Return of the Obra Dinn
DISCOVER THE FATE OF A STRICKEN MERCHANT SHIP.
$24 | PC | dukope.com
THIS IS A first-person puzzle game from Lucas Pope, creator of the acclaimed Papers, Please. It’s completely 3D, but rendered with a bold, beautiful art style that recalls the 1-bit dithered visuals of old Macintosh adventure games. But the Obra Dinn is no less atmospheric for it. In fact, the sense of place created by its hard lines and limited palette is quite remarkable.
As you explore the ship you’ll find piles of sun-bleached bones that used to be the crew, and activating the pocket watch near them will whisk you away to a static, but wonderfully detailed, vignette of the seconds before they died—be it an unfortunate accident, a brutal murder, or something altogether weirder. And it’s here where your investigation really begins.
Determining the cause of death is normally the easiest part, because the evidence is right in front of you. You might see a man recoiling in pain as a shot from a flintlock pistol rips through him, or another taking a fatal tumble down a stairway. But the tricky part is discovering the identities of the people involved, which requires some real detective work.
The game paints a vivid picture of life aboard the Obra Dinn, and with each chapter—unlocked by exploring and locating more bodies—a larger story begins to take shape. I won’t go into specifics about what befell the crew, because getting to the root of that is the core of the game, but I can say that this has to be the unluckiest merchant ship in the world, with so much chaos and calamity occurring on-board it’s amazing the thing is still floating.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a stunningly clever thing and one of the best puzzle games on PC. It not only presents you with a vast, complex, and interconnected mystery to solve, but trusts in your intelligence enough to let you do it yourself with almost no hints, markers, or guides interfering in the process. Few games have this much confidence in the player, and it’s a deeply satisfying experience as a result, even if I did occasionally feel like I’d hit a dead end.