RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN

Getting back to basics

Do you get into heated arguments about the truth behind the Mary Celeste? Yes? This is the game for you. It challenges you to assess insurance claims relating to the abandoned ship Obra Dinn by using a skull-emblazoned pocket watch to step into each of the crew’s final moments to determine three things: who they were, how they died, and because of whom.

We already feel like we’re peering into another dimension thanks to the stylised visuals, which emulate old Macintosh systems. 1 Each time you find someone’s last resting place, you can zip into an explorable diorama of their final moments rendered in amazingly stylish detail, accompanied by an audioscape of the moment. You can even hop between memories, uncovering other final moments from within those scenes. Everything you encounter about the ship’s fate is put down in a thick notebook, which you have to fill out as you go. Ingeniously, the game will only confirm your correct answers for every three you get right, meaning you can’t quite fudge it – but also get a sense of which ones you must have got wrong.

Essentially it’s one gigantic logic puzzle, which has you piecing together the mystery of what befell the ship, as well as tracking down individual members of the crew across several memories to pick out identifying features, such as a distinctive tattoo. 2 It clicks in a way that few mystery games do, making you feel like you’re doing actual detective work. The biggest issue is that on a pad some of the menus feel a bit too clunky, but it’s a solid mystery you’ll be chewing over even when you’re not playing. Oscar Taylor-Kent

And can be set to different colour patterns to emulate the look of other old systems too. It’s often a taxing game of deduction, but almost always feels completely fair.