Return of the Obra Dinn is remarkable, and was very possibly my favorite game of 2018.

A ship lost at sea has returned to shore, with no-one on board. Your mission is to find out what happened to each member of the crew. By the end, you have a complete list of 60 crew members (including passengers), know how they look like, and have determined their fate (dead incl. cause of death and possibly perpetrator; or alive incl. where).

The whole crime mystery genre (whether in the form of books, novels, or games) is rife with smoke and mirrors, pretending that there’s a clear-cut way to deduce the mystery, while actually making humongous leaps in deduction, or hiding crucial pieces of evidence, etc. There’s tons to love about Return of the Obra Dinn, but I particularly appreciated it for fulfilling the unfulfilled promise of the genre – it truly asks you, the player / reader / viewer, to solve the mystery, and it gives you all the tools and information to make that possible.

Therefore, this is my favorite take on a true detective game (i.e. a game about genuinely deducing stuff based on limited though sufficient evidence). The also amazing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a great detective story, with far more satisfying deductions than typical crime novels. This game felt similar.

The game has an insane attention to detail: all the death scenes contain tons of details, and often it's more important what happens *around* the victim, sometimes even on another deck. The crew painting is very cleverly designed and insanely valuable, and the ship layout is logical and similarly important. So you actually have an excess of information, which makes it possible to deduce everything without the game providing obvious handholding as is typical in the genre, like by giving you limited dialogue options.

But the game is also remarkable in other ways, e.g. in how it tells a story in an asynchronous order, very quickly gives you the freedom to explore in whichever order you see fit, and still manages to create well-rounded suspense and story beats. All this is supported by the amazing dramatic music, and impeccably timed acoustic scenes. Even the ending is fantastic. I loved the munchkinism and the symbolism (involving the m***** ***), too.

Remarkable. Perfection.

PS: It doesn’t seem like Obra Dinn’s dev likes to repeat genres in his projects. Back in 2018, I was worried that unless some other devs took heavy inspiration from it, it was likely that we wouldn't see anything like it again. But if wishing would make a difference, I wished this game could start a new genre by itself. Well, that wish came true, in the form of a bunch of games like The Curse of the Golden Idol or The Roottrees Are Dead.

PPS: On replaying the game in 2024, I do have a few minor criticisms: the aliased font is hard to read; some of the UI is annoying; and on replaying, the pacing feels a bit too slow at times. I wish one could move a bit faster, enter death scenes directly from the book, and leave them more quickly. It's also a bit annoying that you only get the ability to list causes of death for lost characters once you complete a chapter. So you either have to take notes, or must alternatively rewatch scenes after completing the chapter.

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Return of the Obra Dinn is remarkable, and was very possibly my favorite game of 2018. A ship lost at sea has returned to shore, with no-one on board. Your mission is to find out what happened to each member of the crew. By the end, you have a complete list of 60 crew members (including passengers), know how they look like, and have determined their fate (dead incl. cause of death and possibly perpetrator; or alive incl. where). The whole crime mystery genre (whether in the form of books, novels, or games) is rife with smoke and mirrors, pretending that there’s a clear-cut way to deduce the mystery, while actually making humongous leaps in deduction, or hiding crucial pieces of evidence, etc. There’s tons to love about Return of the Obra Dinn, but I particularly appreciated it for fulfilling the unfulfilled promise of the genre – it truly asks you, the player / reader / viewer, to solve the mystery, and it gives you all the tools and information to make that possible. Therefore, this is my favorite take on a true detective game (i.e. a game about genuinely deducing stuff based on limited though sufficient evidence). The also amazing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a great detective story, with far more satisfying deductions than typical crime novels. This game felt similar. The game has an insane attention to detail: all the death scenes contain tons of details, and often it's more important what happens *around* the victim, sometimes even on another deck. The crew painting is very cleverly designed and insanely valuable, and the ship layout is logical and similarly important. So you actually have an excess of information, which makes it possible to deduce everything without the game providing obvious handholding as is typical in the genre, like by giving you limited dialogue options. But the game is also remarkable in other ways, e.g. in how it tells a story in an asynchronous order, very quickly gives you the freedom to explore in whichever order you see fit, and still manages to create well-rounded suspense and story beats. All this is supported by the amazing dramatic music, and impeccably timed acoustic scenes. Even the ending is fantastic. I loved the munchkinism and the symbolism (involving the m***** ***), too. Remarkable. Perfection. PS: It doesn’t seem like Obra Dinn’s dev likes to repeat genres in his projects. Back in 2018, I was worried that unless some other devs took heavy inspiration from it, it was likely that we wouldn't see anything like it again. But if wishing would make a difference, I wished this game could start a new genre by itself. Well, that wish came true, in the form of a bunch of games like The Curse of the Golden Idol or The Roottrees Are Dead. PPS: On replaying the game in 2024, I do have a few minor criticisms: the aliased font is hard to read; some of the UI is annoying; and on replaying, the pacing feels a bit too slow at times. I wish one could move a bit faster, enter death scenes directly from the book, and leave them more quickly. It's also a bit annoying that you only get the ability to list causes of death for lost characters once you complete a chapter. So you either have to take notes, or must alternatively rewatch scenes after completing the chapter. [quote]For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers[/url] and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group[/url].[/quote]