UnExplored - Unlocked Edition [Xbox]
UnExplored - Unlocked Edition is a challenging roguelite RPG that sees you exploring the Dungeon of Doom. With a top-down perspective, you must make your way through the twenty floors, delving deeper and deeper into the dungeons to find the fearsome dragon - from whom you’ll steal the Amulet of Yendor - before you attempt to make it back to the surface, alive. Upon beginning, you’ll start with basic equipment: a sword and simple armour, with better equipment available as you progress.
There are a range of difficulties: Casual, Challenging, and Hard; as well as other game modes which offer up their own twist on the gameplay and difficulty: Desolate Mode spawns less monsters and gold, but also offers less healing; and Arcade Mode will throw more ‘monsters, magic and mayhem’ at you. Three Special Runs are available too, each with their own descriptors - Mithril Run: Collect gold and treasure, get out on the other side; Ripley Run: Kill as many creeps as you can; The Dark Ritual: Stop them from summoning the Great Old One. These were all originally DLC, but are included within the Unlocked Edition, and all give you a great deal of replayability, as trying out different options may vastly change things up.
You can pick specific Seeds, or choose to replay the last played, in order to get a specific run you want to attempt. You can also add Extra Puzzles and/or Extra Bosses, with both of these options granting additional rewards if toggled on. There are different Rewards that you might earn upon ending runs depending on certain factors being achieved, such as recharging a depleted Staff, or picking a lock. At the beginning of each run, you’ll get a short message from someone at the Tavern, and you can buy them beers in order to gain hints and tips, as well as sometimes receiving useful items.
Defeating enemies will sometimes give you items to pick up, ranging from keys to weapons and consumables. You’ll also come across books such as adventurer’s journals that will give you tidbits of information and lore. As well as books, there are scrolls you can find that upon reading, will bestow you with knowledge or power - though this can sometimes be harmful, so it’s always good to be cautious! Everything is surprisingly in-depth, with loads of different things to learn as you progress. It is highly beneficial to play through the tutorial first of all - and pay close attention to it - in order to familiarise yourself with things before you get let loose on the world, as believe me when I say it is complex. There are altars that you can sacrifice items to, in order to raise your favour with the Gods, with three altar types, each corresponding to a different god. Green altars are for Lady Sophie, Yellow for Density and Red for Grievous, each of which will give you different benefits for pledging to them.
The combat feels decent, with weapons dealing contact damage to enemies as well as being able to be swung, or even used as projectiles. Getting used to the combat will help you to do better against enemies, however there are no negatives that come from just bypassing enemies (aside from the possibility of missing dropped items, though these are usually minor). You don’t receive any experience through battle, so weighing up the dangers of a fight will often lead you to just run on by.
Visually, it’s a little bit mixed, with a very simple overall look and kinda ugly, but stylised character designs. Moving through the depths you’ll see a variety of different level designs, with some having a typical dungeon-y grey-ness, icy levels, and lava filled levels too - though there’s a great utilisation of lighting and shadow, as well as lots of bright pops of colour to denote poisonous gas, fire and more. The twenty levels can vary in length, with a path down to the floor below sometimes coming shortly after you’ve moved onto a floor - though there are often multiple routes out of any single floor, which can lead you to go down one set of stairs before returning back up to try another route, depending on the challenges lying in your wake.
By all means, this is not a quick game to get into. You will easily need at least a few hours to get to grips with the mechanics as well as a bit of the lore, though you might see yourself whipping through a bunch of characters in that time. You start off as Rodney the First (though you can change the name), and with each death you’ll respawn as the next in line (Second, Third and so on), which is a fun little inclusion to keep track of just how many runs you’ve attempted - and with each Hero, things will change, so one may make it much further through the Dungeon of Doom than another.
Priced at £11.99 on Xbox, UnExplored - Unlocked Edition is a great price for the sheer volume of playtime you’ll get, though it’s definitely not a game for the faint of heart. If you love super-in-depth games that are filled with lore and have the risk that comes with being a roguelite title, then this might be right up your street.
In the end, we decided to give UnExplored - Unlocked Edition the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.
Are you interested in UnExplored? What do you think of it?
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- V x
