Steam Tip: Curious Expedition is a perilous, procedurally-generated adventure simulator

Randomly generated worlds, unpredictable events, and permanent death are all the rage right now. And no setting fits those traits quite as well as a treacherous exploration into an uncharted jungle.

That's the idea behind Curious Expedition - a top-down, turn-based game about slicing up trees, fighting tigers, and advancing archeology through indiscriminate looting.

The game drops you - one of a handful of famous explorers and an ever-shifting team of lackeys - into a randomly generated jungle.

Your job is to explore, chat to locals, finish little missions, and generally try to pin down the location of a golden pyramid. If you manage to reach it, you'll go home and be graded on the amount of loot you recovered during your trip.

Obviously, that's a big "if". Your expedition is as treacherous as it is curious, and brainless moves - or just dumb luck - can put your journey in peril.

In my game, I prayed to some ancient god at a big stone monument and received a handy boost. But some natives weren't impressed with that and demanded we pay tribute. When we refused, the locals whipped out their spears.

My team managed to kill them off with a shotgun blast to the face, but Charles Darwin was critically injured in the fight and, after a run in with a tiger and an accidental forest fire, succumbed to his injuries and dropped dead.

Which is annoying. Not just because it would surely set back the theory of evolution by a few centuries, but also because he died literally on the steps of the golden pyramid. Curses!

Your health is obviously one thing to think about, but you also need to keep your group's sanity in check, and you need to manage your standing with the locals. Looting artefacts, blowing up mountains, and generally being a big racist is frowned upon, apparently.

Otherwise you'll end up like me, in turn-based, dice-driven fights against dudes with spears. Or tigers. Or dinosaurs. The combat system is a little tricky to understand, but it's all based on your stats and your stuff, so preparation is everything.

Curious Expedition, then, is the potent mix of permadeath roguelike FTL, and gentlemanlike story-spinner 80 Days. With a little Indiana Jones for good measure. It's all quite wonderful, and will be out on PC, Mac, and Linux in early access, later today.