Return of the Obra Dinn

Return of the Obra Dinn is a mystery adventure game from Lucas Pope, best known for Papers, Please. It's a huge "whodunnit" type puzzle, where you piece together narrative shown to you out of order and try to figure out what happened, to whom, how and why. The premise is rather simple - a ship returns with dead bodies on board and you, with some mysterious clock that lets you watch final moments of some people on board, need to clear the fates of every single person who was on board. Every memory is presented as a freeze frame you can explore with some great voice acting and ambience that usually contains hints, which opens with a more dramatic presentation but is later available for you to revisit at any point if you need more references. Once you've filled in the names and fates of three people correctly those people disappear from the list of suggestions for unidentified people. This motivates you to be careful with your investigation, but also do some guessing at times. Thought it does become a bit frustrating in the last parts of your investigation, once you've seen all memories and easily identified about a half of the crew, as quite a lot of the rest will require at least a bit of guessing. This also involves manually finding the correct scene you want to rewatch to refresh your memory and entering it, then exiting it, finding the next one and etc. But the game is still extremely interesting, the story is good and full of quite unexpected supernatural twists that are somewhat reminiscent of how normalcy and magic combined in the classic The Last Express and the music complements the journey quite well. If you like games that allow you to really dive into untangling the mystery, restoring the chronology and feeling like a detective and you can excuse some occasional quality of life deficiencies, this game is an absolute must have.

Obra Dinn is a unique game in the fact that most of the gameplay comes from your ability to reason and deduce. You are tasked with finding the fates of the members aboard a ship in 1803. Everything the game gives you contains clues that you might not expect at first glance. All in all this a phenomenal time with a well executed idea, supported by great music and voice acting.

I was a bit skeptical when I decided to buy the game but... wow, this is something different. I'm at loss of words... great idea, unique graphics, excellent voice acting, earworm soundtracks, challenging detective work that makes you think. It's a very particular style and I understand not everyone will like it. The ending could have been a bit better IMHO, but other than that, all was great. 9/10 It's mindblowing to think that a single person managed to create this game from start to finish.

Gripping from start to finish. Really unique mechanics. Not easy, but not hard for someone with decent intuition and deduction skills to finish without cheating. Very satisfying to solve. Unique visuals. Plenty of surprises in the plot. Highly recommended for anyone seeking a unique experience and interesting story.

This game is the only game I have ever played that is a true mystery. You are required to use a significant amount of critical thinking in order to determine the identities of the poor souls lost aboard the Obra Dinn. As a long time fan of authors like Patrick O Brian and CS Forester I really enjoyed the attention to detail when it came to nautical knowledge, but a handy glossary would provide more than enough information to even a complete layman. The low quality graphics loop right back around to being charming and unique, and the story that is slowly told is excellent. I highly recommend this game and hope that Lucas Pope will continue to release stellar work like this.