Return of the Obra Dinn

Lesson of purpose and purity of game design. All the technical and game principles are subject to great narrative and an experience you will not forget. [Issue#291]

Unapologetically old-school, the captivating tragedies of the Obra Dinn are in a class of their own. Visually striking and extraordinarily immersive, a must-play for any mystery fan worth their salt.

The Return of the Obra Dinn is a stunning work of craftsmanship. Pope, who handled every aspect of its production himself, has created a work that celebrates scrutinizing details.

An artistic manifesto of overflowing power.

Return of the Obra Dinn is simply gorgeous, from the idea to the execution. Finally a gem in which your deductive skills, your logic and your patience are really important: this game doesn't help the player. With an amazing graphic art and a strong gameplay, another great game from Lucas Pope.

An enthralling, tragic and surprising seafaring fairytale - a complex but always logical adventure for passionate detectives.

There is no thrilling story, colorful characters or allure of the high seas. Instead, Return of the Obra Dinn is a bold, massive puzzle, an exquisite workout for your 'gray cells'. Unfortunately, the innovative gameplay mechanic gradually loses its appeal and excitement towards the finale, and I had to muster my willpower in order to beat the game in one go.

This game is "verdammt" good. If you like puzzles or just heavy thinking, moving from place to place searching for clues, this is for you. The game is immersive and grabs your full attention, and the story it tells is engaging. Obviously, the crazy part is how satisfying it is to solve any mystery in the game, but it’s also important to pay attention to what is actually happening. By the way, some of the crew are really unlucky, if not all of them. Overall, the idea of investigating the disastrous voyage of a long-lost ship through memories is just brilliant.

The artstyle is fantastic, and the game is very interesting in general. However, I thinkit should point oout more on the names of the crewmates. You can't deduce many of them. You know how they died but not who they are.

The game is interesting in the beginning, but after around 30 souls it's close to impossible in the sane mind to define the names. The game stops being funny when you need to look at the color of the shoes and rings on the fingers of people

if there's a good game here, it's buried under a ton of minutia and time-wasting transitions. when you get to a death scene you're forced to just sit and look at it for 30 seconds before the game lets you do anything else. and when the game points you do a new death scene, you first have to walk there, and then click on it, and then you're teleported back to the previous one, then have to walk there a 2nd time, only this time behind a slow-moving gas cloud thing. Repeat 60 times. these things serve no purpose other than to waste the player's time. you spend more time following ghost clouds around to places you've already been than actually "playing" anything in this game.

Unique art style, interesting premise, and a clever main mechanic; but I didn't have a good time with the experience at all. Especially disappointing given my love of Pope's previous work, as well as detective games and sudoku. I completed the game after about 8 hours, but forced myself through to the end. My primary issue with the game is that the majority of the time, playing through it felt like busy-work - on multiple occasions I'd deduced what was needed to find someone's identity/death, and from then on it was a matter of piecing it all together by traveling through various memories. This doesn't happen quickly, nor seamlessly. I feel like I wasted about 2 or 3 of my 8 hours purely in traversal in pursuing this busy-work, and found it extremely frustrating. On a personal note, had I known it was a lovecraftian story going in I definitely wouldn't have played it at all, as that is not something I ever enjoy; but I can't fault the game for that, and arguably it was my fault for not having researched enough beforehand to know. Regardless, I recognize why some people may love Obra Dinn; but I was extremely disappointed by the game.