Return of the Obra Dinn

All of the murder mystery games that I've played and seen focused on some far-fetched series of puzzles that you should solve to move the story. You should complete one puzzle after another in exact order to progress. Some times these games will hold you by the hand and scream some clues at you like: " MISSIS SOANDSO HAS BLOOD ON HER BOOTS!!! HER HANDS HAVE BRUISES LIKE SHE WAS KILLING THAT MAN LAST NIGHT WINK-WINK NUDGE-NUDGE!!!!!" Sometimes these games will have some puzzle that you just don't understand or maybe you can't spot something which ultimately resolves with pixel hunting and other silliness. The point is that this "genre" of games pretty much was defined and it was (IMHO) stupid. And Lucas Pope did it again... The author of this magnificent game may have been known to you by his previous game "Papers, please" which was a genre-bending or even genre defining experience in game design. Return to the Obra Dinn made by exactly this habit of the author - to ignore conventions and barriers of genres. It almost seems like he was mad as me by this void of proper games that will make you feel like Sherlock Holmes or some other great detective. And he made this game as if to fix and revitalize this dreadful and un-dead genre. PROS: - The game will show you the whole story (except for one chapter) of what happened regardless of how good you are as a detective. No stream of stupid pixelhunting puzzles that lock your progress. - No stupid hand holding and screaming clues at you. There are some clues that are blunt, some are very subtle, but nothing is in-your-face press-e-to-sherlock - You have one and only one thing to worry about. The main game mechanic is simple to understand and the game builds on it effortlessly. No new out of the blue and far-fetched puzzles! - Music is superb! - Sound design, voice work and the direction is godlike. CONS: - The opening of every new scene may drag a tiny-bit at times :(

I love puzzle games. This is the first puzzle game that in a while where I had to break out pen and paper and actually take notes. I got about 15 fates in and I was like, "Well, I guess that's all this game is going to give me". Then I looked closer and slowly started to solve the rest of the fates, and a majority of the fates took some serious mental straining. To ding the game a little, I wasn't exactly sure how to solve some of the fates, but through a process of elimination, but even that felt rewarding. This game was refreshing to me, especially after I just got through with playing one of the Myst games, which, no offense, the world doesn't make much sense and the puzzles suffer because of it. This game, even though there were obvious fantasy elements, felt like close to reality. Loved it. I'd like more games with a similar game mechanic.

Obra Dinn is a murder mystery on an empty shipping vessel, where you have to determine what happened to the crew and passangers before the ship reappared empty. The premise is adequtely spooky, but the set-up of how you actually view the events used to solve the mystery is a little contrived, though easily ignored. The game's graphical style was offputting to me for the longest time, and I still find them a bit hard on the eyes for long sessions, but they work for the game's mood, tone, and mechanics. The music is great, even when it doesn't tonally fit a scene, just because it's so well written and produced. When it does fit, it gives the game great horror feeling. The voice acting and modeling was distinct and diverse, which helps add realism to the somewhat abstract world. There's also some neat twists on the chain of events the player will find that really helped make the game structurally very memorable. I unfortunately found myself being a little less attentive and found myself in a pretty aggressive loop of going through memories many times to catch little details to identify people. Doing this requires you to travel the ship to find a specific memory, and some are locked behind other memories. Locking memories to others led to a lot of speeding through segments just to reach one specific point, which was less enjoyable and more like a chore. I also felt the ending sequence didn't quite have the impact maybe Lucas Pope was going for. I loved playing through this and I'd love for Lucas Pope to consider doing another game expanding on these ideas.

Very nice aestetic with a switchable palette to emulate many diffrent popular late 80's computers; a little hard on the eyes at first, but you get used to it after about half an hour. Identifying the Chinese Topmen is the most frustrating part of the game, but you can get them all eventually. (Copyed over from my Steam Review)

Great experience of a game. Basically the board game Clue (Cluedo) on steroids. Your goal is to find out what happened on the ship, and what happened to everyone... but this isn't as easy as it sounds. The game is all about trying to find details in what is happening, and making connections... again not as easy as it sounds as some connections are pretty obvious while others take a bit of a guess. Overall, this is a great game but it does suffer from some negatives. First, the art style, while really cool, does make some details really difficult to see. Second, there isn't a hint system or even a tutorial, so it can be difficult to figure out what is going on at first. Third, even if you are correct there isn't any immediate confirmation, though you do get confirmation once you solve 3 instances. Lastly, the biggest one is that there really isn't any replaying this game. All in all, if you get it on sale I think it is worth it to give it a go.