It looks really neat. The procedural generation sounds cool, and the story even sounds kind of interesting.

However, when I sit down and play it, it's quite slow, pretty obtuse (a little too random for my tastes), and nothing really stuck out to me as actually interesting.

The game clearly isn't a game focused on combat; in the tutorial it straight-up tells you to avoid combat almost always. Ok, so combat isn't fun, and it also isn't supposed to be rewarding. So, that means that the story would be good, then? Well, judging by the story that was revealed to me during my time playing, it clearly isn't trying to tell me a masterpiece. The random elements in the game basically reduce anything interesting to encounters, but more often than not, it just seems like empty towns. Loot, then. Well, what's the point of loot if the combat is trash and should be avoided?

Ok, so the the procedural world, then? That's the core thing in this game, right? I mean, it sounds interesting, but like most procedural games, the feeling of "anything is possible" wears off really fast once you learn a few of the layouts and have seen a few things. Things like randomizing dungeons are great for replayability, but unfortunately the dungeons felt so empty and pointless that I really didn't even feel like going through the current dungeon, much less coming back later. Random things, like "why is there a burg-style well in the middle of this ancient underground temple?" not only does it not make sense, but it's that kind of procedural flavor that kind of insults your intelligence. "Why are 3/4 of the paths in this encounter dead-ends?" It's just pointless; random for the sake of being random, and about as fun as flipping a coin over and over.

On almost all random encounters, I just walk through them, ignoring the enemy because the game straight-up tells you enemies will almost never drop anything, and just act as a drain on your resources. Once I get to an area with a quest event in it, I just wander around because it's supposed to be random, and if I'm lucky I'll be able to find what I was supposed to trek all the way over there for. Sometimes, I just can't find anything, or it seems like I was supposed to go somewhere else first.

As it stands, I can't tell why this game is supposed to actually be fun; it's a neat idea, but it really comes off as a procedural storytelling engine like Wildermyth or RimWorld. However, unlike those games, it doesn't really seem to have anything in it, and there isn't really enough going on to make you care about the character you have. Feels more like a tech demo more than anything else.

I've also encountered a number of bugs and very consistent frame drops in this game so far.

I know this game is called "unexplored", but I didn't expect that to be the goal.


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Originally posted by jd (developer):

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts! You are entirely correct that there isn't a traditional story for you to follow, nor is combat the sole purpose. The game is an outlier in the RPG genre in that respect. However, the game can be rewarding, the objective is to travel and explore. There are mysteries to uncover, so the storytelling is very open and leaning into simulation. We compare it to a 'hex crawl' more than a typical dungeon crawl or tight narrative RPG. As a youtube reviewer said: the game needs a little time to grow on you and gives back as much as you put in.

There are a few more narrative experiences you might try to follow if you haven’t given up completely. The quest lines for waking the elementals might be more to your taste. These start with the storytellers in the inns of clan villages. We plan to expand the game with more content, especially content that expands on this type of story lines. So maybe give it another go after an update or two.

really appreciate your comment, and yeah I can see why the game would lend itself to more of a storybook, history-style procedural narrative game, like Wildermyth.

I'm sure there's plenty to see later on as it pertains to story later in the game. I hope others find a way to explain what this game offers and what to come here for.

I think the disconnect for me came from the sense of what entity this story is being applied to. In most games, this is effectively 1st person; "I did this, I did that". The goal in these games is mostly to observe a world firsthand and gain mastery and all that. Self-actualization in a short time.

Then there's what I'll call "2nd person", Hades for example. Zagreus did this, this character did that. Feels more like listening to conversations over the shoulder of a good friend than doing it yourself. The story in this way is interesting because the characters are effectively not procedural, however the situations are. This makes you want to play over and over to see the weird setups and ways those might shake out.

As for third person, we have RimWorld and Wildermyth. With these, the technique seems to be to give the player a team of ragtag adventurers, all with their own personalities. Wildermyth has a story and a decent-sized sandbox, RimWorld effectively has no story and a huge sandbox. This fun is mostly as an ant farm, peering in, imagining a complex personality in a complex world, and not telling stories so much as recording them.

All of these strategies are great ways to build engagement by applying player agency in the right places, teasing out specific types of fun to act as the lubricant along the player's journey.

I think the issue for me was that this game did none of these for me; I had no desire to step into the shoes of this character, but the character themselves had no actual personality or seemingly unique story to tell. Random is as random does, so if all I see is a bunch of stats, this isn't a character, it's an avatar. As a result, I didn't get hooked into 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person engagement. I am not the character, the character isn't interesting enough on their own, and what is around them might be interesting, but being shackled to the character is where engagement fails. The character isn't fun to explore with.

I think this game would benefit from outright removing combat and direct player character control, focusing on procedural storytelling through vignettes, where the player doesn't actually have control over anything but the thread of the story directly. The player character then acts as an ant, being strung along by grains of sugar that the player chooses to leave for them. Similar to Wildermyth, but a little farther back, not as focused on tactics so much as interesting choices and outcomes. Whether or not the character themselves has the ability to override player choice is a design decision that sounds interesting.

The game has a fantastic art style and a very interesting promise of worldbuilding. However, mechanically it didn't hook me, and personally I think this game's flavor of direct player control gets in the way more often than not.

This game is not for everyone.

I can't say how many times I debated in my mind to refund the purchase. And while I eventually came to like the game after going through its steep learning curve. I wouldn't recommended the experience to anyone looking for an adventure-exploration experience. The game is tagged as an "rpg"when it's not quite an rpg as you are railroaded into some specific playstyles just to progress. Some load-outs are just more superior than others (due to encumbrance mechanics). The game also reinforces a "cautious and sneaky" playstyle, which when you deviate from, the game penalizes you heavily with death and time loss due to permadeath. While it does have meta progression as roguelikes do, it feels unrewarding since you just lost a character which you invested 10+ hours into. . Edit for Update: There is a save feature implemented in game (save while in camp). This does alleviate some frustrations for character loss (especially when said loss is by reason of bugs). However, it also eliminates the reason to create your next character as rare buffs can only be acquired once per world (a subsequent character will be weaker compared to the first character who acquired those buffs - unlike how other roguelikes work)

Another issue with the game is it still has loads of bugs. While there is a "prayer" system that helps you get out of stuck situations. There are instances where this mechanic can only do so much and then you have to go ask the devs in discord to help you with the problem. Though I appreciate the quick and responsive support of the devs, the problem shouldn't have existed in the first place, being that the game is already out of early access. I personally experienced this as I can't get into the endgame area since a mountain generated in front of the path and I can't back-out since I already unlocked the final gate.

Another problem with the game is that you can't just experience the entirety of the story in one world, there are elementals/masks that are not unlockable due to the world generation limits. It wouldn't be a problem if the game session per run was a short and repeatable experience (e.g binding of isaac), but it's not. Playing the game is a slow, deliberate and careful effort that starting a new game just to experience the same slow yet now more repetitive thing (since you've experienced it already) is no longer that fun.

Edit: I finished the game, however, there is another aspect of the game that is quite weak - its Story. There is indeed lore scattered about in the game, however, such lore are a bit scarce considering the number of ruins scattered about. Furthermore, the world seems to despise your character or don't really care about them. For a person who is working to save the world, it doesn't really seem motivating when people (even ordinary vagrants) attack you. You need to work a lot to turn other clans to allies (as if these clans don't care if the world ends) and there is no lore explanation why one clan has "angry" relations with you to begin with. The ending is also a bit empty (no post-ending or epilogue) and the world doesn't mourn for the death of your character (no tombstone, memorial, or even a passing mention).

While I really liked what the game was going for (music, world-building, artstyle, LOTR influence), ultimately like other reviewers said, the game just doesn't respect your time. So with a heavy heart, I just can't recommend it.

I loved Unexplored 1 and it was by far one of my favourite games. Intense combat, interesting map generation, stealth and funny interactions - the game had it all! So I came into this game expecting a similar type of feel with the same level of fun but... the game just isn't fun for me. Don't get me wrong I love what they did visually to it but the raw gameplay just feels missing. Combat feels less impactful and watered down from the previous game where you had to manually control your thrust forward and worry about where enemy weapons would be facing - it was iconic, unique and FUN. What makes the second game even worse is the fact that the game tries to make you avoid combat given that most things won't drop anything. This makes the game feel extremely unrewarding - is there a tough enemy that you managed to beat? Great you get absolutely nothing for it! This would be ok if there were rewards to be earned elsewhere to compensate for this change but in general there's very little in this aspect. This makes the game feel less of a game and more of a chore where your will to continue playing exponentially subsides. Even the procedural mystery elements don't feel right in this game, its unnecessarily convoluted and very confusing.

TLDR: Overall I'd say the game looks really good but just doesn't have any of the same charm the first game did and just straight up isn't fun.

EDIT: Just to make it clear so that my playtime isn't misleading - I've been following this game since early access (Epic Games) as an avid fan of Unexplored 1. However in saying that - this game does have some good explorative elements that I know some people enjoy so please don't let my review put you off if good combat isn't a must for you!

I thought I would really enjoy this game... and for a while I did. But then I began to see how the game design was really flawed. The best way to describe it is "RNG to a fault". I went to a story dungeon and attempted to clear it, however the RNG put the goal behind a wall that was behind some stairs and I could not access it. I searched the whole thing over and over, no door to get in, no portal to activate, no teleport spell to invoke.

Another example of this would be a huge tower dungeon that I spent over an hour in. I slowly clear mobs and dodge traps and get all the way to the top. Summon the chest through an invoke spell after clearing the trap mobs and open it to find that the chest is... empty. RNG rolled that there would be no reward at the end of this huge dungeon.

The BAD:
- It is way too hard to get around the map. The constant stops while traveling make this game a huge time sink with no payoff.
- "Hope" is a finite resource, as you lose hope (from seemingly any source) you will lose skills making your character less powerful. The only item that can replenish one hope MUST be cooked with fresh food and it spoils quickly if not used. Also, trying to close the rifts will drain your hope so quickly that one attempt will take away two skills if you are not careful.
- Glitches, so many glitches. Spirit keys do not open spirit doors. Attempting to loot quest items and they never move to your inventory, try and close and reopen and the item is gone from the container. Talk to a vendor once, go into a building and come back out and you can't talk to the vendor again. Look at a pouch to decide if you want to steal and you cannot close the menu.
- No rhyme or reason to the upgrades you can buy from a vendor. Some weapons and gear will show and others will not.
- All the damn space that support gear takes up in your inventory. everything takes up space and you cannot reasonably carry anything around while also hoping to find good loot. Also, worn items and gear for some reason also take up bag slots.
- there are gear slots on the character screen that are not even used... just why? No headgear anywhere to be found. I found a crown once that had a sigil slot so I put a sigil in it... and it did nothing.

All in all, after playing this game it just feels so unfinished and the game design is just so user unfriendly.


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While i don't have many hours sinked into this game o really enjoyed the exploration aspect of it and its initial vaugeness of main quest,

But unfortunatly the developer doesn't understand what it means to release a game from early access. The devs recently are doing a lot of changes to the game main gameplay loop (changing it into mission based rogue like with randomly generated characters) No exploration, after clearing the mission instant travel to base, hence repeat.

If it was still in an early access it would be regretable change but it is what it is with early access, BUT the game was released 2 years ago from it and making such a major change to the game system is simply unacceptable.
The new vision is not a product i was sold. If i could request a refund i would do it. These changes should be done in a next game or at very least an additional game mode that in no way changes the main game.

I'm pretty sure that Ludomotion is going to end up making my favorite game eventually because I love procedural generation, and they are the best at it. Unfortunately, this isn't it. I feel like its against my best interest to leave a negative review if I want this goal, but I started writing this with "yes" checked and that felt dishonest.

I loved Unexplored 1, but my biggest issue with the game was that it was too long. The highlights of the game were finding gear and consumables and discovering that the game was giving you exactly what you needed to overcome challenges (which were sometimes entire floors) that looked impossible... but not if you have potions of fire protection, and the game just gave me 3 of them! Moments like that happened regularly, but a single session of the game still felt like it overstayed its welcome because most of the floors didn't have this excitement, the game advertised itself as a gear based RPG, and you would find truly exciting gear maybe like 2-3 times in the 4(!) hour run. A game like this needs to have EVERY floor feel meaningful, so they all need to have bosses or legendary loot, or key items, or multiple of these things hidden behind puzzles and secret areas.

Unexplored 2 is a much prettier game, but amplifies this problem times like 100. I've played it for probably a total of like 12 hours across Epic through early access and Steam, and it is shocking how little progress I've made in any given run during that time. There is certainly loot to be found, but the majority of your real world time in actual gameplay will be sneaking around enemies (which the prologue warns you to not bother fighting) as you move to the destinations you care about. Also, "fun" gameplay elements such as needing to camp because you are fatigued, or needing to camp because you are wet.

In my current run, I've been playing for 3.5 hours. I just barely got to the first major point of interest (which still isn't the first quest yet), and I got through a large area, through a major dungeon to discover an important looking machine that I can steal sigils from to power it down, but I don't know what the consequences of that are. If my entire run up until that point was 30 minutes, I would feel like experimenting, but its been 3.5 hours, and I'm probably like 1/20th? of the way through the game, so I didn't want to mess it up that early, so I guess no reward for me... Unexplored 2 takes a big step back in terms of fun compared to unexplored 1 for me. In my time playing, I've never had the experience that the level generator did something cool which was the major selling point of unexplored 1, and I know the response is going to be to sink more time into it, but compared to other video games, the moment to moment time spent in this game is way less valuable.

My personal ideal unexplored game would be the metaprogression/overworld of desktop dungeons with the art style of Unexplored 2. On the overworld for that map, all of the nodes would be self-contained missions that take an hour to beat that have a similar vibe to Moryonder in Unexplored 1 where there's a fixed goal and unique biome and the generated level is densely packed, and beating those levels unlocks new content to play with as opposed to permanent power ups for your character that increases the diversity of what you will see on that given level, but also unlocks new levels to explore. A complete game in this style would probably have been 1/3 of the work compared to UE2, but I'm already feeling like I don't want to spend more time in this game, so the impressive amounts of content that it has will continue to be unexplored :(

The game is quite nice, and there's a lot of organic stories and moments that pop up thanks to the free-form exploration, the procedural generation and the different systems that interact to give meaning to your character creation choices. However, the game is surprisingly unstable and crashes ALL THE TIME.

Just earlier today, I booted up the game and had a crash after 10-15 minutes after which I opened up Steam to write a review mentioning that the game was crashing too frequently, as it has every 20-30 minutes in the past 10 hours or so that I'd played the game for. Then I decided to give it another chance and erased the review, booting up the game again. 5-10 minutes later, the game froze on a loading screen. I could not be patient any longer.

In principle, I wouldn't even mind. However, for a game with an immersive world, where the journey is most important, where every moment is full of some kind of exploration and wonder, such frequent crashes really do not help the experience at all. Underneath the poor performance is a FANTASTIC game, genuinely - but the performance is really unbelievable. Add to that the fact that every time you explore an area from the overworld map, it "Generates" the area and "Builds" it, a process that takes close to a minute easily, and it's easy to see why I'm spending more time in loading screens than actual gameplay between crashes. I'm writing this while playing on an Intel i7-7490K, GTX 1080 card and 32 GB RAM system, which isn't modern but easily above the spec. The sad part is, it may be entirely possible that it is some esoteric setting which I have not activated or some update which I haven't gotten on my system which aggravates performance, so your mileage may vary. But for that reason I would recommend playing the demo before purchasing.

On the objective side, here are the best reason to give the demo a try:

1) The graphics are legitimately gorgeous. There's no other way to put it, this is a beautifully realized terrain and world generation system which at least so far has not given me any problems (in terms of spawning impossible puzzles or objectives, etc.)

2) The RPG aspects, for me, are stellar. In terms of the skill checks/dice rolls that the game tries to emulate with the "Fortunes" system, it nails a big part of the experience at least for me. It really does feel like my character build is relevant.

3) Internal systems also work very well - I was in a dialogue check to avoid combat with some threatening bandits, when I realized that I had lost my bonus of being a smooth-talker because I had entered the conversation with my weapon drawn! There's a lot of nifty little details like this in the world.

4) The legacy system is pretty fascinating - seeing familiar locations evolve and change over time really puts the journey that you are on in perspective, and it's real fun seeing if there is any way we can be part of that.

There are many more, but in short - this game is packed to the brim with fantastic systems, ideas and possibilities. The fact that it crashes so frequently even on hardware well above the recommended spec is offputting to me, and if it might be for you as well, then try out the demo first. I really hope this situation improves at some point or the other, since there are patches being released, and when that happens I will gladly change my review, since the game very much deserves applause for what it's trying to do and how well it does it (aside from the crashes).

21 hours in and instead of enjoying my weekend I am extremely irritated by the game.

The artstyle and gameplay looked so chill I forced myself to learn the game (I don't like that process) to at some point understand the way it's supposed to be played and start enjoying it.

I don't know what to say, that it's not for me or it's just a mess?
Whole idea of exploring feels so irritating. Even after I created new world with ease modifiers, traveling is so punishing I don't have the will to go anywhere anymore. Every traveled dot on the map uses your items or inflict negative statuses on you. To repair/ recharge the traveling equipment you need: a repair kit, set up camp, light source, ingame time. Repiar kit of course takes a precious place in the inventory and is a diminishing resource that can be bought. And to earn goods for trade you have to loot. Looting items or being well equiped seems extremely limited because of "encumbrance". Both these elements make the core game mechanic frustrating instead of fun. There's just no way you can travel with half the crucial items (pan, bed roll, rope, cloak, armor, weapon, shield, boots, pickaxe, torch/lanthern, anti spoling bag, cold/hot anti-weather item, repair kit, wood and whatever I forgot) and have space left for any loot. Every mechanic of this game is bothersome keeping me in state of worry constantly. (I found out that reducing encounters on the road makes game harder, not easier. Because you miss opportunities to collect wood and extra sparks)

Some paths (inside a location) are the only available route to your destination and for example you have to climb it. So you either go back to base for rope and waste another (realtime) half an hour and resources or force yourself with these lottery events. Which are often without a chance to succed in the pool at the start(?). So you use a fckton of 'sparks' or 'hope' or lose health and gain negative stats. There is no alternative way. Remember you have to also come down later, and if you gained some negative statuses that will obvioulsy hinder your lottery chances, believe me, you will die there or on the way back to the city. Because of these stacked negative debuffs that punishes you on every dot on the map. If you somehow manage to crawl back you lose so much 'hope' that it's hard to proceed anywhere further into the world later).

Then there are also glitches and bugs. I spent an hour trying to open some door looking for a key. Not sure if just procedural generation failed me again or am I missing something. The ingame hints are so vauge, you can waste even more time trying to follow them. Decided to finally use "pray" to open the door. There were turrets behind so I backed off to get hide status and then doors just closed. I used "pray" again and got instantly punished by a game with a rift. All this happened because I wanted to find a key for some other gate in the first place. And after carefully inspecting whole dungeon and outskirts (you guessed it right) I didn't spot it anywhere. And I will never be sure if I just couldn't find it or if it was never there at all. I can't search for help throught disscussions/google because it's procedualy generated content.

Another gaming session with new world I managed to talk to some kobolt leader to join my cause and defend against empire. I travel to the adjoining "Keep" where I'm supposed to clear it out of spider like creatures. I wipe them out, get a notification in the corner screen to prove it but still can't offer the keep to a clan because info message states that I haven't cleared the location out of enemy force. Sucks. I travell back to the kobolt cave to trade some loot and I notice there is no more a kobolt mark on the map. They vanished, whole generated location looks empty. No messeage, no info, they just vanished. I go back to that Keep nextdoor and it's filled with these tree turrets now and some Empire travelers. Corner screen status informs me I can misslead the empire If I talk to them. So I sprint throught all the previously cleared corridor paths to reach them. But to my surprise I can't talk to them, they just nod to me. Checked and still can't offer the Keep to a clan. Enough for this gaming session. I'm out.

Who is willing to throw away so much of his time because of bugs? I have more or less 5 hours of free time a day. Would prefer to actually relax and feel some sort of accomplishement instead of irritation because of flawed game.

On the performance side: I've got myself some high end gaming pc and the game doesn't give a damn about that. Making me wait for loading&building levels 1-5 minutes, even tho I've visited them before. I would consider them small. Loading even crashes sometimes. It's so time consuming. I checked ingamie options like 'loading in the background' or 'remembering last locations' but it didn't have any noticable impact.

Unexplored 2 helps everyone realise the importance of a level designer in the industry. Concept is great but the execution of this procedural generation is subpar, rich in bugs. The game fails to teach a player it's riddle patterns. A lot of mechanics is missleading, vaugly explained or not explained at all. Combination of that is fatal. But even then if all that was flawless the designed game balance and encumbrance seems to be mostly bothersome, a joy destroyer.

4/10. It's not what it could be.
Unexplored 2 has incredible charm, but the flaws are simply too glaring, the biggest of which is that it just doesn't respect your time.

Most of the game consists of hours of incredibly inane, trivial, yet time-consuming activities. Like waiting for a map to generate so you can run around some dangerous plants, a few seconds loadtime after each node of uneventful travel, entering a level to rest after travel(why can't your character do that on its own?), killing 20 rats/spiders/bats that spawn when you trigger a trap, talking to a dozen different NPCs to gather rumors about which places might be worth going to...

...and then you get ambushed by an imperial battle squadron or run into a weird enemy, and they kill you before you even realize what you've done wrong, which is the main way you will die as other enemies are mostly boring and easy.

What this game needs is to abstract away the tedium, replace random spikes in difficulty with more consistently enjoyable encounters, and to recognize that long-term progression and permadeath just don't mix- making a new character is cool and great, but you just do the same things over and over, except without the loot you've already looted and the leveling opportunities you've already used up.

I wanted to like it, but I can't. The payoffs aren't worth the time and tedium.

I really love this game, but even after so much patching there are so many game breaking bugs it's hard to recommend this game. Maybe the devs should focus on clearing bugs before implementing new features.