Return of the Obra Dinn

What an adventure.. really enjoyed every single part in this game. A very unique experience and very very challenging. The characters, the way the story is told, addicting music themes and the satisfaction of correctly identifying the crew. Definitely a must for puzzle/detective genre fans!

It’s very rare for games about solving a mystery to allow you go about it without giving you any help. ‘Return of the Obra Dinn’ is such game; it expects you to put in some real (brain) work. If you do, you’ll find the game not only challenging, but also empowering and rewarding. Aside from a brief tutorial on how to use your log book and supernatural pocket watch, ‘Obra Dinn’ doesn’t hold your hand. As you come across corpses and witness final minutes of the victims, you’ll unlock opportunities to explore various parts of the ship. You’ll need to rely on your observation and deduction skills to identify the victims, their causes of death, or reasons for their absence. There’ll be a few instances in which you’ll need to make educated guesses. The story of ‘Obra Dinn’ is also full of surprises, and is told asynchronously as you uncover more clues. Aside from a few snippets of dialogues, the story is told visually and musically. This style of storytelling adds to the mystery, making the first-person exploration very engaging and immersive. Designer Lucas Pope did a fantastic job keeping ‘Obra Dinn’ minimalistic and focused. The game’s visual design also sets itself apart from its peers. The graphics are in 3D, but are presented in 1-bit style like the art in early Macintosh games. This presentation is homage to this art style, and is an artistic choice akin to filmmakers shooting their movies in black and white. It is effective in showing some people and locales in greater detail, helping to direct your attention to key areas during your investigation. It’s worth noting that ‘Obra Dinn’ is a game that you can only experience its magic once. The moment you've solved the mystery, that’s it. Still, the rewards of making correct conclusions and cracking the case are very gratifying. If you’re a tenacious puzzle solver and enjoy a challenge, ‘Obra Dinn’ may just be the perfect game for you. Just remember to take your time and savour every moment of it.

Wanderful, Fantastic, Unique. Unlike other games, this one really challanges the player to solve the puzzle without many hints. Quick tip: a piece of paper and a pen might come handy to organize all the datas/hypothesis you'll find in your investigation. Hope to see more games like this in the future!

The unfortunate thing with Lucas Pope's games is that they tend to occupy a genre of 1. I say unfortunate because this game left me heartbroken that there are not 100 like it. For my tastes, this is about as perfect as a game can get. Very tight, very well designed mystery/deduction game with a good mix of "so obvious you'd have to be sleeping to miss it" clues and "expert deducers only" clues. I think the art direction is stunningly cool, the sounds are incredible, and in general I found the whole experience deeply immersive. There's not much else to say, really. Maybe if I'm nitpicking, the meta story that ties everything together could have been a bit stronger? It seemed like it was going somewhere more... significant, I guess? It's not bad by any means, I'm really being picky here. For bonus fun, get a friend/spouse/SO to play through it separately and simultaneously, and then come together at the end to discuss. My wife and I did this and it was really cool how much we both got into it. A great shared activity even though we didn't directly solve it together. I suppose you could also do it couch-"co-op" style but I have a hard time doing puzzle games with other people and it worked really well as a "book club"-style game. Last thing I'll say is, don't listen to the people who claim the game gets grindy and there's no way to figure out some of the later characters. It's not true. Every single answer can be deduced without any guess work at all. Now, some of them are fiendishly difficult, and I don't think there's any shame in making a few educated guesses at the end, but the ability to use your brain cells to solve it the right way is there if you want it. (And the fan wiki is there at the end to show you all the obvious-in-hindsight things you missed.)

An excellent backstory which you will learn as you need to discover the fates of all the passangers and crew on the Obra Dinn. The aesthetic is unusual, but I found it suited the game perfectly and means it can run on a potato. The first person view sucks you right in, allows you to wander around as needed. The clues are all there to work out who is who, and what happened to them. There is no twitchiness required you can take your time and look at everything you need to. It is self contained, has a definate end. A uniquie experience and one I enjoyed thoroughly. If a second game out, or even one in the same vein it would be an instabuy.