A Monster's Expedition is a delightfully twee puzzle game

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It combines exploration and puzzle-solving in interesting ways.

(Image credit: Draknek and friends)

A Monster's Expedition is a new puzzle game where you explore an open, outdoor museum for monsters who want to learn more about human civilization. It's an historical, human, and very cute experience. A Monster's Expedition is the latest from puzzle game designer Draknek and collaborators, billed here as Draknek & Friends. Draknek is behind some of the better puzzle games of the past decade, like Cosmic Express and hit indie puzzler Sokobond. 

A Monster's Expedition is adorable, and quite funny, but it's the simple joy of the puzzles and explorable world that make it good. It's rare to actually call a game that can challenge your brain relaxing, but this is one of them. If a puzzle is too hard, you can generally just go solve a puzzle somewhere else in the open world. It's also simple-enough for anyone to play—mostly just pushing things around.

When PC Gamer took a look at A Monster's Expedition earlier this year, our Rachel Watts said it had "a breezy approach when it comes to its puzzles." Here's how she described the gameplay: "Bouncing from one island to the next means solving block-pushing puzzles. There are a number of trees on each island that can be pushed over and used as logs—bridging together two islands. If you push a log sideways it will keep rolling until it hits something, meaning that many of your logs might accidentally roll into the ocean if you're not careful. Pushing a log lengthwise will let you flip it one tile at a time, making it stand upright or lie down. These petite puzzles are all about moving your log in the right direction so, when you give it that final push, it rolls neatly into the right position. "

A Monster's Expedition is available now for $20. You can find A Monster's Expedition at its official website, on itch.io, on Steam, and for Mac on the app store.

Disclaimer: Former PC Gamer deputy editor Philippa Warr is the writer for A Monster's Expedition.

Jonathan Bolding
Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.