This game is unlike anything I've ever played. Ostensibly just a walking simulator with some deduction on top, you follow the story of the ship The Obra Dinn, whose passengers all mysteriously vanished. The story is fantastic, and told non-linearly through a series of flashbacks. The game helpfully provides a timeline for the events and it's much easier to follow than some other non-linear stories. The story is fantastic, but the deduction is what kept me coming back. You are tasked with finding out the fates of each passenger. Armed only with a magic pocketwatch and a book, you'll investigate the ship, slowly chipping away at the identities of each of it's passengers and crew. You feel like a detective, more than any other game I've played, as you deduce each person's fate and identity though dialog, the context of each scene, and tracking them through each chapter and scene. You can guess and hope you're right, but in my opinion, the experience is vastly better if you wait until you feel certain. This game is slow and methodical, and there is no gameplay apart from walking around and observing things. I found it incredibly engaging, but it's very much not a game for everyone. If deduction and puzzles and note-taking appeal to you though, this game is a masterpiece.
The puzzles in the first chapter or two are easy and uninteresting, but they do pick up in difficulty a bit later on. As you progress, the world map opens up and many puzzles require a lot of backtracking. Coupled with a fairly slow transition between locations and no quick movement system, this quickly becomes rather irksome. Other than that, this game was..fine. The plot and setting are a pretty generic spy motif and the writing is somewhere between passable and uninteresting. Overall, I'd say your time would be better spent playing something else. This game doesn't bring anything new to the table and fails to bring any modern conveniences to smooth out the gameplay.
