Review: Expelled Rewards Bad Behavior in the Best Ways

It’s interesting when games offer a morality system, and Expelled is no exception. Like titles such as Mass Effect or Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s constantly tracking your behavior to influence the flow of the story. However, while in other games don’t really push you one way or the other, Inkle definitely wants you to do bad things. In fact, it’s the only way to really open up the story and perhaps help save a framed scholarship student from a tarnished reputation and shortened school life.

Verity Amersham is innocent! She was framed for pushing hockey captain and classmate Louisa Hardcastle out of a library window! She didn’t do it!

Well, she didn’t do that. But she did potentially do a lot of other things. 

The thing is, headmaster Mulligatawney doesn’t really care. She wants Verity expelled. However, there is a chance you can keep your position and scholarship at Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls. You just need to actually do some pretty bad things to get dirt on other people, uncover secrets, find objects, and discover exactly why Louisa took a tumble. Verity’s bad behavior will be tracked, to show exactly how delinquent she is, and you’ll often find it’s critical to uncover some extra information or see some really funny interactions.

Expelled is an adventure game game that is very heavy on choices that matter. Especially since you’ll replay it multiple times to find an end, good or bad. Verity’s fateful day starts in the morning that Louisa fell from the stained glass library window. From there, you need to talk to students and members of the faculty, find items, and gather information that could be useful on this or future runs. As you progress, you’ll gain the ability to deviate from the set “path” that Verity needs to follow during the first few playthroughs and get a chance to explore more of the school and use the full day to your advantage. All of which is framed as Verity telling her father exactly what happened to her. 

This means you get to see scenes from different ways and get an idea of what’s happening at all times as you play. Once able to explore the campus, you can see how long it gets to each spot, who will be there, and get an idea of other people’s schedules. Interactions help you see how folks relate to each other and what information or items they might value. I do wish it was a bit easier to keep track of additional information on future runs, but the execution is quite tidy and concise as-is. But from my experience, I feel like it is best to stick with it for a few days in a row or week, so all of the information and possibilities stay fresh at the forefront of your mind.

What’s fun is that your report card at the “end” of each short run grades you on Verity’s bad behavior. You’ll see exactly how “naughty” you were. It will also highlight certain accomplishments for that run, to let you know how close you are to completing important milestones. Even Mulligatawney will push you toward that sort of behavior in her unavoidable encounter in her office, to push you toward taking risks and being a jerk sometimes to get what you want.

Also, there’s a delicate balance between good and bad behavior! It will take some time to work out the “right” choices to get what you want. But sometimes, it isn’t always about selecting the options that involve bad behavior. You also need to pay attention and make smart or even not-so-bad choices too.

Which leads into another reasons why Expelled works so well. In addition to Verity trickle truthing her story to her father, it makes it feel like she’s doing that in each run to us as well. She clearly isn’t as innocent as she seems, which is evident in so many of her possible dialogue choices. But we’re only getting the full story as we explore. However, said story also doesn’t take a ton of time. The very first run will probably not even take fifteen minutes, given the speed with which Verity is discovered and sent to Mulligatawney. But every subsequent run, you can spend more and more time delaying and figuring out what happened. And, since each one is so short, it doesn’t feel too devastating if you fail and need to restart.

The only thing that annoyed me about Expelled is that it can be easy to quickly falter and fail in the game early on. This means you can quickly find yourself getting Verity almost immediately kicked out. There does seem to be a built-in failsafe though, so it’s not like it’s devastating. Just expect to experience much quicker runs your first three or four times before you really find a groove and get into more solid investigations.

Expelled is a wicked good time, with each playthrough of the game building on the one before it. However, even though you will be replaying that fateful day repeatedly, it doesn’t feel tedious or exhausting. Inkle constantly builds upon events, opening up opportunities and new outcomes for Verity. It’s a delightful story that encourages you to experiment and be bad.

Expelled will come to the Nintendo Switch, PCs, and mobile devices, with the game debuting on March 12, 2025.