In this strategic rogue-like you become a famous expedition leader in the 19th century. You form your own crew with the skills and personality to discover legendary treasures, while exploring randomized locations and stories on every new adventure.
Reviews
It's genuinely great, like, it's one of my favorite games this year so far. It's got so much going for it, so much depth, so much character, so much replayability, great systems, unique concepts in combat, awesome presentation...
TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit
Heres where I start to love Renowned Explorers. The encounters arent just a paper/rock/scissors system of aggressive, friendly, or devious. The more pertinent choice is whether youre going to talk or fight. Either approach has distinct rules, with some characters suited to one or the other.
100 Quartertothree - Tom Chick
...Renowned Explorers still stands as one of the best surprises of the year so far that wannabe adventurers of any age can enjoy. Encountering some thugs but instead of fighting, it just turns into one great big insult throwing contest where the loser runs away, foaming at the mouth. Brilliant.
85 Gamewatcher - John Paul Jones
Looks pretty cool. To me it seems a bit too mechanical instead of going for an immersive sandbox exploration expedition simulator which is something I would love as a concept. A lot of people like the sort of game that have almost boardgame-like rules that are well balanced and complex, but it's not my favorite.
It's got a really fun, upbeat vibe to it. The art, music, voice acting, story and the interface and mechanics are all really polished so there's little to get annoyed about or frustrated at unlike a lot of other games. It's easy to get into, there's lot of booty and treasures to look for but there's actually a lot of intricacies to scoring big if that's your goal, so it's not simple like you will get bored after a few runs. As your characters achieve different level of professions, you will unlock more hidden storylines and treasures, some of those sequence of events can be quite absorbing, surprising or funny. The encounter (battle) system is unique in that there is a current mood to the encounter which you or AI can change which can give you bonus/penalty, so it's not just trying to maximize your attacks and dealing big hits ASAP. Sometimes retreating and using your lesser attacks are actually the best moves though it may not be immediately obvious, even after I have done it. The expedition maps are randomized so no two games are exactly the same (some treasures and challenges are the same but they are in different locations). There is a real risk/reward feel to exploring almost every node. The story you unlock help create a real sense of adventure in a way. The devs are passionate and care a lot about the game, really friendly and approachable on steam forum too.
I picked up Renowned Explorers shortly after release, mostly because I played an older game of the same developers that was pretty good ("Reus", sort of a puzzle god game).
Renowned Explorers is a nice "choose your own adventure" style game with the interesting twist that the combat system isn't just whacking at enemy. Instead you have "encounters" that you can resolve in three different ways (violence, deception, diplomacy). These are, sort of, set up as rock-paper-scissor, BUT the game has a mood system (both for encounters and characters), so it's not as simple as "use violence against diplomacy".
It has been a while since I played the game, so I can't 100% recall how the mechanics worked, but it was something like this:
Every encounter has a "mood" indicator for the global mood and and an indicator for the mood of each party.
The starting moods (both global and your party) are defined by your first action. Everything after that alters the global mood and the acting party's mood - so if you start with a "diplomatic" attack/action, the global mood will turn "friendly" and your party's mood will become "helpful" (or something like that).
The global moods have modifiers that alter the effect and power of your abilities/attacks. For example, if you are in "diplomatic" global mood, all "deceptive" attacks are weaker, all "diplomatic" abilities are stronger, but "violence" attacks also get extra damage.
But the first "violence" attack will also drasticly shift the mood (iirc depending on how much damage you have done). This can also create some sort of hybrid/inbetween global moods ("uncertain", "escalating", etc) that have special modifiers on their own.
Both sides can influence the global mood, so you also want to react to what your enemies are doing. If they use mostly "diplomatic" attacks, it might be good to use some "deception" ones to keep the global mood in a state of uncertainty, because a "friendly" global mood would boost their "diplomatic" attacks/abilities.
Now certain enemies have certain attack types. So if you know, for example, that the ghosts you are facing use "deception" attacks, you want to try to bring the mood to "friendly", where these attacks are weaker. If you face of against the femme fatale from your rival expedition, you want to set up a mood where diplomacy is weak - and then stab her with your sword once it actually shifts to "friendly".
On top of that, each character can also have different moods (but these are different from the global ones and usually alter stats). For example, if you use your "charm" ability on a bully, he starts to get into "friendly" mood, dealing less "violence" damage, but also getting higher "speech defence". Or you heal/buff your ally, which makes them "confident" (less "deception" defence, but better chance to hit).
And lastely, most encouners offer different rewards depending on the global mood when it is over. If you manage to resolve the fight against the femme fatal diplomatically, you might get a few extra "influence" tokens, while violence will yield more "reputation" tokens - and deceptive might just get less overall.
Here is an example for the combat UI:
Spoiler:
So the combat system alone is a reason to give that game a try. But, wait, that's not all:
Before each game create your own party of 3 characters, chosen from a roster of 25 total, 5 from each category. Each character belongs to a specific category (scientist, scout, fighter, speaker) and has unique stats, abilities and perks. They can also level up during your adventure (but XP doesn't carry over between games), allowing you to unlock even more abiltiies.
You also have to designate a captain leading the expedition, and each character has a unique effect when leading an expedition. Initially you just have 4 (iirc) available, but if you finish enough campaigns with a character in your party, they are unlocked as well.
Since each characer has unique attack / ability combinations, you can design parties with vastly different focus. Some combinations are great for diplomacy, some are good at violence. If you want, you can stack up 3 speakers to weasle your way through encounters. Or you stack up 3 scientists and use their extra research to get all the fancy stuff that boosts your party. Or.. ...well, you get the idea.
Example:
Spoiler:
On top of that you have "choose your own adventure" style expeditions that take place on randomized location templates (so each adventure is different). There are also some hidden / sidequest things that can appear (e.g. you can find the grave of an old Viking and get a special artifact for your collection).
The campaign map (tutorial misson):
Spoiler:
The number between the connections show how many supplies you need to get there. Supplies are refilled between expeditions and aact as limiter, so you can't explore everything. You can actually push your luck and run out if you want to explore more, but that bestows nasty debuffs (for the rest of the expedition) on a party member each time you are short. The other icons give you an idea what you can expect at that location (and you get a tooltip for more detail).
Most encounters give you different options and sometimes you can take special actions depending on the classes or abilities available in your party.
Spoiler:
Inbetween your expeditions, you can turn the "tokens" you find into ressources and use these to research stuff (think of it like the CIV5 social policy trees), to hire an entourage (that increases token gain during missions), you can unlock new locations (better stuff, better entourage to hire, etc) or you can just buy items that boost stats or give special abilities.
The artstyle is quite lovely, sorta reminds me of The Banner Saga. I'd recommend to watch Total Biscuit's video to get an idea how it looks in motion:
If there is one thing to criticize, it's that I would have liked more expeditions. I think the game had like 9 or 10 on release (and a free one was added shortly thereafter), but the way missions are made available means that you never had more than 3 viable choices (the campaign lasts 5 expeditions, iirc). So that can get a bit old after a while.
Still, for the rather low price it's a great game that you certainly should try if the idea of a Rogue-light RPG / choose your own adventure game focused on exploration and archaeology sounds interesting to you.
It's one year anniversary for Renowned Explorers, and there's a special going on steam, 50% off the bundle ($12.50) and 60% off for base game ($8). There's a new patch to go with the anniversary, they have been adding a few more changes and treasures to the latter expeditions so they are a bit different to how they were 2 months ago when the last expansion comes out. Another new expansion has been announced in the stream last night though no details yet. The game is still being fixed and patched every few weeks so minor new contents are regularly added even without the expansion.
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