Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)

If you're into adventure games, someone has told you to play Return of the Obra Dinn. And if no one has, I'm telling you now. Go play Return of the Obra Dinn.

To be honest, I put off playing it because the idea of a game with exactly one big puzzle that takes 8 hours to complete didn't sound like my thing, but my wife loves deduction puzzles and I treasure any game I can play with my wife, so we gave this one a shot and I'm glad we did. I've never played a game that welds puzzle and story together so well. And especially a puzzle where every part of the presentation is important. The voice acting, the foley work, the attention to detail in character and environment design all have to be incredible for the game to work. So it's all the more impressive that, yeah, they genuinely are all that good.

If I have one problem with this game, it's almost the reverse of my problem with Lukas Pope's previous game. The message of that game, Papers Please, is clear immediately and resonates through every single design decision. You can't play it without thinking about how oppressive systems maintain power by keeping people in poverty. But the gameplay loop of Papers Please just isn't all that fun, to be honest. I respect it from a narrative perspective, but I don't enjoy it as a game.

The Return of the Obra Dinn is an absolute blast to play, but I did kind wonder, what is all this saying? There's definitely something gesturing at substance in walking through the dead bodies of people who have names and lives and relationships, reducing them to a couple of terse lines in an insurance report. But the game spends very little time being about that. Mostly it's just about magic and murder. Which to be clear, I like magic and murder. I liked Return of the Obra Dinn. It's a banger mystery with some gorgeous setpieces and I've never played anything like it. It's probably unfair to ask for more than that, but still, I can't help but wonder if I'll think about this game much now that I've finished it.

This is the first game I completed on my Christmas gifted steam deck. It was addictive and fun, but I feel like I probably would have been better served playing with a mouse. My biggest complaint was the UI. The developer mentioned that some decisions were made for simplicity of creating the game, and some were made to match the lore/setting of the game. I totally understand the reasoning of those choices. I also think the UI helps keep you more immersed during the "discovery" portion of the game. Once the player has encountered every cut-scene; however, is when I felt the UI choices greatly hampered the ease of connecting bits of information/deducing. But if I were actually the insurance investigator in possession of the devices that made the investigation possible, I would have had to do it the way the game forces you to do it, so I guess that works. (I probably should have just had a pen and paper nearby for solving the last portion of fates)

The graphics were distinctive and given the variety of monitor settings/color choices for the 1-bit style, I believe the majority of players could find a palette they deem pleasing. There were only a few times the graphics were a hinderance. These were times where I was very certain I had the fates of 3 passengers correct, and had to look up on the wiki to see that I had chosen the wrong verb for the manner of their death. 2 of those times it was because I couldn't clearly make out the scene due to the graphics, and one ended up being a time where the game was oddly more restrictive about the manner in which a beast killed a passenger.

The soundtrack was very well implemented into the gameplay as well, and a few of the chapters had real ear-worms.

I may play again with keyboard and mouse to unlock the last achievements, and if that is a smoother UI experience, I believe this game warrants a bump to 5 stars.

This game somehow manages to combine time travel, (murder) mystery, and lovecraftian themes together that left me wanting for more after each discovery. The ending wasn't what I expected as I wanted something more exciting but nevertheless this would be one of the games that I don't regret playing.

If you're not into the graphics of this game, bear with it. The story's worth it.

Lucas Pope exclusively develops games for degenerate people. I'm degenerate people. I just finished playing through Return of the Obra Dinn and not only was it an incredibly entertaining experience, but it was something I've never seen before and that, honestly, I don't think I'll ever see again. Loved it.

I guess the best way to descrive Return of the Obra Dinn is as a detective game. You work for an insurance company in the 1800s, and you have a watch that lets you see how a person died. It's a super cool premise that could lead to many different styles of gameplay, and yet the entire game you're doing nothing but paperwork so that the company you're working for can save a few bucks. There's a huge mystery on what happened to the ship and its people, yet it ultimately doesn't matter. It's almost like you're only solving this entire thing for your own enjoyment. You're learning the story of the ship just for your own curiosity, and I absolutely love that.

And for a story that doesn't matter at all, Lucas Pope managed to create a damn great one. It's so damn complex, yet once you have all the details everything fits together no problem. I love it. I love trying to figure out the exact identity of every passenger just from the crumbs of info the game gives you. I love how all 60 characters have something to do in the ship. I love going back to change my answers once the game feeds me more details. I love how you can finally figure out the entire story once you finish the game, and how much sense it makes even with the amount of parts you can't see. It's a masterfully crafted story, and it's perfect.

I will say however that not every character is created equal. While you're trying to figure out who's who, there are a ton of characters that have better and smarter clues than others. On one hand you have incredibly written solutions like the ring on Emily's hand, and on the other you have boring ones like the identity of the helmsman. The game is incredible at making you feel smart for finding the truth on certain characters, and incredible at making you groan when you figure out some of the others. Also, some of the answers have to be incredibly specific to make them count and it can get a little annoying (I'm looking at you, Samuel Galligan).

Visually speaking the game might feel a little rough for you. Personally I really liked the game's aesthetic, however there are moments where it does get a little hard to look at, especially when particle effects are introduced. Every detail in the story is accounted for, so when studying stuff like bullet trails and blood splatters becomes essential to find out the truth, it can get a little confusing to deal with. The price for having a recognizable aesthetic, i suppose.

The game absolutely shines when it comes to sound design though. The soundtrack is good, sure, but the sound effects and voice acting are top notch. They're all so nuanced and immersive, I don't think there's a point of the game where the developer didn't nail the audio portion of it.

In conclusion: This game is not for everyone. However, it is for me, and I appreciate every single thing the game does. It may have a few flaws here and there, but when it comes to telling its story, I don't know if this game can be beat. 9/10

PROS

• Immersive setting and structure really put you in the shoes of an investigator
• Striking visual style
• Fun and adventurous musical score
• Plot takes spooky and unexpected turns as you work your way through it
• "Solve three" mechanism strikes a great balance between guiding the player along and giving them agency

CONS

• Clumsy UX makes solving the various mysteries more tedious than it needed to be. Why can't I just revisit any memory I want from the book menu? Getting back to some of the nested memories to reanalyze the scenes again feels like a chore.
• Fill-in-the-blank puzzle solutions seem a bit guesswork-y. I was frequently wondering if I was using the verbs the game wanted me to use.
• The story's pretty anticlimactic once you get it all figured out

Lucas Pope has an interesting schtick of taking mundane and terrible jobs in the real world and making them shockingly engaging. You're an insurance investigator sent to appraise a recently returned ship that has it's entire crew missing. Fortunately, you are given a mysterious and magical pocket watch from an unknown sender to help you solve the mystery! It allows you to witness the last few seconds of a person as they died. What unfolds is a singular artistic vision with clever puzzles and a griping narrative.

I won't spoil anything about the game, beyond my brief synopsis above because I believe this game is best experienced as blind as possible.

The game play loop involves moving around a ship and interacting with different deceased persons to uncover who they are and how they died. The former being the main challenge and puzzle with the later being the first thing you typically solve. This is done through the many still frames you will witness as you progress through the game. These still frames are fully 3-D and brimming with atmosphere. The sound design is top notch and while the music is minimalist (typically 1-2 instruments strumming dramatically), it works to evoke appropriate tones and emotions for each scene. Lucas Pope has a thing for minimalism which seems to be a combination of artistic taste and to overcome the limitations of being an Indy developer with no budget. The greatness of this game is how dense it feels despite having a subtractive design.

You will be overwhelmed. You are given a dense ledger that is completely blank and you need to identify 60 people. While most flashbacks features some dialogue, names of persons will rarely be spoken and when they are it feels natural thanks to the strong writing. Accents, language, attire and who people spend their time with will all play a role in identifying persons. The game rewards careful observation, inductive reasoning (ironically the game pitches itself around deductive reasoning which is misleading) and long term memory. There will be plenty of persons you will witness across a plethora of memories and not be able to identify until much later into the game. Correct identification is handled in trifectas, meaning every 3 correct identifications and fates will result in a prompt showing you the correct answers. This in turn will help you identify more people and identify their fates. There will be plenty of "Eureka!" moments that will result in a spiral of correct identifications that are very cathartic. It's rare for me to play a game and I feel smart as a result. You are rarely given an answer and it will challenge you.

Overall, if you like a game that makes you feel smart and like to engage with video games as art look no further! This game isn't for everyone, but if it's right for you it will be one of your fondest gaming moments.

liked: the way this game is structured isn't just an i-spy, look for the highlighted images pixel hunt. solving the ~mysteries~ involves actually paying attention to the situation, discovering the clues on your own, using inductive reasoning. it's so satisfying each time you make progress. i'm not one for puzzle games usually but this isn't really a puzzle game in the way that most puzzle games are...

disliked: honestly...nothing...by googling "games like obra dinn" i found outer wilds too so it has overall just been a good influence on my life.

bottom line: u like to use ur brain? play!

Obra Dinn is the best murder mystery I've ever played, best mystery in general tbh. 100% completed, with all fates correct in a little over 8 hours.

Difficulty: Mid-Hard, I didn't need to use any outside hints however I did guess alot, because it auto checks at 3 correct, if you have 2 you know forsure you can try multiple options for the third. Plus being able to solve in any order makes it very go at your own pace [Causes of death are pretty easy to do just paying attention, names of characters is where it gets hard, make sure to use nationality, voice, and everything you can as means of solving] 8/10

Graphics: The game is all black/white, however the art is really amazing for what it is, 8/10

Sound: Voice actors are amazing, and there are many different language options for you playthrough along with different languages within the game itself to give hints on nationality. Background music is either non-existent or not the best 7/10

Story: Story is amazing, you are given a journal and a compass that leads you through the reverse cronological timeline of the events on the ship, being able to replay any part. 10/10

Controls: Controls are set up really simple, there's movement, opening the journal, and interacting. very simple layout that's easy to understand and use within the first 10 minutes. 10/10

Overall enjoyment: without much need to dig deeper into many causes of death and being able to easily check answers at certain points it makes the game very simple to do in one play through to find everything out. The story is catching and makes you want to solve the rest. The art and design of the characters and world is really good and sometimes you just want to sit and stare at the art for awhile. 10/10

Final score 10/10

This detective game has been in my recommendation for a while and I can understand why it's a brilliant title. As an insurance agent, the player has to enter the eponymous, ship that reappeared and assess the fate of each crew member. Using a special tool that views the past events in a suspended animation and related sounds, it's up to the player to piece together the details and complete the ship's book as much as possible.

The longer I played this game, I uncover more details of the events I've visited through observation and deductive skills. I commend the game for its minimalistic style and reveals pieces of the picture largely in a "show, don't tell" manner. Of course, some details are so subtle or stubbornly impossible to uncover that I had to do many guessworks after about half-way in my gameplay time. At least the story is intriguing as it unfolds at different points of time and one will have to expect some mythical factors coming into play of the plot.

I am happy with the experience overall; the gameplay mechanics are largely basic to get around with, as far as I've done my way. The challenge of solving the crew's fates can be largely difficult, depending on your observation and deductive skills. But if you feel confident enough, give it a run and Obra Dinn will suck you in like the time-watch itself.

I try not to spend too much time playing games. I have a wife and kids. If I make games a priority, it is almost always to the detriment of my family. So I keep my gaming in check. An hour here. Thirty minutes there. Miles away from the nonstop-ten-plus-hour-forgot-to-eat sessions of my youth.

But Obra Dinn sucked me in. Over the course of a little over a day, I ended up spending nine hours devouring Obra Dinn. I NEEDED to solve the mystery. And the game sucks you in for a lot of reasons: Strong writing and performances, excellent sound design, a one of a kind visual style, etc.

Most of all is how the game makes you feel like a real detective.

I was thinking about how the dream of a GTA game (or a lot of open world games) is to let you do anything. I think that's why Watch Dogs Legion has such anticipation despite being in a fairly mixed series. However being anyone and doing anything are different. The dream of the open world game still feels lightyears away.

The dream of the detective/mystery game is you get to solve the mystery yourself. And Obra Dinn does it. You're solving the mystery. You have the necessary freedom that is still galaxies away in open world games.

I remember as a kid asking a friend of mine if Guitar Hero would make me better at guitar. He just laughed. Then I asked about the drums in Rock Band. That might actually help teach me some skills. So I played the drums in Rock Band and got better at the drums in real life.

I think this game has had the same effect on my real observational skills. Obra Dinn makes you a better real life detective.

SPOILER FOR METAL GEAR SOLID 1 Y'know that puzzle in Metal Gear Solid. Not the Psycho Mantis one. The other one. The one where Meryl tells you her number is on the box. And the solution to the puzzle is realizing that Meryl is talking to you the player and the box she is describing is the box for the game? That was my favorite puzzle in all of games... But I think every puzzle in Obra Dinn made me feel as smart or smarter than that MGS puzzle. I think this game is full of puzzles that are better than my favorite video game puzzle.

Look, I love this game. I love it too much. So much so that I ignored my family to play it. And for that reason it should be a 1/5. But I love it so much that the game cycle's around back to a perfect score.

Play Obra Dinn. It is what video games should strive to be.

Adding this game to my list of favorite games of all times.

I still can't believe how completely this game absorved me for the more than 9 hours I expend on it. I was really determined to uncover the fates of everyone on this ship and enjoyed every second of exploring every inch of every memento searching for clues.

The systems of this game really put your observation and deductive skills to test. This is not another 'detective game' where you activate a 'detective vision' and everything is highlighted for you. In Obra Dinn there's no handholding. Sometime there's not even physical clues and you had to go with an educated guess. It really makes you feel smart when you solve a group of fates.

I had a few problems resolving some ambiguous deaths, the epilogue wasn't as interesting as promised and there's no replayability. Despite that, I absolutely loved it.

You can read my full review (in spanish) in GamerFocus.

Unique puzzle game unlike anything I've played before. You feel like a real detective, through scenes and documents, listening to conversations, picking out the clues to identify 60 victims and what led to their deaths. This game was way more challenging than I expected; there are some real head-scratchers in there. The art style is magnificent, but the sound design is where the game really shines. You feel like you are truly on a ship, shoulder to shoulder with all sorts of miscreants and swarthy chaps. Most of all though, I give this extra points for the story. I was fine with just a basic mystery on the high seas casual romp, but I had no idea that the narrative would dive into some very dark, cosmic depths. A pleasant surprise!