The Lost Expedition

There are a good few solo games (or games with solo modes) in my collection that I’ve wanted to start getting back to the table. The Lost Expedition is a game that I have a lot of time for, as it reminds me of the Usborne Puzzle Adventure books I played as a kid. The game was designed by Peer Sylvester the designer of The King is Dead the best 3 player game I’ve ever played.

Look & feel

Hands down I love the artwork of this game. The artist is the extremely talented Garen Ewing and they have really captured an art style that transports me straight back to my childhood. There is a beautiful balance of humour and horror in the art that was a staple of a lot of Usborne books of the 80s and 90s. The Lost Expedition is a difficult game, so the cards quite often depict the intrepid party of explorers in extremely sticky situations. I could go on and on about the artwork, needless to say it is excellent and contributes hugely to the enjoyment of the game.

The game is published by Osprey Games and the production quality is very good. The game consists mainly of oversize 80mm x 120mm cards which are lovely to handle and give the gorgeous art a decent canvas. It does make the game quite hungry for table space, especially with the Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures expansion which is pictured above. Playing it at its most difficult elongates the Expedition trail to 11 cards in total. You could stagger the trail, but it feels more thematic as one epic trek. Another slight downside to the expansion cards is that the card backs are slightly darker than the original game, so you can tell when you are drawing an expansion card. This has zero impact on the gameplay for me, so is not something to worry about.

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty simple and the rulebook is easy enough to follow. You select 3 adventurers (who look completely unaware of what is to come) and bring some food and ammunition with you. Each adventurer has a speciality (jungle, navigation, and camping) that will be used to resolve actions on Adventure cards as you delve deeper into the jungle. With the expansion you can add 3 new companions—Vulcana (bodyguard), Comatsi (generalist), and Rinty (a doggo). These companions make the game easier if you play without the Fountain of Youth expansion, but are probably required if you play with it. The Fountain of Youth adds some supernatural elements to the game with undead soldiers and the possibility of a member of the party becoming a werebeast!

You lay out Expedition cards from the Base Camp all the way through to El Dorado. The expansion adds some options here and is a nice addition to the base game, hiding the route (for the most part) and giving certain locations positive/negative effects also. The party are trekking up and over a mountain peak, just in case their trek through hostile jungle wasn’t bad enough! With the route ahead laid out it is time for the party to get their adventure underway.

Each round represents a day of trekking, and is broken into a morning and evening phase. You start each day by drawing a fresh hand of 6 cards, and in both day and evening phases you choose 3 cards to play into ‘The Path’ and draw 3 off the top of the deck. So you have some idea of what you will face. The main difference between day and night phases is the order in which cards are arranged in the Path. For the morning they must be numerical order and in the evening they can be in any order. The order the cards come out for the morning phase (for Solo play) is 2 from the deck, 2 from your hand, 1 from the deck, and finally 1 from your hand. For the evening it is 1 card from your hand and from there you can choose to place from your hand or the deck (to the left or right of any placed cards in the Path). The difference in how you place the cards between each phase does keep the game interesting and makes decision making quite nuanced for morning and evening.

Each card on the Path has symbols on it that you must resolve to survive and continue. Each explorer has a specialty and using it to resolve symbols on a card costs a health token (they all have 3 to start with in the base game). You can choose to spend two health instead of using a specialty, usually because someone has died, or is has too little health to use their specialty without dying. Not every card offers the option to advance to the next Expedition card and make it ever closer to El Dorado. With some cards offering you the choice of advancing at the cost of sacrificing the life of one of your explorers!

Conclusion

I have a lot of time for this game. It scratches a nostalgic itch with its artwork and overall tone. And it offers a great solo experience that is quick to set up and play. Outside of solo it probably plays best with 3 (similar to the Kind is Dead mentioned above), but it shines as a solo experience. The Lost Expedition is a game that I will come back to every few months to slog through the inhospitable jungle on a quest to find treasures unknown!

27 Apr 2025