Expelled! review - "Question your own morality over and over again"

• Memorise the best way to make your enemies take the fall
• Quirky characters that you'll have eating out of the palm of your hand
• Repetitive loop gets tiring after a while

Wide-eyed, persuasive, and with a penchant for non-linear storytelling, the Unreliable Narrator has always been an intriguing literary device, and when you chuck that into a fancy boarding school filled with snooty girls and their nasty secrets, chaos will inevitably ensue. 

And ensue it does in Expelled!, developer inkle's latest foray into the whodunit genre but with a juicy twist - it's 1922, and you're framed by a school prefect for an unspeakable crime you didn't commit. Or did you?

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Table of contents:

• Expelled! visuals
• Expelled! gameplay
• Expelled! verdict

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Expelled! Visuals

The old-timey aesthetic is totally on-point here, especially with the jazzy soundtrack and the lovely voice-acting by Amelia Tyler (of Baldur's Gate 3 fame). The visuals are simple and clean - there are the students, the teachers, and the school you're roaming around in, and they're all wrapped nicely with such a lovely little bow that it's hard not to be suspicious about the sinister secrets hidden beneath the surface of this squeaky-clean boarding school.

And the secrets are quite literally underneath the surface too - there's a mysterious cellar door that nobody ever goes to and a statue in the quad that talks (in your head, at least). 

Every single NPC will have their own motives and will act on their own with or without your involvement. They see everything, hear everything, and can rat you out when push comes to shove - how you navigate all this treachery is entirely up to you, and will determine your fate in Miss Mulligatawney's School For Promising Girls.

Expelled! Gameplay

Herein lies all the deliciously evil fun of this sneaky little adventure. It's meant to be replayed over and over and over again, as each new playthrough will reveal more of the story to you.

What you initially thought was the honest truth suddenly won't seem so real after a second look, and while one character might profess their undying love for you after everything you've done for them (and I gave you a rose, Nattie, a rose), they can just as easily drop you like a hot potato when it matters most.

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• Choice of Life: Wild Islands review - "Choose your own (island) adventure"

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There's also a morality meter you can fill up as you pick out your answers, with some dialogue choices making you more and more evil as you go along. The more sinister you are, the more options open up for you - you can even chloroform an annoying tattletale just to get it over with should you so wish. 

But while every choice you make will have lasting consequences throughout the narrative, I did find most of the dialogue to be a little dragging, especially since you'll need to go through them all over again each time you restart the day.

And because there are just too many options for all the characters, it'll get to a point where it's more a matter of memorising which answer led to which outcome rather than trying to get to the bottom of the so-called "mystery" here.

What's the appeal?

I suppose that's what makes it different from Overboard!, the studio's previous choice-based "reverse whodunit" that I absolutely enjoyed. For one thing, there were actually fewer outcomes to aim for there, and for another, you already know the full story before you begin your adventure.

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• Overboard! review - "Getting away with murder, with the help of a higher power"

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On the contrary, Expelled! wields the power of the Unreliable Narrator all too well, so it'll have you trying to piece together what actually happened on top of trying to clear your name and pin the crime on someone else.

Now, I get how that could be more appealing to other players, but for me, I just want to either get away scot-free or give my enemies the ending they deserve. 

I do like how you'll need different items to open new pathways and venues for you, as grabbing something from a room might help you with a new option in a different room, or how entering too early or too late will have an entirely different outcome depending on who's present at the moment.

This really gives your brain a pretty good workout as you'll need to manipulate how the characters move from one place to the next, all so you can get the dirty job done before the prize-giving ceremony at the end of the day.

I also loved how the game made me feel, in that it brought back warm feelings of nostalgia over point-and-click adventures on the MS-DOS way back when. I would think about which items I could combine in my inventory and which combinations I hadn't tried yet, obsessing about it all day at school and then rushing to get home so I could try my theory out.

It's an incredible rush once something actually works, and just so, so satisfying when your theory proves to be correct.

It's hard to talk more about this in detail without spoiling anything, as the story truly is something you'll have to experience for yourself (both Expelled! and Overboard! are delightfully connected, by the way). Suffice it to say that the storytelling is top-notch - it's the execution that fumbles a little bit in my opinion, bogging the whole thing down with too many elements happening all at once.

Overall, Expelled! does a bang-up job of keeping you hooked on its Groundhog Day-esque loop, with a replayability that's totally off the charts. It's not the best pick if you're a tad impatient though, as you'll really have to pry answers from your unwilling NPC subjects to get them to do your bidding.

And while there are optimised tools for fast-forwarding through previous answers, your expulsion will largely depend on your ability to remember dialogue picks - so just be sure you've got your memorisation skills in tip-top shape if you want to get to your desired outcome in one piece.