can resolve in three difference way, its essentially a complex game of rock, papers & scissors but its on that you can change your selection of a method to resolve the combat in fairly quickly. Finally, there is the manner in which you acquire and use the resources from your adventures, you can focus more on gold and outfit your party to the nines, or you can focus more of research and have you're party at the cutting edge of exploration, or you can focus on fame and draw more and more people to come with you on your adventures, or you could go crazy and actually try and mix it up and get the best of all three of these worlds.
I'd be lying if I said that my achievement whoreness didn't push me to play this game a bit longer than its shelf life should have had me playing it, but if there wasn't a solid game there to start with then I wouldn't have even made to the point where I started to get completionist pangs. The game is a really solid strategy in the same line of games like XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, Shadowrun and the life, yes it a more whimsical experience but in some ways it is actually a bit more complex than some of these games.
The art style in the game is fantastic in my opinion. It just drips this really strong sense of whimsy, casual fun and slightly racist undertones. All the characters and expeditions are quite distinct from one another and really bring a sense of scale and variation to the game. The same can't really be said for the sound design or the music of the game, its not that its bad, it is that its kind of irrelevant to what is going on in the game. To illustrate this, I just randomly muted the game one day and just never unmated it ever again and didn't notice a single change in my enjoyment of the game itself.
The meat of the game as is to expected in its mechanics, under that casual looking exterior is a really deep and complex game that allows a player to really try and leverage all the various systems at play. The whole purpose of the game is to become the most famous explorer and this is easier said than done as you've got a limit of five expeditions to do that in.
I don't really want to bog you down explaining the entirety of the mechanics to you, but I'll try and gloss over it all just so that you get a sense of how complex the game really is. The first mechanic is that of the party that you assemble, you've got four different classes of explorers to pick from in order to assemble you're team of three and you can be damn sure that not all parties are created equal. After that you've got the combat itself which you can resolve in three difference way, its essentially a complex game of rock, papers & scissors but its on that you can change your selection of a method to resolve the combat in fairly quickly. Finally, there is the manner in which you acquire and use the resources from your adventures, you can focus more on gold and outfit your party to the nines, or you can focus more of research and have you're party at the cutting edge of exploration, or you can focus on fame and draw more and more people to come with you on your adventures, or you could go crazy and actually try and mix it up and get the best of all three of these worlds.
I'd be lying if I said that my achievement whoreness didn't push me to play this game a bit longer than its shelf life should have had me playing it, but if there wasn't a solid game there to start with then I wouldn't have even made to the point where I started to get completionist pangs. The game is a really solid strategy in the same line of games like XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, Shadowrun and the life, yes it a more whimsical experience but in some ways it is actually a bit more complex than some of these games.
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