Return of the Obra Dinn

Return of the Obra Dinn is a particular kind of Murder Mystery. A merchant ship that went missing 5 years before returns to harbor with a few corpses on board and a lot of missing crew members. You play an Insurance Investigator(Don't get too excited now) who is sent figure out what happened. Aiding you is a map of the ship, a crew roster, sketches of the crew and a logbook....as well as pocket watch which allows you to see the last few moment of a dead persons life. With these tools, you will explore the ship and use the corpses to reconstruct the series of extremely unfortunate events that comprised the last voyage of the obra dinn, and more importantly(and with some difficultly), determine the fates of all 60 passengers and crew. While you see faces clearly in the flashbacks and fates are often obvious, names are much harder to connect and often must be gleaned by inference and intuition(uniforms, what jobs they're shown doing, what language they speak, etc). For the very most part, the game doesn't try to throw curve balls at you. Everyone will be wearing their proper uniform and doing their proper job and using their real names(no aliases or name changes). A tip to get the best ending: Don't leave the ship until you see a screen telling you that there is nothing more to do on the ship. You're not under any time pressure and your job is to correctly determine everyone's fate. The game is about 8-9 hours long but a fascinating reconstruction of a doomed voyage through a unique mechanic(Cryostasis did something like this years ago but this isn't quite the same thing). It's certainly not a game everyone is going to like but if the idea of watching a tragedy unfold piece by piece and trying to make sense of it all appeals to you, this is worth a play.

Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the most immersive adventure games I have ever played. Everything is spot on and immensely fine-tuned - the graphics, the music, the sound effects and the gameplay. There is nothing quite like it and I have never thought that I am going to enjoy piecing together the fates of the sixty crew members this much. I am seriously considering buying the game on Steam for a second playthrough. Sure, the mystery might not feel that fresh for a second time but Obra Dinn's atmosphere is something that I rarely experience in the world of video games. In this day and age, Lucas Pope deserves every bit of support we can give him! If you enjoy detective and mystery games, you simply have to give this one a try!

I absolutely loved this game. Hopping aboard the Obra Dinn and slowly unraveling the mysterious tragedy of its voyage was so much fun and made me feel like an absolute genius when I correctly guessed the fates of some of the crew. It did get a little frustrating near the end because there was just so much information to gleam and navigating between memories for a particular person became a little tedious. I wish there was a way to just jump to certain memories and to simply play those vignettes from the book once you had already seen them, but still, it was fine. It also did feel like, at times, I was just making educated guesses and occasionally the details of a vignette weren't super clear so it was hard to actually see what had happened. Other than a few nitpicks, this was one of my favourite mystery games I've played because it felt like I was really a detective. The music was great, the overall aesthetic of the game was beautiful and it all came together to make one hell of a game.

Presentation: While all the video settings hurt my eyes, I can agree that the style suits the mood of the game. (I recommend taking a break semi-frequently if your eyes start to burn from all the particle effects.) There is voice-acting for what few moments you view, and you'd better be able to tell accents apart, if you want a chance at solving some of the puzzles presented. Gameplay: The main mechanic of checking around moments frozen in time works well for the most part. The fact that you can't restart the audio segments without leaving and returning to the memory, and can't just leave one when you please (you need to find a "door" to exit), makes some aspects seem like padding. There are also a few members of the crew that appear to require guesswork, even after you've seen all the moments in time that you're able to access. There is also one memory where a number is replaced with a symbol is a very "this is a game" moment, but for the most part things stay true to he world. Story: Other than the one plot hole near the end, the story actually comes together quite nicely, and I found myself wide-eyed at some of the twists and turns presented. (Even with a few spoilers from video reviews of the game.)

Return of the Obra Dinn is an acquired taste initially due to the graphics, but this is amazingly done and it is one of the historically accurate games I ever played in all my life. Even if you are not familiar with the time period or are normally good at puzzle games, the game will give you subtle nudges towards the possible answers. The voice acting and sound effects are key for this game and a lot of effort was done to make sure the accents would be correct and that the sound effects would match with what would be happening in the scene. Overall, this game is a pleasure to play and I highly recommend it to anyone that is a fan of logic-based deduction and/or good story-telling.