| (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) Originally, this was going to be a retrospective of the last week or two in games, in particular, the whole ‘microtransactions in single-player games’ debacle around Dragon’s Dogma 2. But, after writing for about an hour, I hit a wall. I was tired, I was bored and I felt as though everything that I was saying had been said before. I was shouting into a void that was too creatively empty to shout back. So, I threw up my hands and said, “Screw it! I’m going to write something positive about a game that I really liked and talk about why its good.” Enter; Return of the Obra Dinn. The Premise Return of the Obra Dinn was released in 2018 and takes the form of a historical, first-person puzzle game. You play as an insurance investigator who goes unnamed for the duration of the story so I can only assume that their name is Insurey McInsuranceface. You are tasked by the East India Company to write up a report into what happened to the doomed ship, Obra Dinn, that has arrived back in Falmouth harbour short on crew members and long on blood stains and severed limbs.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) The way in which you go about this investigation is where the unique selling point of Obra Dinn lies, the Memento Mortem, a special pocket watch-like device that allows you to relive the final few seconds before a person's death. Your task is to use this to complete profiles on who each member of the crew was and what happened to them. Less is more To cut to the chase, what I love about Obra Dinn and what makes it worth playing, arguably more so now than 6 years ago, is that every single fabric of the game embodies the idea that less can be more. The game not only embraces its shortcomings but makes genius use of them to create an experience that is actually improved by them. In an industry dominated by outrageous budgets and where micro-transactions are mandated to recoup the costs of the latest graphics software, Obra Dinn stands in a defiant two-finger salute against these established norms.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) The most obvious way in which Obra Dinn makes use of its limitations is in its presentation. The game only has two colours and fairly basic graphics. Note, that in no way am I saying that the game is ugly. In fact, despite the harshness of its appearance, the game is downright beautiful and the bold visual style makes some moments all the more striking. What's more, Obra Dinn's limited visual range actually enhances its gameplay. The barebones graphics make it hard, if not impossible to discern important details like ethnicity or injuries, mandating that you have to work harder with your logical deductions and making links between events if you want to piece the story together.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) |
Return of the Obra Dinn also goes to show that games can still be immersive without cutting-edge graphics. The stellar voice acting and sound design means that you are drawn straight into the scenes you are witnessing. Regardless of how they look, you are never given reason to doubt the realism and integrity of these characters and their setting. By the end, I felt personally invested in some of these characters and their experiences even though they only existed in this exaggerated visual style. Gameplay Just like with his previous smash hit, Papers Please, Lucas Pope manages to turn what should be a boring, bureaucratic process like listening for information and filling in paperwork into something remarkable and interesting. Each memory drops you right into the middle of the action with someone's death and the game becomes less about working out how they died and more about how their fate ties into what went on on this doomed voyage.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) The game checks your answers for the crew's identities and fates in batches of three rather than one-by-one. In my time with the game, this allowed for a perfect balance of some reasonable guesswork without being able to just cheat my way through the whole thing. The effect that this creates is that, even when you do manage to land a correct guess at someone's fate, it never feels disingenuous because it is always built upon the foundation of other information that you have already worked hard to deduce. Over the course of the game, there are multiple instances where your understanding of what happened on the ship is turned almost completely on its head and, even at the end, some elements are left up to the reader's own interpretation. Regardless of what you already know about the East India Company and some of the 'business' they got up to, there is still plenty of scope to be taken by surprise. It is worth also mentioning the journal that your character writes in as you undertake your investigation. In the past, when games have provided diaries or journals for characters that you can edit yourself, I've always found them clunky and hard to manage. However, through a combination of intuitive shortcuts and creative design choices in Obra Dinn, I found myself dancing back and forth through the pages without the need for a second thought.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) In many ways, just like in the presentation, the gameplay of Obra Dinn exemplifies everything that the gaming industry is too scared to do. I'm sure that a game set in 19th Century England all about paperwork would horrify most Triple-A publishers and leave them screaming and fleeing the pitch meeting but Lucas Pope makes it work to brilliant effect. In my hours with Return of the Obra Dinn, I could feel myself shaking off the rust that had built up on me from following the state of the industry in recent years. Recommendation I usually only review games through my Instagram account but I knew that my praise for this game would never fit in a caption. I could continue to gush about this game's excellence for many more pages. However, that would undoubtedly start carrying us dangerously close towards spoiler territory so, instead, I will leave you with an anecdote.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) I heard back in 2018 that Obra Dinn was incredible, but I never got around to playing it. Partly, that comes down to being pre-occupied with life stuff at the time but predominantly it was out of suspicion. You see, when a game receives the kind of glowing praise that Obra Dinn got, I get uneasy because so rarely do I feel as though it can live up to the hype. There are many beloved indie games that I like or even love but so often I find myself disappointed by their inability to walk the red carpet that has been laid down for them. I regret my decision back in 2018. Return of the Obra Dinn is every bit as good as people say it is and it managed to exceed my expectations in ways that I didn't think it ever would. It stands unwavering in my mind as the best puzzle game I've ever played.  | | (Image property of Lucas Pope and 3909 LLC) You should play Return of the Obra Dinn. You don't have to be a history buff. You don't have to be a navy nerd. All you need to play the game is to enjoy the feeling of pride you get when you work something out on your own and when you're rewarded for noticing small details. If, like me, that's what you love, you will love Return of the Obra Dinn.
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