In 1802, the East India Company’s Obra Dinn set sail from London headed to the Orient. The ship never made it to its destination, and was deemed lost at sea until five years later, when it resurged, drifting along the coast of Falmouth, back in England. This apparent miracle came with more questions than answers, however, as every person that boarded the ship in London lied either dead or missing.
It’s at this point that Papers, Please creator's Return of the Obra Dinn pulls you into its world. You play as an insurance agent from the EIC who boards the derelict ship, tasked with investigating the fate of the ship’s crew and passengers so to find out how much the Company owes each of their estates in insurance. Yep. Lucas Pope really likes using bureaucracy as a framing device.
Although you are alone in this task, you are equipped with a book containing information about the Obra Dinn, as well as a magic pocket watch that lets you rewind time back to key moments in the ship’s journey. These two elements form the core loop of the game: find a point of interest in the ship, time travel to an event, and jot down things of interest in the book, rinse and repeat until the mystery is solved.
Of course, if it was as simple as just finding each person in the ship, it would be an easy task. The catch is, you know the names and occupations of everyone in the ship, and the book contains sketches of all of their faces, but you don’t know who is who, nor are they nametagged in your visions of the past. You have to piece this information together as you explore the ship.
Furthermore, you have to enter information manually on the notebook. For each person, you must identify their fate; if it happens that they are dead, input how they died, and in case the death was a murder, point out who committed it. It’s a fantastic mechanical that prevents the game from devolving into a bunch of checklists, like many detective games do.
Return of the Obra Dinn has the makings of a masterpiece in it, but a couple of glaring issues hold it back. For one, there are some truly baffling UX decisions. The book is what you use to input the aforementioned deductions, as well as check the information you're given. It's pretty much where you will spend most of the time with the game, but is really clunky to mess around with. I get that this is a deliberate design decision, to make it feel like an actual book, but hours into the game, it doesn’t get any less annoying. A way to access visions from the map, or replay their audio, would also have been appreciated.
Furthermore, there is the matter of the game’s visual style. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous. The monochrome recreation of old Macintosh monitors looks crisp and unique, and it’s very nice to stare at. However, it feels like these visuals should be in a game other than an investigation one. Lots of mysteries rely on minute details to be untangled, but with simple visuals as this, it’s hard to tell what’s going on.
Is that a pipe? Is that sword unique? Does this person look like they might be of this nationality? Are those the same shoes as in that other scene? What is going on in this static vision? These and many other question sound trifling, but are at the core of many deductions you have to make. Not to mention, some inferences require you to take those details and make some wild assumptions about them, paramount to guessing, another design decision I don’t agree with.
Nevertheless, even though, to me, the game didn't quite live up to the masterpiece it set out to be, what it does achieve is simply brilliant, an amazing work in narrative design and on how detective stories can be expressed with game mechanics. Without a doubt, Return of the Obra Dinn is a must play for fans of the genre, as well as for everyone interested in game design.
It’s at this point that Papers, Please creator's Return of the Obra Dinn pulls you into its world. You play as an insurance agent from the EIC who boards the derelict ship, tasked with investigating the fate of the ship’s crew and passengers so to find out how much the Company owes each of their estates in insurance. Yep. Lucas Pope really likes using bureaucracy as a framing device.
Although you are alone in this task, you are equipped with a book containing information about the Obra Dinn, as well as a magic pocket watch that lets you rewind time back to key moments in the ship’s journey. These two elements form the core loop of the game: find a point of interest in the ship, time travel to an event, and jot down things of interest in the book, rinse and repeat until the mystery is solved.
Of course, if it was as simple as just finding each person in the ship, it would be an easy task. The catch is, you know the names and occupations of everyone in the ship, and the book contains sketches of all of their faces, but you don’t know who is who, nor are they nametagged in your visions of the past. You have to piece this information together as you explore the ship.
Furthermore, you have to enter information manually on the notebook. For each person, you must identify their fate; if it happens that they are dead, input how they died, and in case the death was a murder, point out who committed it. It’s a fantastic mechanical that prevents the game from devolving into a bunch of checklists, like many detective games do.
Return of the Obra Dinn has the makings of a masterpiece in it, but a couple of glaring issues hold it back. For one, there are some truly baffling UX decisions. The book is what you use to input the aforementioned deductions, as well as check the information you're given. It's pretty much where you will spend most of the time with the game, but is really clunky to mess around with. I get that this is a deliberate design decision, to make it feel like an actual book, but hours into the game, it doesn’t get any less annoying. A way to access visions from the map, or replay their audio, would also have been appreciated.
Furthermore, there is the matter of the game’s visual style. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous. The monochrome recreation of old Macintosh monitors looks crisp and unique, and it’s very nice to stare at. However, it feels like these visuals should be in a game other than an investigation one. Lots of mysteries rely on minute details to be untangled, but with simple visuals as this, it’s hard to tell what’s going on.
Is that a pipe? Is that sword unique? Does this person look like they might be of this nationality? Are those the same shoes as in that other scene? What is going on in this static vision? These and many other question sound trifling, but are at the core of many deductions you have to make. Not to mention, some inferences require you to take those details and make some wild assumptions about them, paramount to guessing, another design decision I don’t agree with.
Nevertheless, even though, to me, the game didn't quite live up to the masterpiece it set out to be, what it does achieve is simply brilliant, an amazing work in narrative design and on how detective stories can be expressed with game mechanics. Without a doubt, Return of the Obra Dinn is a must play for fans of the genre, as well as for everyone interested in game design.