PC User Reviews

Return of the Obra Dinn offers a truly unique investigation. Reconstructing the fate of an entire crew purely through observation and deduction is a brilliant idea. I loved the satisfaction of slowly solving the ship’s mysteries. The difficulty can become quite demanding at times. But that’s also what makes the experience so rewarding.

The game that got me into investigative games to the point I call them "Obra Dinn-likes." I've yet to find another game that drops you in the middle of an immersive environment and sets you lose to uncover its compelling mysteries in your own way. It may very well have ruined all similar games for me.

Es un juego de puzzles bien construido que trata con inteligencia pero sin excesiva borrosidad al jugador. Todo parece encajar y no hay errores profundos de diseño. La estética y la banda sonora, únicas, acompañan fielmente al título y le dan consistencia. Hay algunos problemas de ritmo en ciertas ocasiones pero la experiencia es de lo más recomendable.

Equipped with nothing but a notebook and a magic stopwatch that shows you the final moments of a person's life, Return of the Obra Dinn tasks you with investigating and solving the fate of the crewmates who disappeared on their journey aboard the ship "Obra Dinn". The game takes this premise and manages to squeeze every single drop of intrigue, style, substance, and drama, and with the help of some stunning retro-inspired visuals, a fantastic soundtrack that perfectly punctuates every new case, great voice-acting, and just sheer brilliant execution, moulds itself into one of the best puzzle games on the market. (Without spoiling anything) each and every scene is filled with little hints to a person's true identity. The situations these people found themselves in couldn't be more imaginative, and the notebook that holds a whole bunch of ways any single person could potentially die does wonders for the imagination. With the entire collection of investigations shaping up into an impressively coherent story by the time you reach the end credits. My only gripes with this game would be that the visuals can sometimes obfuscate the nature of death, with you needing to do multiple 360-degree rotations around a victim to really understand what's happening. This many times leads to you not having enough time to observe many other details in a scene, and hence, a bit of unnecessary backtracking. And that some people are just nigh-on impossibly difficult to identify, with me always hitting a roadblock at around the 20~35 solved cases, which just leads to a bit too much frustration for my liking. Otherwise, it's an incredible game and an easy recommendation.

Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the greatest puzzle games ever created. It oozes a rich atmosphere with its outstanding art direction, brief yet memorable soundtrack, captivating mystery, and its puzzle solving systems that admirably respect the intelligence of the player.

Even though this was my first real puzzle game, this is probably one of the best expiriences in the entire genre. While I do have some critic points, overall this was great. I loved the entire thing with like the munity introduction to then the Kraken attacking and other insane stuff. That moment was peak. Also, some ways people died were so crazy that it's hilarious. I also quite enjoyed solving the cases. It feels so good when the screen tells you 3 more fates have been solved. Also, I never talk about graphics, because I think artstyle is way more important and this games artstyle is phenomenal. The weird green look combined with the dot artstyle looks so good. All in all a really good puzzle game. (My favorite way is figured a case out was the Peters brothers. I used the memory where the dane got killed and used the dialouge noticed someone was talking about their brother dying because of ropes and the only rope related death that I remembered was the one in chapter 1. Due to the guy saying it was his brother, I checked the surnames for doubles and Peters was there twice, solving that made me feel so smart, even though after watching a playthrough, I noticed so many easy ways to figure out who was who.)

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.

An incredibly engaging and story-rich game with novel mechanics. Lucas Pope keeps releasing revolutionary game experiences.

Racial-profiling simulator 1807. One of the best murder-mystery games ever made. Completely unique, ingenious, and engaging from start to **** first hour will naturally be a hurdle to understand the game's strange story and gameplay mechanics, but after that short initial hurdle, is something truly special.60 people are either dead or missing- turn back time to find out who they were and how they died, so you can bring closure to the horrific state of affairs that occurred on a 19th century British voyage across the **** soundtrack and visuals are initially strong, but eventually will become a bit tedious and lose their magic. The game was around 8-10 hours to completion, as you play process of elimination through the ship's crew dossier, and a list of choices to how people can be described as having been killed. Not too complicated a game- but does require some focus to maintain track of a large cast of characters; their relationships, and roles among one another. The real magic to this game is piecing their tangible little lives together one-by-one, in addition to primarily identifying them.Unmissable Puzzle game for people who like detective-style experiences.

I am not much of a fan of detective games and didn't particularly like Papers Please, but something about the atmosphere and information gathering of this game completely **** me in. The only issue is that the coolest part of the game is seeing new scenes for the first time, but you spend most of the game staring at your notebook and thinking, but that's the only thing keeping this from being a 10 for me.

"Absolute Cinema" Le genre de jeu qui te marque. Return of the Obra Dinn est un jeu narratif à la première personne, dans lequel nous devons élucider le mystère de la disparition d'un équipage complet dans les années 1800. Afin de comprendre les événements, est a notre disposition une montre a gousset pour stopper le temps et mener notre enquête. J'en dis pas plus mais sachez que le jeu est très bien écrit, il y aura toujours quelque chose pour vous taroder l'esprit.

There are so many things good about this game. The music. When the music hits you as you explore each memory, it just feels so... perfect. The visuals. They were a bit jarring at first, but as I got more and more comfortable with them I really enjoyed the style. The historical accuracy. I am not a historian by any measure, but this game feels incredibly well researched and accurate in all the details. I learned many things about what life at sea 200 years ago might have been like. The voice acting. It's rare to find a game so well voice-acted in so many different languages. The writing. It's subtle and so immersive. The story is interesting and the details of each character and their actions and expressions during the course of events are extremely well thought out. As for the gameplay itself, it feels like an elaborate game of Clue. If you like the idea of playing a game like that, this is made for you. If not, I'll tell you this - it's not really the game play that hooked me at first. It was the atmosphere and story. As I played on, I became addicted to getting my answers correct in solving the mystery of the Obra Dinn. Eventually, all i wanted to do was get back to playing Return of the Obra **** for the main downside of the game, the overall user experience. Having to walk all the way across the ship to a memory over and over again is cumbersome. The book's controls of page turning have a high learning curve. Zooming into someone's face to highlight it in the book is a very slow process for something that needs to be done over and over again. For a game that's about noticing small details in a large picture, the monochromatic style makes your eyes strain unnecessarily harder. That said, the tediousness of walking around the boat and flipping through a physical book did help with immersion. And you can actually get pretty good at flipping through the book once you've done it enough **** the game is amazing. A work of art. A must-play for anyone with the patience for this type of game. Verdict: SUPERB

This is a beautifully crafted and addictive game that needs about an hour or two to really pull you in. I'm still blown away at how the team made this work with 60 characters and multiple acts to cover using only a few freeze frames. Great stuff. Minor ding for no real replayability and the unnecessarily long loop when you first watch a scene.

What a game! Disappointed that I didn't get on board when it first released. Suppose that ship has sailed. Amazing little detective indie game. What's there left say when everyone been going on about this game like mad. Get it, feels stupid not knowing what's going on, make some guessing, watch things fall into place and feel that rush when you hear that gahdamn violin. 10 out fckn 10, didn't pull up a single guide. PS: IT WAS THE CAPTAIN - HE KILLED THEM ALLLLL

This game is amazing with me wishing I could erase my memory of the game so I can play it all over again. There are some flaws with you having to wait until the memory is over for you to move on instead of you being able to manually do it. But I have to balance out the bad reviews so it gets a 10.

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.

Music, style, concept, characters, story, and everything else is very unique and entertaining. Very recommendable!

(JEU) Enquête géniale. Une expérience unique en son genre. Très fier d'avoir réussi le 100% sans jamais m'être aidé d'Internet. C'est donc une bonne nouvelle, si j'ai réussi à le finir de manière autonome, vous en serez aussi capables ! Malheureusement vu la réputation encensante du jeu, je me voyais plonger dans un jeu un peu plus "fou" que ce que j'ai eu. J'ai l'impression que l'aventure reste bien trop en surface (sans mauvais jeu de mots). J'entend par là plusieurs choses. Premièrement l'histoire, elle était bien... mais on aurait pu avoir qqchose de tellement plus riche, intriguant et complet en ajoutant des événements moins similaires entre eux. Deuxièmement, l'enquête. Je trouve vraiment dommage d'être obligé de résoudre des énigmes par élimination alors qu'il y avait la possibilité d'ajouter plus de secrets, de liens entre les personnages et leurs objets/lieux ou caractéristiques physiques (autre que la couleur de peau). Mais le jeu n'offre que très peu d'idées dans ce sens. Il offre aussi si peu de possibilités de morts différentes... j'ai l'impression que 60% des morts venaient de la même cause. Pourtant le jeu offrait plus de possibilités, mais elles n'ont pas étés utilisées... en plus le jeu était propice à explorer tellement de morts atypiques. Mais l'impression qu'on tourne autour de 3-4 morts récurrentes et 2-3 exceptions par-ci par-là. Ce qui est bien dommage et à rendu l'enquête moins stimulante pour mois. Surtout que les causes de mort sont parfois compliquées à différencier. Cela est peut-être du à la traduction. Dernier point que je voulais relever. La DA est super cool, mais j'ai l'impression qu'elle n'apporte absolument rien de plus au jeu. Le sentiment qu'avec n'importe quelle autre DA, le jeu aurait été le même. Mais BREF, je chipote. Le jeu est vraiment super. Je suis juste un peu déçu car le jeu aurait pu aller plus loin dans ses idées et ses secrets pour nous offrir une plus grande variété de réflexions et de pistes.

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

It's a very strong 4 hour experience - just know your own limits and don't fret about missing out.

Dazzlingly effective gameplay hook. The mystery is engaging and the frame-by-frame piecing together of what happened to the Obra Dinn is never tedious and always interesting. The grimy art style contributes well to the mood. I got so into the experience that I started keeping a notebook full of clues and observations. Highly recommend.

The best detective game ever made. The only flaw in it, isn't really a flaw -it's a detective game, so it's inherently unreplayable. It's a one and done, but wow is that one time perfect.

This game is one of best one i have ever played. It is all based on you and everything is so satisfying, you find out the misteries of the obra dinn all by yourself and there is nothing like the feeling of when you finally get 3 right, I'd say that the only game that is better tha nit in this aspect is Outer Wilds. The art style is incredibly well done. Plase give this game a shot it will be worth it

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The game, the music, the story, the game mechanics and the art are all fantastic. the only problem is how the story is presented. my main goal through out the whole story was find out who everyone was. when i finally finished that, the game was over, and i didn't have time to understand the story fully, as i thought they were going to show the story in order at the end. that caused me to search it and watch it on youtube. now that i know how good the story is, the game definitely deserves an 8, but i wished they had showed us the full story before ending the game.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A deeply satisfying and fun puzzle game that is like none other. Some obscure solutions in finishing up the crew list, but other then that is a overall great experience. The overarching story is intriguing and has a few twists to uncover. The art style is also very unique and suits the game perfectly. Some of the scenes it places before you are beautifully detailed and a joy to explore.

The best detective game ever made and one of the masterpieces of the 2010s.

What will you get if you combine Lucas Pope and Sailing ship? BEST GAME EVER CREATED (after Minecraft). Loved it, replayed it, loved even more!

If you like the game Cluedo but want to try your hand at determining the fates of sixty crew and passengers on a 19th century East India Company vessel, Return of the Obra Dinn might be the game for you. If you have a morbid curiosity on the creative ways people can die or you enjoyed playing What Remains of Edith Finch this game should also appeal. Whether you enjoy the story or not really depends if you're content with less characterisation but are at home with the nautical setting. Frankly, I found the characters in Papers, Please and the Soviet-era politics more compelling but Return of the Obra Dinn was still enjoyable if only to experience a trip down memory lane thanks to its early Macintosh monochrome graphics.

One of the best game i have ever played, specially when you finish the book and rethink and manage the credits.

An incredible unique experience. I want more games like this. This game made me feel more like an actual detective than any detective game I've ever played.

A fantastic game made with great attention to historical details. What an interesting experience! The setting is great, I've always loved stories taking place on ships, and the mysteries themselves are so satisfying to unravel! The music sets the tone perfectly for each chapter, and I have listened to "Soldiers of the Sea" and "The End" soundtracks many times over, and I still cannot get enough of them, even though they are quite short. And this game also brought to mind some fond memories from my childhood, how I'd lay in bed at night with a bedside lamp on and read Jules Verne, and imagine the atmosphere of a maritime adventure in the faraway lands... And while the game reminds me of those times, unlike Jules Verne (or, rather, what I remember from Jules Verne's books, since it has been a long time since I've read one), I really like that 'The Return Of Obra Dinn' is critical of practices (and laws, for example, the insurance laws: how a murder is fined less than stolen cargo) of the marine of the English Empire. I like when stories are this aware of the historical times they are set in. Overall: a great experience!

8,4 Jogo muito interessante, com um visual diferente e muito bonito, além de uma jogabilidade muito simples. Porém, devido à não-linearidade da história do jogo, se torna mais difícil adivinhar o nome dos personagens, já que você se esquece das memórias em que eles apareceram, isso pode ser bom para alguns, mas, me fez perder um bom tempo em tentar procurar as lembranças em que a pessoa apareceu, mas isso foi falha minha, já que há um botão para marcar as memórias em que ele apareceu, mas eu não percebi kakakak.

A legendarily great game that does what all games should… tell a story and do it well. An amazing adventure-story game with a first-person exploration mechanics.From the very start your mission is simple… find out what happened to the crew… and how they died. But this task is not nearly as easy as it seems, as you must accurately determine who each body belongs to… and exactly how they died, from what, and by who if necessary. Without spoiling the story, it can only be said to get better and more bizarre as it goes on! A must-play if you love murder-mystery games, stylized games, thinking games, or want a casual game in general to play with an excellent story!

Well, it's a masterpiece. Pros.: - Story. - Audio. - Even visuals. - The concept and gameplay. Cons.: - Pity there is no full event film at the end when you solve the whole book. - Some visuals prevent from understanding what exactly is going on (like explosions). - Some causes of death are dual. Can be done both ways.

I have never played somethinglike this and I am sure I never will. I hope to loose my memory to play it again for the first time

very impressive . retro style have good atmosphere but make things difficult to identify . the story is well designed but still need your attention go get into it , or you may just uninstall the game very quick . somehow it is really a damn to identify spines or spear . being press to dead or being squeeze to dead by kraken's tail .

Niche genre but best game ever made about assessing an insurance claim. It's a little bit clunky in places yet transcends all its self-imposed limitations to be a wonderful example of piecing together clues and inferences, with the help of some guesswork. The only sadness is in realising you can only complete it for the first time once.

fantasztikus ez a játék nagyon el lehet vele ütni az időt

Got this recommended to me by my friend as breath of fresh air from modern AAA dev games. The game experience was truly unique. Indie devs are truly carrying the game rn,

8/10

Return of the Obra Dinn is a very original investigation game. It's set on an abandoned ship where the protagonist has to investigate what happened to the 60 people that were on board. You can do this by exploring the ship in a first-person view; during your exploration, you'll stumble accross many corpse, and every time you find one, your special power will let you listen to the last seconds of life of that person, and, after that, you'll be able to see and explore the surroundings of a static scene representing their istant of death. Starting with an almost blank book containing the ship map, some drawing of the entire crew, the list of people on board and little else, you cannot talk with anyone, examine object or read documents, and just looking at the scenes you'll have to notice a lot of details and make a lot of connections in order to understand who is who and what happened to them. Sometimes this process is very difficult and makes you feel lost, but with attention is possible to identify several characters, and excluding them from the people list will help identifying the remaining ones. The process is fun, the game will confirm your choices every time you get 3 of them correct, and when it happens it's extremely satisfying. The game has also flaws, it's short and not replayable, its graphics is stylish but sometimes confusing (and surely not the best you can find), the little area explorable and the lack of any interactivity with the environment let you wonder the potential that a similar game would have, if it wasn't a low budget production. In conclusion, Return of the Obra Dinn is a great investigation game, with an original and clever structure that will give you something fresh to play and a lot of satisfaction for completing it. It's not perfect and won't last long, but if you're curious to undersand how a ship with 60 people can disappear for 5 years, and then be found without a single person alive on board... well, you won't regret playing it!

This is a good age of independent games, and Return of the Obra Dinn delivers well. The basic premise is that of an insurance agent searching an old sailing ship, attempting to identify those aboard, and what happened to them. Essentially, a detective story, and it is done very well. Some cases are easier to solve than others, and I found some situations took more thought than others. Sometimes a little extra thinking goes in, and personally, I found that very rewarding. It's remarkably satisfying when you get it right. The graphics are interesting. On the surface, they seem simple, but they are very effective. If one monitor style doesn't suit you (the default is old Macintosh), there are other options that might appeal more. I found the default works fine, and given I am prone to migraines, but didn't have any issues with this game, I was relieved. There's quite a bit to this game, and it had more depth than I was expecting. The story drew me in, and if you like detective stories or mysteries, you'll probably like this. I've reached a stage where I've grown a little tired of many AAA games being flashy and pretty, even quite big, but lacking that soul, the element of good writing, interesting plots and just something a bit different to the standard "destroy enemy, fetch item, sit through some Hollywood-style lacklustre dialogue", so I'm finding the independent games offer something that older games tended to. In lieu of enormous budgets, special effects, bloated marketing budgets and buckets of hype, the independent arena has offered many games which just do things a little different. I think this is for the best, and Return of the Obra Dinn can certainly be added to the list of smaller (though there's a lot of meat to this one), more independent games which have these qualities. Yes, there'll always be a place for the big pricey hype machines (just as Hollywood films tend to deliver), but it's good to see independent works out there which offer something that simply throwing truckloads of cash can't achieve. And that's some soul. Some writing. Some results that don't insult your intelligence. More of these independent efforts, please. They're hitting the spot nicely.

The best thing I can say about Return of the Obra Dinn is that it is unique. The premise is that a ship with a crew of 60 had gone missing and has now resurfaced. You are given a personnel manifest and your task is to put a name to each corpse. Your only tool is a magic device that allows you to view a flashback of the moment each corpse died. To make things easier on you, the game will let you know every 3 correct matches you make (makes it way too easy IMO - should have added difficulty levels). What is unique about the game is that you do not have any sort of inventory to manage, or witnesses to interview, or puzzles to solve for unlocking new areas. All you have is a ship filled with dead bodies and your little flashback device. But don't mistake this as the game being hardcore "bring your own notebook" type game. The game takes care of all the legwork you could want - it will record names to persons matches you made (so in a flashback you can tell who is who), it will order the flashbacks from first to last, and it will give you a map so you don't have to remember anything. Everything is taken care of for you besides your one task - matching the name to the body. You'll be able to do this through various hints in the scenes. For example, you'll hear someone referenced by name, or you'll hear him speak a different language, or you'll see he is dressed different, or sleeps in special quarters. Lots of little things, a few of which are a bit contrived. Basically it is through guesswork and process of elimination you'll be able to win. To give you an idea of how this works, as an example in one flashback you'll see 3 men playing cards and speaking Russian. You check the crew manifest and confirm there are only 3 Russians on board. You see a funny hat next to hammock #41, then in another flashback you see one of the 3 men wearing the hat. Now you know he is #41 on the manifest, you can cross him off. The other 2 russians have different job descriptions - one works as a sailor the other as a deckhand. In yet another flashback you see one of the 2 scrubbing the floor - now, out of the 10 deckhands on the manifest, you know this is the russian speaking one. Cross him out. The sailor you can guess by process of elimination. Done. This is a more or less simple example, but that's essentially what you'll be doing all game for all 60 crew members. It's not exciting, but it isn't terrible either. An average game that has been exalted only for being unique compared to the regurgitated AAA slop that most every studio produces these days. One thing other reviewers aren't mentioning is just how morbid the game is. I'm not very squeamish, I've played other fantasy horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but this game is particularly depressing. You will literally spend 90% of your playtime watching people die, hearing them beg for their lives, and all set to a funeral soundtrack. Not very fun.

great great great great great great great great great great great great great

this game was so phenominal. it is the most interesting puzzle game ive played with an amazing atmosphere

This game is just something else, Lucas Pope prove us, yet again, that you can tell a story in a totally different way and still deliver every single emotion intended. It's not a particularly hard game, but you gotta really put some energy in it sometimes if you want to finish it correctly. Honestly, there's not much more to say about this, the game speaks for itself and you must really feel this experience to understand it. If you like indie games or just looking for a different experience, this is a must-play.

An absolute masterful experience. That being said, it won't be for everyone and do your research beforehand. A great concept, interesting setting and unique mechanics make this a must.

Absolutely amazing soundtrack. Unique visual art style (that can be customized). Superb voice acting and sound design. Perfectly crafted story. The only downside (if you can even call it that) is its lack of re-playability.