Charming, crude art direction and ludicrous situations carry this further than expected. The deduction gameplay builds on Obra Dinn in a way that is a little more focused in its structure, progressing linearly through puzzles, so it doesn’t quite suffer from the slight meandering final third of Dinn (that was a little too freeform for its own good).

I do think the more heightened, fantastic scenarios lose their lustre quite quickly, and I did prefer the earlier, more ‘grounded’ puzzles. A mystery needs gaps, intrigue, momentum, and I found most of the later scenes convoluted in a profoundly absurd way, though really funny.

The reliance on discovering words to describe the scenarios also leads to a lot of studying crucial documents to solve logic puzzles, and Obra Dinn’s minimalist focus on studying the scenes (faces, poses, props), without any documents to provide exposition, was felt missing here.

Reviewed on Feb 14, 2023


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