Unexplored Review: One-eyed One-headed Marigold Monster Murderer (PC)

    One of the first roguelike games I've ever played was Nethack, a game about trying to find the Amulet of Yendor in the Dungeons of Doom, and dying repeatedly. I can't count how many of my wizards died to thing ranging from newts, to water demons, to swarms of friggin' giant bees and ants. It's probably what led me to spending almost 2.5K hours of my life having a small, naked boy kill hideous monsters in his mind by using his tears. The game I'm reviewing today is a bit of column B, but mostly it's column A. It's Ludomotion's top-down dungeon crawler Unexplored!

    The base game has a simple excuse plot: lead your supposedly human character into the dungeon and retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. It doesn't need a huge world-spanning tale explaining why your furry cyclops is seeking the Amulet. No quest for a god or anything. There are also two free DLC missions where you adventure in either the Mines of Moryondor or in the Aliens universe. If you go to that second one, be sure to bring some morning after pills.

    The game starts with letting you customize your character's appearance, along with choosing your class and buying items if you've unlocked those options via achievements. When that's done, you enter the dungeon, where the gameplay takes place in a top-down dungeon crawler. The game is real-time with pause, so the action is constantly moving unless you're looking at your inventory. The interface works fine, although if you want to see the message log, you also have to have your equipment and the primary inventory showing as well, which can clutter up the screen and make it hard to see things on the sides.

Pictured: The inventory and message log.

    Combat in the game works sort of like a real-time version the old puzzle game Deadly Rooms of Death. Your character can use a variety of weapons, and how you fight depends on the weapon. The swords follow the DRoD comparison best, as you hold it out automatically and can run into enemies to poke them with the pointy end. All melee weapons also let you click the respective mouse button to use the weapon in that hand for a different attack, like a lunging stab or a swing. It's a kind of slow-paced, strategic combat where your position counts. You might be able to use a shield in your off-hand to block one enemy while you hack at another with your ax...or you could find yourself running and swinging frantically through a boss or a swarm of large spiders.

Fire physics at work. Do not cross.

    When exploring the dungeons, you'll be solving puzzles, avoiding traps, and collecting loot in the form of items to strengthen your character, and gold which can be spent before a run or in rare dungeon shops. Finding this stuff is important, because the clothes make the adventurer, and there's no experience point system in this game. The only stats that matter are strength and maximum health, both of which can be increased through potions. Books found around the dungeon also can provide hints on how to solve puzzles or warn of possible bosses you may face. There are also quite a few mysteries in the game that will require a few playthroughs in order to solve.
    An interesting feature of Unexplored is how the dungeon floors are built. The game makes use of a system known as 'cyclic design.' The game's creator, Joris Dormans, has a background in the humanities and a PhD in game design. His idea was to create a dungeon crawler where the dungeon was based around cyclic design instead of linear paths, like the ones seen in the earlier Legend of Zelda dungeons. The game also employs different interpretations of the 'find a key for a locked door' routine seen in many dungeon crawlers. A good example from one of my more successful runs have the locked door being some impassable chasms, and the key being a grappling hook that lets me cross gaps and grab items from a distance.
    The game as a whole is similar to Nethack, and not just in your ultimate goal. It also inspires, and even requires, some creative problem solving. As an example, there are skeleton enemies that you can kill, but they keep reviving unless you read a scroll of Last Rites near their remains. However, those scrolls are in limited supply and better saved for liches, which have the same auto-revive ability and magic spells. A good way to deal with this problem I've found, is to steal the temporarily deceased skeleton's weapons and armor and throw them in some magma or just take them somewhere the skeleton won't go. The skeleton will revive, but have no way to attack you and just stare at you while you waltz by. This also works for liches, but they still have their magic, although this did lead to a funny moment.

I've never had a lich try bribery before.

    One thing I noticed was that sometimes there are places where you can get stuck in dead ends. This happened to me in one game where I couldn't get out of a set of rooms and there didn't seem to be any secret passages out. Thankfully, if this happens, there's a 'pray for help' option that can spawn a portal if you're stuck, although the gods hate worshipers who are too needy. There is a possibility that there was a solution in that case, and maybe I didn't see it. During the article on cyclic design, which also explains how Unexplored's level generator works, Joris said that "There's a fine line between generator flaw and something they missed. Fortunately, people seem to have quite a lot of trust in the generator so they tend to try to figure it out."

    Other than the interface sometimes getting cluttered when opening up the inventory or message log, the only main complaint I have is that there isn't the greatest variety of enemies and floor themes. I've seen quite a few types of enemies, but they can feel a bit samey after a while. Orcs, goblins, kobolds, and ratmen all function basically the same, as an example. Maybe having certain monsters able to more easily detect you when you're hiding or gaining a boost to their damage when badly hurt. Going back to Nethack, there are a whole variety of monsters with some very unique abilities, including turning you to stone, turning you into green slime, drowning you, and several different flavors of dragon breath, including disintegration from the black variety. Like I said, that game is brutal.

Random gnomes spawning with instant death wands? Totally a thing!

    Unexplored brought me back to those days of fighting through the Dungeons of Doom, but with more success (which is to say one victory so far) and an equal amount of enjoyment. The game's use of cyclic design to create the dungeons gives the game a unique feel to progression and the environment. It's definitely worth a look. I've also heard that Joris wants to take these same cyclic design techniques and use them to create an adventure story. I'm curious to see how that idea will pan out.