Expelled! - ★★★★☆
I’ve been playing inkle games for a long time: I remember playing 80 Days on an iPad that must’ve packed it in about a decade ago and have been keeping up with their releases ever since.
For anyone who might want a little peek under the IndieLoupe hood, we’ve a pretty lengthy spreadsheet full of games (past, present and future) that are of interest to us: I was a little giddy when I added “Miss Mulligatawney's School for Promising Girls” earlier this year, and was forced to resize that spreadsheet’s title column. Imagine my abject horror, then, when the game reappeared on our radar a couple of months later, only now going under the somewhat snappier title: “Expelled!”. It is, for reasons I’ll get into, probably a good move from inkle, and I’m sure Renowned Explorers: International Society is thrilled to have its longest-name crown back, but I refuse to hide my own personal disappointment.
Luckily, that’s just about the biggest disappointment I had with Expelled!, and as soon as the opening credits rolled, I was more than ready to throw myself into the game, with almost as much intensity as hockey captain Louisa Hardcastle finds herself thrown through a stained glass window. Really, I think more games need to open with a sequence of someone falling to their potential demise while Flight of the Bumblebee plays in the background, because, were it not for the prospect of dealing with a school run on four hours of sleep, I would’ve likely played the game in one go. Players are expertly hooked in by Jon Ingold’s writing (hardly a surprise if you’ve played previous inkle games), desperate to uncover more about the mystery unfolding before them.
Image: inkle Ltd
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Developer: inkle Ltd
Publisher: inkle Ltd
Release: 12 March 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 14,79€/$14.99/£12.79
Playtime upon Review: 3.2 hours
It turns out that your character, Verity Amersham, is the prime suspect for Hardcastle’s defenestration. It’s impossible – you were fast asleep when it happened – but clearly someone is out to frame you, as all the evidence is pointing your way. With the very limited information you have, you’ll need to get to the bottom of things and figure out how to convince everyone – though primarily Miss Mulligatawney – of your innocence. That’s not going to be easy: in fact, at the first time of asking, you’re almost certain to suffer the eponymous expulsion, to Mulligatawney’s thinly-veiled delight.
What you will garner, however, is a little bit of information. Expelled! Is neatly framed within Verity’s recounting of the day to her father, and perhaps she doesn’t get it quite right the first time around… or the second, or the third. In any case, she’ll give it another go, and each time both her and the player have a few more morsels to work with. Perhaps not enough to get things exactly right, but enough to correct a few mistakes here and there, enough to edge the story that one bit closer to a preferable outcome.
If you’ve played inkle’s previous games, some of the above may sound a little familiar, as it follows a similar structure to their wonderful 2021 offering, Overboard!. That’s where the aforementioned rename comes into play: there’s even a tagline (“an Overboard! game”) in case it really wasn’t clear. To get the absolute most out of Expelled! I’d recommend playing Overboard! beforehand, but you can certainly still enjoy it without having done so. If you’ve already played it and you enjoyed it, you’re sure to like Expelled! too.
The game takes the mechanics introduced in Overboard! and refines them: the drip-feeding of information feels much more considered in Expelled!. While I didn’t personally encounter it with Overboard!, I know people who happened into that game’s “perfect” ending in very few attempts, and lost the motivation to continue exploring to see what endings they could find for that game’s protagonist, Veronica Villensey. I’ve only got my own experience to go with, but I can’t see that happening with Expelled!.
Image: inkle Ltd
In the most likeable of ways, the game comes with a cast of unlikable characters: save for Verity’s poor father and the game’s analogue to Matilda’s Miss Honey (Miss Lemon, naturally), they range from the mildly annoying to the outright horrid. First impressions are not necessarily what they might seem, however, and there’s plenty of room for players' opinions to change over the course of the story’s reruns. Change too does Verity’s own level of horridness: you start the game out as a perfect student, but, slowly and surely, can reveal yourself to be a rather nasty piece of work – should you so wish. Throughout the game you’ll be presented with options that push the boundaries: to be cheeky or rude or outright mean – to behave in a way unbefitting of your “perfect student” status.
As with its predecessor, players can encounter a small amount of tedium towards the end of the game: if you find yourself certain that you want to start the day in a particular way, going through the motions each time can be a slight drag – inkle have acknowledged this with a feature that allows you to fast-forward through most of it, largely taking care of the problem. You will still need to take those steps, but given the game’s premise, it’s dealt with about as elegantly as it can be while keeping the story of each day intact.
Expelled! Is a worthy addition to an already-impressive portfolio, once again proving inkle to be among the masters when it comes to interactive fiction. It is awarded ★★★★☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided by the developer.
