In this 1-bit first-person mystery game, a merchant ship called the Obra Dinn has appeared at a London harbor, years after being declared lost at sea. As an insurance adjuster, the player must examine the ship for clues.
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I feel like I played this game at an incredibly fortunate time in my life. Struggling to commit to any game for more than a few hours I was burned out on most modern game genres such as shooters, platformers and RPGs. When I first saw this recommended to me on steam during a sale I was intrigued by the art-style and main gameplay mechanic. I didn't have particularly high hopes I just knew it was highly rated and had a unique aesthetic. If you had told me I was going to play through the game in one long 8 hour session whilst losing track of the time I'd have been shocked. This game is good. REALLY good.
Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-asses what in the actual fuck is happening.
Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.
This game and Outer Wilds are two games that complete changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.
Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-asses what in the actual fuck is happening.
Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.
This game and Outer Wilds are two games that complete changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.
É um jogo com uma mecânica incomparável, um dos melhores e mais únicos de investigação por aí. Bota a cabeça pra trabalhar e é muito satisfatório ir encaixando as peças. A única coisa que me quebra as pernas é alguns furos de roteiro que acontecem mais pro final, mas ainda assim vale muito a pena!
One of the best games that I never want to play again!
At the height of maritime trade in the Atlantic, an English craft dubbed the "Obra Dinn" sets out for the Cape of Good Hope with sixty people aboard. However, it never makes landfall at its destination, and it is assumed lost to the depths after a year without contact. Some four years later, the ship miraculously returns off the shore of its home port... With not a single member of its crew to be seen. You play the role of an insurance investigator working on behalf of the East India Company, who has been tasked with recording what might have happened to the unfortunate vessel. A less-than-enviable charge for just about anybody. Blessedly, a mysterious individual by the name of Henry Evans has given you a significant boon: A magicked timepiece called the Memento Mortem, which grants you the ability to witness visions of a person's final moments. In exchange, Evans has asked only that you remain steadfast in your investigation and not rest until you have unveiled the full truth of the Obra Dinn's grim fate.
Return of the Obra Dinn managed to do something not many games can pull off these days, which is make me refuse to budge from my seat until I had seen it to its conclusion. Granted it ended up being pretty much the perfect length for it, at least in my case - it's a runtime that I'm sure varies wildly depending on one's powers of observation and deduction. However, I think that is exactly where the bulk of Return's strength lies. It introduces the concept and the concern, slaps a journal and a cool pocketwatch into your hands and says "don't step off this boat until you've puzzled it out". The singular tool at your disposal would be any homicide detective's dream come true, but where such a powerful artifact would lead to a breezy day of work at Scotland Yard, here you are responsible for discerning the fate of sixty individuals. A daunting mystery, to be sure, but one that does compel: Just how does a crowd of that size disappear, and moreover, how does their ship make it home without them? Thus you will go to your task with that burning question in your chest, and will scour every inch and ponder every angle as you unravel this nautical whodunit. The lack of hand-holding and thoughtful design results in a riddle of logic that is deeply satisfying to solve, and you can rest assured knowing that each eureka moment you arrive at is well-earned.
Concerns? Well, the way each new scene is introduced did start to grate after a bit, permitting you to wander around your newly discovered "momento mortis" for a limited amount of time before kicking you back out to present day. Oftentimes this felt like an arbitrary imposition, as I would usually want to jump back in right away to continue taking notes. The soundtrack, while by no means bad and perfect for the setting, felt just a bit too same-y across the board with no real stand-outs. The retro computing-inspired visuals, which I'm sure will hold plenty of appeal for some, wore out their welcome for me by the end - if for no other reason than its monochrome palette not being a great choice for a game centered around careful observation of your surroundings. I admittedly cheated a smidge at one point just because I was completely lost on what to do next, only to realize the clue I needed was pretty much staring me in the face. If only I could see it! And while I know it's all in the name of establishing a sense of progression, the fact that the book will periodically confirm your findings for you feels a bit... Cowardly? A part of me wishes the game would force you to fill everything out and submit it with no way of knowing you were correct until the end, but that's probably just the masochist in me speaking. When I think about it, I doubt I would have been willing to go back through the full game just to correct one or two mistakes. This is the kind of experience that only hits with full force the first time around. To its credit, though, this mystery does have a bit of open-endedness in how you can resolve it, so that may be a bit of a draw for those seeking to dive back in.
I think if there's anything that truly hurts the experience in the long run, it's that the narrative at the center of it all, for all of the fantastical elements surrounding it, ultimately feels rather mundane. This didn't need to be a problem, mind; I would argue that the more grounded elements of the story are what lends it the gravity and intrigue that it does have. The failure, then, is making the more out-there aspects seem a bit shoehorned and unimaginative by comparison. I won't pick it apart here in case you intend to play it, and hopefully your opinion of the tale of the Obra Dinn will be brighter than mine. I simply felt that the conclusion arrived at was a little lackluster given the setup.
All in all, Return of the Obra Dinn is an excellent adventure in deduction that trims away a lot of the fluff typically associated with other games of its ilk. It knows the story it wants to tell and drops you right into the center of it, leaving it up to you to fill in the blanks. While I don't know that the ending will satisfy everyone, I think this is definitely one situation where the journey is more important than the destination. Hopefully I'll be able to give Lucas Pope's other claim to fame a proper shake in due time.
At the height of maritime trade in the Atlantic, an English craft dubbed the "Obra Dinn" sets out for the Cape of Good Hope with sixty people aboard. However, it never makes landfall at its destination, and it is assumed lost to the depths after a year without contact. Some four years later, the ship miraculously returns off the shore of its home port... With not a single member of its crew to be seen. You play the role of an insurance investigator working on behalf of the East India Company, who has been tasked with recording what might have happened to the unfortunate vessel. A less-than-enviable charge for just about anybody. Blessedly, a mysterious individual by the name of Henry Evans has given you a significant boon: A magicked timepiece called the Memento Mortem, which grants you the ability to witness visions of a person's final moments. In exchange, Evans has asked only that you remain steadfast in your investigation and not rest until you have unveiled the full truth of the Obra Dinn's grim fate.
Return of the Obra Dinn managed to do something not many games can pull off these days, which is make me refuse to budge from my seat until I had seen it to its conclusion. Granted it ended up being pretty much the perfect length for it, at least in my case - it's a runtime that I'm sure varies wildly depending on one's powers of observation and deduction. However, I think that is exactly where the bulk of Return's strength lies. It introduces the concept and the concern, slaps a journal and a cool pocketwatch into your hands and says "don't step off this boat until you've puzzled it out". The singular tool at your disposal would be any homicide detective's dream come true, but where such a powerful artifact would lead to a breezy day of work at Scotland Yard, here you are responsible for discerning the fate of sixty individuals. A daunting mystery, to be sure, but one that does compel: Just how does a crowd of that size disappear, and moreover, how does their ship make it home without them? Thus you will go to your task with that burning question in your chest, and will scour every inch and ponder every angle as you unravel this nautical whodunit. The lack of hand-holding and thoughtful design results in a riddle of logic that is deeply satisfying to solve, and you can rest assured knowing that each eureka moment you arrive at is well-earned.
Concerns? Well, the way each new scene is introduced did start to grate after a bit, permitting you to wander around your newly discovered "momento mortis" for a limited amount of time before kicking you back out to present day. Oftentimes this felt like an arbitrary imposition, as I would usually want to jump back in right away to continue taking notes. The soundtrack, while by no means bad and perfect for the setting, felt just a bit too same-y across the board with no real stand-outs. The retro computing-inspired visuals, which I'm sure will hold plenty of appeal for some, wore out their welcome for me by the end - if for no other reason than its monochrome palette not being a great choice for a game centered around careful observation of your surroundings. I admittedly cheated a smidge at one point just because I was completely lost on what to do next, only to realize the clue I needed was pretty much staring me in the face. If only I could see it! And while I know it's all in the name of establishing a sense of progression, the fact that the book will periodically confirm your findings for you feels a bit... Cowardly? A part of me wishes the game would force you to fill everything out and submit it with no way of knowing you were correct until the end, but that's probably just the masochist in me speaking. When I think about it, I doubt I would have been willing to go back through the full game just to correct one or two mistakes. This is the kind of experience that only hits with full force the first time around. To its credit, though, this mystery does have a bit of open-endedness in how you can resolve it, so that may be a bit of a draw for those seeking to dive back in.
I think if there's anything that truly hurts the experience in the long run, it's that the narrative at the center of it all, for all of the fantastical elements surrounding it, ultimately feels rather mundane. This didn't need to be a problem, mind; I would argue that the more grounded elements of the story are what lends it the gravity and intrigue that it does have. The failure, then, is making the more out-there aspects seem a bit shoehorned and unimaginative by comparison. I won't pick it apart here in case you intend to play it, and hopefully your opinion of the tale of the Obra Dinn will be brighter than mine. I simply felt that the conclusion arrived at was a little lackluster given the setup.
All in all, Return of the Obra Dinn is an excellent adventure in deduction that trims away a lot of the fluff typically associated with other games of its ilk. It knows the story it wants to tell and drops you right into the center of it, leaving it up to you to fill in the blanks. While I don't know that the ending will satisfy everyone, I think this is definitely one situation where the journey is more important than the destination. Hopefully I'll be able to give Lucas Pope's other claim to fame a proper shake in due time.
what a fantastic video game. like the best, most stylized, most engaging brain puzzle you've ever seen.
É uma bagunça. "Obra Dinn/10"
Mais uma obra-prima de Lucas Pope, Obra Dinn é um notório tributo ao jogo de tabuleiro Detetive.
A narrativa, baseada no livro de anotações do protagonista, é apresentada de forma anacrônica e confusa propositalmente, e cabe ao jogador montar o puzzle.
Confesso que não é um jogo pra todo mundo porque é relativamente difícil e pode causar frustração pra completá-lo, mas com certeza fica mais divertido se jogar com um grupo de amigos e um caderno para anotações e rascunhos (muito importante!!!).
Eu ainda não peguei o final bom mas ainda tenho vontade de tentar novamente em breve.
A narrativa, baseada no livro de anotações do protagonista, é apresentada de forma anacrônica e confusa propositalmente, e cabe ao jogador montar o puzzle.
Confesso que não é um jogo pra todo mundo porque é relativamente difícil e pode causar frustração pra completá-lo, mas com certeza fica mais divertido se jogar com um grupo de amigos e um caderno para anotações e rascunhos (muito importante!!!).
Eu ainda não peguei o final bom mas ainda tenho vontade de tentar novamente em breve.