Pregnant nuns, the lost Romanova princess and an alligator in the cellars - but I still can't win?
The star hockey player has been thrown out of a priceless stained glass window, and you, the scholarship student at Miss Mulligatawney's School for Promising Girls, have been blamed!
Using your wits, whatever items you shove in your pockets and anything you learn from previous playthroughs to assist you, developer Inkle’s classic time loop style shines in EXPELLED!, where you must convince the headmistress of your innocence…but is it really worth telling the truth?
This point-and-click choose your own adventure game questions faith, reputation and morality through its simple mechanics and well rounded story that left me begging for more, and more, and more. The game runs with its own time system, where it actually calculates how long it would take you to reach certain locations, and gives you times where you should be in certain locations. This was surprisingly really hard to work with, because the game regularly reminds you that you only have so many hours before you’re expelled, and frankly, I keep wasting my time and running out.
Honestly, I have yet to successfully survive the events of the game. However, I have hung out with a pregnant nun statue, interrogated a gardener who I am 99% sure has been involved in some kind of torrid affair, and tried various methods to access a cellar that may or may not have an alligator in it. Every playthrough I find a new story to latch onto, and then get so horrifically distracted by wanting to solve that mystery that I forget to deal with the broken window shaped elephant in the room.
So why did Louisa Hardcastle jump out of the window? Would Nattie, your strange Russian roommate, really lie to save your hide? Is it even possible to make it out with your scholarship and your honour?
With charming art, immersive voice acting and well-matched sound design that paints the perfect picture of a 1920s nunnery-turned-boarding-school, on a backdrop of war-torn Europe…while still feeling lighthearted enough to keep me giggling, Expelled! is replayable, enthralling and my favourite kind of whimsical. Will you survive the dark secrets of the Old Nunnery? Or will you, like me, be Expelled!
A copy of EXPELLED! on PC was provided to SIFTER for the purpose of this review.
