Return of the Obra Dinn: Detailed Review

Return of the Obra Dinn is hands down one of the most independent games ever built. This shouldn’t sound surprising, given that Lucas Pope, the developer of Papers Please, also developed this. You might easily lose yourself in this story for days since it’s equal sections snapshot of a moment in time and other an enigmatic puzzle. However, despite all the acclaim, I believe this will be on many people’s greatest or worst rankings. Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers Please, was responsible for the development of this game. If you’re a fan of mysteries and time travel, this is a story you’ll want to revisit again and over again.

As an anonymous surveyor, you are sent to investigate the Obra Dinn, a vessel that inexplicably vanished with a company of 51 men. You are tasked with documenting Obra Dinn’s ill-fated trip and finding out what happened to everybody. Whilst staring at images that might have originated from a supercomputer from the 1980s, of course.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a low-stakes game that I’ve enjoyed playing. When the vessel is quiet, there are no adversaries to combat and also no shaky cam, so you’re not on a spectacular expedition. You’re just doing your work. Obra Dinn is the sole source of information you have regarding what occurred. As you make your way across the ship, the title’s narrative would grow and change and reveal the tragedies that transpired. As far as the story goes, the game has a unique method of obtaining facts.

Dead Men Tells Few Tales

You are handed a mystical compass at the outset of the adventure with no instruction. If the compass is activated, a glimpse of how somebody perished may be seen, along with the individuals and circumstances surrounding their death. You learn more about the Obra Dinn’s history with each corpse you locate. Three things must be figured out for everyone from here: Who were they? Who murdered them and how did they drop dead? Only by binding destinies together can you gauge your progress in the game. When you correctly predict three outcomes in a row, the system would securely record the results in your book. Notes or scrawled notes will be used for the rest of the gameplay,

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In spite of the fact that there are no riddles, this is absolutely an adventure game—more particularly, a mystery quest. For example, you’ll swiftly sift through the obvious indicators, such as persons who are uttering the moniker of someone else. Several more elements would have to be worked out before the majority of the group can be put together All of the ship’s locations and even a little feature would have to be studied for clues. However, your perspective will be different depending on how you cope with the challenges and irritations that are there.

CSI Confusion:

Let’s get started with the title’s quality of life concerns before we get into the mechanics. Aesthetics might be difficult to pick out due to the game’s “low-fi” nature. However, I would have preferred a more graceful method of focusing on a particular subject’s tale rather than zooming in on them and then going to their appropriate book photo. You can’t simply see a picture of what you’ve previously seen; you must return back to the corpse and communicate with it. In order to have a clearer sense of where this person fits into the larger scheme of things, the game had me going back and forth between previously uncovered snapshots.

For roughly a minute after you initially open a picture, you are unable to do anything else unless the melody stops. Unfortunately, I couldn’t always modify my entries because of this strange design choice. As if it wasn’t bizarre enough, you’re not allowed to run at all when onboard the ship. As a result, it’s impossible to make connections between characters in the book if you can’t remember the names of the individuals they slaughtered.

I also wanted to be able to restrict relevant data without having a predetermined outcome. So, if someone has the physical appearance of a surgeon or a big man, I’d want to know what they do so that I can focus my search.

Reasonably Challenging:

This game unlike other puzzle titles I’ve followed over the years poses a different kind of challenge. It needs both in-game expertise, such as the ability to interpret circumstances, as well as an understanding of the world around you. Using this method, I felt like I couldn’t respond to things the game needed me to since I didn’t know what questions to pose.

When it comes to accents and connecting them to nations, I’m a terrible matchmaker for myself. I had a hard time figuring out someone’s identity based on their voice and looks. Yachting and nautical terms are expected of you throughout the game. Despite the dictionary, I was unable to comprehend the meaning of bosoms or the other boat components. Similar to this, I was unable to make sense of objects just on their outfits.

However, the game mainly concentrates on the pictures, and I was expecting additional research components like locating crew records, exploring the yacht itself, and so on.  There were a lot of one-star (or easy-to-identify) persons that I had no clue how to identify. Anyone who is curious should know that there are no tip mechanisms, extra clues, or anything else that may steer them.

For me, this was the point at which the issue of tying persons to photos became most apparent. In the book and in the photos, the many phases of the voyage are shown in sections. Due to the circumstances, you may discover someone working at a location other than where they are supposed to be onboard the ship.

Rather than being allowed to utilize the game to unravel the enigma, I felt stifled by its nature. However, Return of the Obra Dinn’s challenge might be exceedingly variable. Those of you who are following this might have it much easier than I did or vice versa.