Expelled! review – Much more than a pass

In a time of 60-hour-plus open world adventures and their player demands, plus the grind of gachas and GaaS dailies, it’s nice to have a game that you can dip into for, say, 30 minutes at a time, and still receive a concentrated hit of emotional satisfaction and escapism.

That’s exactly what new narrative mystery Expelled! provides. From inkle, the same indie studio behind the likes of 80 Days, Heaven’s Vault and A Highland Song, Expelled! – which is subtitled “An Overboard! game” – uses and refines the systems of its inventive 2021 predecessor.

Before getting into gameplay mechanics, though, it’s probably a good idea to give Expelled! some context. In this cartoon-style whodunnit, set in 1922, you play as British schoolgirl Verity Amersham, who is attending a centuries’ old boarding school for “promising” young women. On the last day of term, though, prefect and hockey team captain Louisa Hardcastle is shoved out the library window several floors up and, as a poor scholarship student, the blame falls on you. With her motives unclear, stern headmistress Miss Mulligatawney gives you until prize-giving at the end of the day to clear your name, or be expelled for attempted murder.

Expelled!, like forerunner Overboard!, can best be described as a narrative “roguelike” with a veneer of choose-your-own adventure visual novel. Replayability is at its core as you have several in-game hours – which translate into just 20-40 minutes in real-life – to navigate the school grounds (or maybe flee to the nearby pub), talk to colourful staff and pupils following their daily timetables, and perform various actions to save your skin. If you haven’t secured the optimal outcome in that time (there’s a checklist of goals for completionists to tick off), the day resets. Though you don’t keep any items you may have picked up over the previous run, you do retain most gained knowledge, scribbled in Verity’s Sin Book. This information can be used to guide your next playthrough.

One thing to bear in mind is that Expelled! is a prime example of the anecdote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you simply repeat the same actions every run, you’re not going to make any progress and likely become frustrated. There are many secrets to mine, and multiple paths for you to pursue in the game, but at first glance you may feel like you don’t have the freedom of choice you expected. For example, if you could just hit a nosy classmate with a hockey stick early in the morning it would remove a witness, but you don’t have that option. At least to start…

It turns out, for different actions to unlock, you need to be bad; the more evil the better. You learn very quickly in Expelled! that being a good girl won’t get you very far. In fact, right from the beginning, headmistress Mulligatawney responds better to your backchat and sassiness than timid obedience, which she considers “insipid.”

Expelled! wants you to steal, threaten, gossip, blackmail, frame and, of course, skip class. There’s even some chloroform and arsenic in the San if you figure out how to snatch it from under the nose of the Matron. That said, Expelled! is never mean or malicious. The game may celebrate dark urges, but it’s more mischievous in the modern sense, leaning into playful naughtiness. It’s the kind of title where you can foist suspicion on someone for being Belgian. And if the jazzy, energetic score doesn’t make it clear, Expelled!’s disclaimer gives a very good sense of the game’s tone:

This game contains mild references to suicide, abortion, evangelism, gym class, medicinal drugs, witchcraft, blood-drinking, live burial, devil-worship, fornication, blasphemy and secondary school education.

As a sidenote, you can also turn profanity on and off.

It’s good to be bad in Expelled! in much the same way as Overboard!, where you murder your husband during a trans-Atlantic crossing and spend the rest of the trip trying to dodge accusations. Speaking of comparisons to Overboard!, it definitely feels like you can accomplish more in a Expelled! run – unless you happen to get lost in the cellar and lose half the day. There’s a further connection to Overboard! but that’s best left for fans to discover as a genuine jaw-dropping moment.

Expelled! may lack the out-the-gates novelty of its precursor, but, if you can avoid the trap of getting stuck in your own choice of action cycles, it delivers an experience that is equal parts compelling, challenging and wickedly delightful.

Expelled! is out today, 12 March 2025, for Windows and macOS via Steam, Nintendo Switch, as well as iOS mobile devices.