Return of the Obra Dinn Blog

 

Return of the Obra Dinn is a mystery/puzzle game created by solo developer Lucas Pope and was released on October 18th, 2018, for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows, and Mac. The game is in a first person perspective and takes place in England, in the year 1807, after a trading ship, the Obra Dinn, mysteriously went missing at sea years before the game’s start, sails into the port. You play as an insurance auditor employed by the East India Company, who is the company that insured the Obra Dinn. Soon after boarding the ship, it is clear that there is not a single living soul aboard, apart from your own. Equipped with a ledger that has the names, occupations, and countries of origin of every passenger on one page, and a photograph of every passenger on another page, it is your job to match the identity of every single soul with their picture. Another tool granted to you is a magic pocket watch with the words “Memento Mortem” engraved on it, meaning “Remember Death.” This pocket watch allows you to, upon finding a corpse, relive that corpses’ final moments of life. To beat the game, you have to identify all 60 passengers aboard, and find out their cause of death.


This game is difficult. There is virtually no hand holding. The game will not tell you if you mixed up identities or causes of death. Some passengers have almost zero clues about them, and you simply have to use the process of elimination to ID them. Nonetheless, I loved this game and the challenges it gave me. I do admit that I resorted to googling some answers, but that only happened once or twice. The only reason I hadn’t bought it sooner was because of the artstyle. The trailers and screenshots on the Steam page do not do the game any justice. I thought I was gonna get a headache from just watching the trailer. However, after playing the game for five minutes I got used to the visuals and after beating the game, I actually really love the way the game looks. 


Pros: This game really makes you use your brain and makes you feel like a straight up detective. It was so fun unraveling the mystery of how, why, where, and when the Obra Dinn went missing. I also think the visuals and the soundtrack are phenomenal. 


Cons: My only problem with Return of the Obra Dinn is that it is pretty short, I beat it in around seven hours. I just wish there was more content since the game has zero replayability. 

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