Dyer Expedition just hit Steam—and I wanted to love it, but I can’t.
Can it be fun? Sure. Great ideas? Definitely. But the presentation wrecked me. The way the color and low-res textures strobe against each other made me nauseous—fifteen minutes in, I was dry heaving and clutching my stomach like I’d been on a bender. Closest I’ve ever felt to a hangover without actually drinking.
So here’s the setup. It’s 1931. Antarctica is still the great unknown. Miskatonic University sends William Dyer to the ice to dig up fossils and prove his academic theories. The supply ship sails home and finds the base abandoned. Contact is gone. You fear the worst—colleagues lost, dread mounting—and so you mount your own rogue mission. Passage through Australia, a fishing boat dropping you at the ice, two days to find out what happened. It’s straight Lovecraft, riffing on At the Mountains of Madness.
That part is compelling. The problem is how the game plays. First cabin you enter? Doors you can’t open. No explanation, no feedback. Why build doors into a level if they’re nothing but wall dressing? And while the atmosphere screams “explore me,” the structure is rigidly A-to-B. Even 1980s adventure games rewarded curiosity. This one corrals you down the track like a tourist on a rope line. If it’s linear, fine—but then don’t fake openness.
Visually, I usually enjoy PSX-era blockiness. But something about this clashes—the chunky textures grinding against color gradients until it’s physically unpleasant. It’s the rare case where a retro filter makes me want to hurl.
Audio is stronger. Puzzles actually lean on sound cues, which is clever. The sound design is tense and practical. Music (if you can call it that) drifts in and out like background radiation—ambient to the point of forgettable. Stereo separation is nice. Custom volume sliders are there. Credit where due: Sjellos composed the score, and while it isn’t memorable, it fits the cold.
Controls are keyboard and mouse by default, Xbox pad supported. But nothing about the layout is intuitive. Expect to wrestle with it before the game lets you settle in.
Quality of life is barebones—Steam Family Sharing, and that’s it.
Specs are featherweight. An old Intel HD 620 runs it. You only need 4GB of RAM and a single gig of storage.
Windows is the official target, but the demo shipped a Linux build, and I can confirm the full game runs flawlessly on Linux too. Even on Steam Deck is plays well.
Monkeys With Jobs, a solo Austrian dev, spent three and a half years making this. It’s their debut. Launch price is C$9.44 with a 10% discount. On day one there are only two Steam reviews, both positive. I disagree with their sentiment.
For me, the linearity, the fake interactivity, and the queasy visuals ruin what could have been a strong Antarctic mystery. It made me sick—literally. And when a game puts me flat on the couch in under twenty minutes, I can’t recommend it.