Expect The Unexpected

Expect The Unexpected is a fantasy roguelike RPG set in the lands of Lorhaven, where players assume the role of a hero chosen by the Gods to collect the 12 Runes of Power and restore balance. Featuring turn-based combat, procedural world generation, and over 100 unique events, the game offers five character classes—Fighter, Archer, Wizard, Druid, and Necromancer—each with distinct skills. Players can customize their hero, hire companions, make morally impactful choices, and navigate dynamically generated challenges, including battles, trade opportunities, and faction alliances. With permadeath and an explorable afterlife, every playthrough promises unpredictability and strategic depth.

Expect The Unexpected: Review

Introduction

A decade after its quiet debut, Expect The Unexpected (2016) lingers in the nebulous realm of cult curiosities—a turn-based roguelike RPG that boldly fused FTL: Faster Than Light’s event-driven structure with traditional fantasy tropes, yet stumbled under the weight of its own ambitions. Developed by the enigmatic Portuguese studio GoldenGod Games, this microbudget experiment dared to ask: What if a procedurally generated odyssey—teeming with moral choices, permadeath, and 100+ “unexpected” encounters—could capture the emergent storytelling magic of its contemporaries? The result was a flawed but fascinating artifact of the mid-2010s indie boom—a game that balanced genuine innovation with glaring technical limitations. This review unpacks its contradictions, navigates its labyrinthine design, and ultimately asks: Does Lorhaven’s unpredictable charm outweigh its frustrations?

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Development History & Context

Studio Origins & Vision
GoldenGod Games, a one-person passion project helmed by an anonymous developer, emerged during Unity’s golden age—a period when solo creators could democratize game publishing via Steam Direct. With zero pre-release marketing and a launch price of $1.00, Expect The Unexpected embodied the scrappy ethos of indie development circa 2016. Its creator cited FTL and tabletop RPGs as inspirations, envisioning a “reactive world where every choice ripples outward.” However, technical constraints loomed: Built in Unity 5 with sub-300MB storage requirements, the game’s scope was hamstrung by budget limitations.

The 2016 Landscape
Arriving amidst roguelike saturation (Darkest Dungeon, Enter the Gungeon), Expect The Unexpected faced skepticism. Critics questioned its $1 price tag—a tactic to offset rudimentary production values. Yet its timing was serendipitous: The post-FTL market craved narrative-driven procedural gameplay, and GoldenGod Games leaned hard into niche appeal. Steam user “Biterkid” later noted: “It’s FTL with swords and arrows—janky but addictive.”

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Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The Hero’s Formulaic Journey
The premise mirrors RPG boilerplate: Gods appoint you (a nameless hero) to gather 12 Runes of Power across Lorhaven—a Tolkien-esque realm fractured by warring factions (Free States, Empire of the Dark Sun, Savahn’s Kingdom). The narrative framework exists solely to justify procedural map traversal, repurposing tropes of destiny and corruption. Scripted events—from bartering with bandits to solving riddles for the dead—oscillate between absurdist comedy (“a squirrel demands your helmet”) and grimdark futility (“sacrifice a companion to cross a chasm”).

Meaningful Choice or Illusion?
The game’s “freedom of choice” ethos manifests in a reputation system tracking faction relations. Ally with the Free States, and merchants slash prices; betray them, and assassins stalk your party. Yet beneath this veneer lies dissonance. Dialog options often reduce morality to binary extremes (“Save orphans” vs. “Burn the orphanage”), undermining nuance. Reviews criticized the writing’s grammatical instability—floating between folkloric grandeur and amateurish shorthand. Steam user “Shinop87” lamented: “The prose feels machine-translated. Immersion dies at ‘Youre sword is shiny.’”

Ludonarrative Gaps
The afterlife sequence—a roguelike purgatory where players solve riddles to resurrect—epitizes the game’s thematic reach. While conceptually daring (a Hades-lite mechanic years before Hades), its execution falters. Solutions rely on brute-force trial-and-error, rendering death punitive rather than provocative.

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Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Core Loop: The Good, The Bad, The Recycled
At its best, Expect The Unexpected channels FTL’s tension:
– Travel Phase: Navigate a node-based overworld, managing resources (food, gold) while triggering randomized encounters.
– Event Phase: Choose responses to text-based scenarios (e.g., negotiating with pirates), with success tied to stats (Charisma, Luck).
– Combat Phase: Engage in grid-based, turn-based skirmishes against bandits, beasts, and demons using class abilities.

Yet systemic flaws erode the loop:
* Repetition: Despite 100+ events, only ~20 templates repeat ad nauseam. By hour three, you’ve seen every “trapped chest” permutation.
* Progression Imbalance: The five classes (Fighter, Archer, Wizard, Druid, Necromancer) suffer from incoherent skill trees. The Necromancer’s summons trivialize combat, while the Archer’s accuracy RNG frustrates.
* UI/UX Nightmares: Inventory management is a cluttered spreadsheet, with no tooltips or sorting. The absence of a tutorial—evident in Steam Forum cries of “How do I equip shields??”—borders on hostile.

The Afterlife Gambit
Upon death, players enter a challenge realm to resurrect—a bold permadeath mitigator. Yet its riddles (“What walks on four legs at dawn, two at noon?”) lack contextual clues, reducing revival to a Google-dependent chore.

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World-Building, Art & Sound

Aesthetic Ambition vs. Execution
GoldenGod Games opted for a “diagonal-down” perspective—a nostalgic nod to Ultima—but technical limitations bite:
– Visuals: Pixel art sprites and environments feel ripped from 2005-era RPG Maker, with bland terrain (forests, crypts) lacking detail.
– Sound Design: A meager loop of MIDI tavern melodies and canned sword clashes. The absence of voice acting magnifies the text’s flaws.

Atmosphere Through Systems
Where aesthetics falter, systemic storytelling shines. Faction reputations dynamically alter NPC dialogues: A max-reputation Barbarian town greets you with feasts, while hated enemies send relentless hit squads. This reactivity—however shallow—creates emergent narratives. As Steam reviewer “The Emperor Of Light” noted: “My evil necromancer run felt uniquely mine—everyone fled at my approach.”

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Reception & Legacy

Launch Turbulence
The game launched to crickets—no critic reviews tracked by Metacritic, and MobyGames’ entry remains incomplete. Steam reviews settled at “Mixed” (66% positive), praising replayability but slamming bugs (Linux builds crashed on launch) and sparse content.

Post-Launch Evolution
Developer engagement flickered: A 2020 patch fixed critical save bugs but abandoned promised features (co-op, new factions). By 2025, GoldenGod Games vanished—leaving the game stagnant.

Industry Impact
While not a commercial hit, Expect The Unexpected influenced indies exploring procedural morality. Unexpected Stories (2020) and The Unexpected Quest (2020) borrowed its faction/reputation framework, albeit with polish. Designer Jonas Kyratzes (The Sea Will Claim Everything) acknowledged it as “a messy prototype for systemic storytelling.”

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Conclusion

Expect The Unexpected is a paradox—a game whose title warns players of chaos yet fails to surprise beyond surface-level RNG. It is neither a hidden gem nor a disaster, but a poignant case study in indie ambition vs. execution. Its strengths—class diversity, faction reactivity, and genuinely novel afterlife mechanic—are undermined by repetitive design, technical jank, and abandonment.

Final Verdict: For $1, it remains a compelling artifact for roguelike historians and FTL devotees craving fantasy reskins. Yet like its restless hero, the game feels eternally incomplete—a blueprint for greatness unrealized. In the pantheon of indie RPGs, it earns neither apotheosis nor oblivion, but a curious footnote: Expect The Unexpected dared much, delivered little, and lingers as a cautionary tale of scope unchecked.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ (2.5/5) — Flawed Fascination