Return of the Obra Dinn

Super cool game, the music and sound effects are phenomenal, and the visuals lend well to the feel of the story. Its insane how much detail was put in.

I couldn't stop playing. I cancelled weekend plans for it.
Worth it. 10/10

The art direction and sound design were amazing. Amazingly good story and setting. Loved every minute of it.

A guy has a slight lisp during dialogue and you're supposed to pinpoint who it is off that
Pretty good detective game

A well-crafted detective / mystery game that can be off-putting at first but is highly rewarding after a couple hours if you keep at it.

This is one of my favorite games I've ever played. Succint and sweet, yet with enough head-scratching for multiple gaming sessions (my real time ran about 7 and a half hours - I left the game running one night).

Some of the fates were extremely difficult, and though I guessed on a few, later when I revisited chapters for other fates, I noticed pieces of evidence I could have used to deduce the crew members without the need for guesswork, though some clues were very subtle.

Overall, a phenomenal game that really breaks the mold. I'd say it's worth the full price, as you'll never play anything like it again.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a detective simulation game. The main gameplay is a walking simulator mixed with a hidden object game and putting in your best guesses in a journal. This is not an exciting game, and there is no voice acting or animations (for the most part). I put this at the front, not to deter you, but to make sure you understand what you're getting into.

This game has one major flaw, but if you can understand that flaw going into it, you'll likely have a much better time. The flaw is unintentionally teaching the player to expect answers much earlier than the game provides. The tutorial of the game guides you through a few flashback sequences, and has you solving a few of the crew member's death right away. This is not how the rest of the game runs. For the most part, you'll need to watch every single flashback, make a few minor notes on each one, then start following every lead you can to learn who is who, and what happened to them.

The first time I played this game, I thought that I was too stupid to really play it, because after going through about 10 flashbacks, I still didn't know what was going on, who was who, and what happened to anyone. Turns out, this is pretty usual. So, the tutorial primes you to think that you can solve "most" of the puzzles in each flashback pretty quickly, but this turns out not to be the case.

If you are willing to put in the time this game requires, and you enjoy searching for every possible piece of evidence to solve mysteries, this is one of the most singular experiences you can have. However, bottom line, this game isn't going to be for everyone, so know what you're getting into

this game is amazing, i still think of this game and hope i forget all the answers so that i can play it again. its such a cool game, so eerie and interesting. i literally cannot recommend this game enough. it rewards paying attention to small details which feels really good when you get something right.
i keep telling all my friends to play this game!!

Fantastic mystery game that really forces you to pay attention and work your brain. Also good spooky sea vibes. 10/10 would sail again.

I can't believe I forgot to review this game. It has the most fumblable(?) premise in history and uses it so perfectly. The music and visuals are immaculate but aren't even the main draw, it's the fact that this is a *real* detective game. You have a extensive set of tools that are all given to you at the start, and a bible's worth of accidents and murders to fill out. Even games that take inspiration from it (cough cough chants of sennaar) unknowingly butcher the satisfaction achieved from it, because everything in Obra Dinn was made for Obra Dinn. Each little detail serves as one of many clues that push you towards each solution, very few clues completely outweigh others and make them obsolete (these still exist, such as E.S., but this makes sense anyway and is a cool way of figuring out an identity). Lucas Pope is an absolute visionary, just the stylisation alone deserves praise for how it mixes oldschool macintosh visuals with 19th century photographs. Ok, I've been yapping on too much, but it is well worth anyone's time, definitely recommend.

7/10 for me. Great style, great story, fun mechanics, but I'm not the target audience. Requires a lot of patience and attention to really tiny details that I just can't be asked to focus on. Good game tho.

Video games bore me when they tell their story like a movie. Those "story-driven" games are nothing more than a mediocre 10-hour film. In this game, it's up to you to uncover the story through its mechanics, and in the end, you feel like a detective who had the satisfaction of discovering a great story. Some games are more works of art than games—this is one of them.

I've never played anything like this, and I'm not sure there even is something else like this. It's a really unique experience and I loved it.

I recommend playing with a notebook, btw! (You can totally beat the game without taking extra notes, but I found it way more fun and involving)

10/10
The characters' premise fits my needs of perspective.
This might not mean anything, and I apologize if this isn't misleading.
I don't leave bad reviews, all efforts are a perfect score.

Okay, at first I wasn't sure I actually liked it because the game starts off SUPER DRAMATIC and OVER THE TOP. BUUUUT after you unlock everything (except secret stuff) it shuts up and gets out of the way of your VERY IMPORTANT investigation for INSURANCE PURPOSES.

10/10. Fun and (sometimes) silly lil maritime insurance scam investigation game.

11 out of 10!

Can't stop once started if you are big on mysteries and puzzles. The setting is fascinating as well, with people of different nationalities and cultural background on board a voyage to an unknowingly calamitous demise. I enjoyed the 1-bit but vivid 3D art style and music throughout the game. Definitely want to play something similar next time!

Its amazing. Probably one of the coolest and most unique detective games that exists.

really fun mystery game, not too long. Nice eerie vibe without turning into full blown horror (closest I will ever come to completing a horror game)

Best puzzle game I've ever played. Doesn't leave you in spots where you have to make erroneous assumptions about each puzzle, and was incredibly enjoyable for someone who's been playing puzzle games for almost 15 years.

I could write an essay on how incredible this game is both on its own merits, and on how much it personally impacted me during a difficult time in my life. A masterpiece, from concept, to music, to execution, to game mechanics, etc, etc. It is a labor of love and Lucas Pope is a real artist. If you haven't played it, don't read anything about it, just play it and experience incredible storytelling and game design. 5 stars. Has taken the top spot for my favorite gameplay experience and I wish I could wipe my memory to play it again and again. I have a rule for myself that I am not allowed to recall any names or faces when I think about the game to attempt to forget.

This game will be burned into your memory the way its black and white style is burned into my monitor and retinas. Like a good book unfolding before you, this game has many moments of ever greater twists and reveals. Best to go into this one blind.

This is certainly a game that continuously surprised me in great ways. A true innovative take on unraveleling a mystery and storytelling! I won't say more on that because of spoilers, but I will add that playing this with a friend was a true delight.
If you want to pick this up, do it! play it, it's great! Even better, drag a friend or two along for the ride :3

Such a delightful puzzle game! Piecing together little bits of environmental, wardrobe, and dialog to identify the misfortune of the entire crew was great fun! The storytelling is awesome and several moments made me gasp!

Excellent game, 9/10
(-1 point from no sprint when your going multiple decks of the boat looking for clues on a single person)

Great mystery. Found the specific graphics style, although beautiful, difficult to parse at some points which is important for mode of death information but no major complaints.

This game seems to have sprung, fully-formed, from the brow of Zeus. Lucas Pope is a genius. I have literally never felt so utterly bamboozled, and then so madly brilliant, while playing a video game ever in my life.

A wonderful detective game with a fun gimmick and no stressful time limits. I just wish you were able to play it all over again.

Amazing! Puzzle and logical deductions. Feels great every time you solve 3 fates. Had a blast with this one. Unique game.

10/10!
This game is one I really enjoyed with its unique art-style, interesting and enveloping story, and mental challenge all adding to its greatness. I love puzzle games, and this game is just that, one giant puzzle! Definitely one of my favorite games played to date, go play it now if you haven't already!!

What a great game!! While I was initially 'horrified' by the basic graphics - it works well for this game. Adds to the challenge. And it is quite challenging. I recommend playing it through until you win or you give up. If you decide to take a break, it's hard to get back into the groove because much of the info is memorized. You keep mental track of who everyone is, what their job is and how they died. There's a place to put this info but when you have only partial info, you're keeping more of a mental note for those things. Thus if you take a break, you'll be doing a chore trying to catch up with all the info you had (and possibly now forgotten). I had solved 24 fates, then took a break of over a year... mistake. wasn't sure if I should start over or try to figure out where I was... painful. In the end, I didn't start over, but it was confusing until I got the hang of it again.

So it's a good game that will exercise your observation skills - even with the fuzzy graphics. Don't overlook the scenic drawings of the crew and pay attention to who is sitting/standing beside who! That will help you solve quite a few people.

I used a supplementary spreadsheet (available in the guidelines) which was very helpful for tracking down names and occupations.

It's a weird story that I'm still not entirely clear about (the monkey?) but entertaining none the less.

Thoroughly enjoyes this game. I should probably try Papers, Please as I understand that's also quite good.

Despite being better-known for Papers Please, this game is absolutely Lucas Pope's magnum opus (as of now, at least - hopefully he continues to make awesome games!). It intertwines a wonderfully-delivered story with incredibly unique puzzles. There's really nothing else like this out there; the puzzles require means of logical deduction that you won't see in other games. On top of that, the music is fitting and pleasant (albeit a little repetitive, after 9 hours, especially given that you can't - as far as I could tell - lower the audio of the music without lowering the other sound effects). Personally, I think anybody that enjoys puzzle games should play this.

Genuine A-Tier work, Lucas Pope's "Return of the Obra Dinn" is the kind of gem that sometimes appears from single-developer studios who have one great idea worked to solid perfection. The gameplay loop feels very enriching, the puzzles are recurring drips of dopamine, and the ambiance draws the player into this 19th-century world of nautical tragedy. More comprehensive reviews are available elsewhere so I will simply add my thumbs-up to the chorus of other contributors who have enjoyed their experience with this title.

Only one caveat, though. Like others who have mentioned the same complaint, I also loathe how the game forces long, long waits between uses of the watch. Titles of this sort often create these artificial waits either to pad out runtime or to force visitors to really imbibe the scenery crafted by the studio. While the developer may have wanted to encourage suspense, these extended breaks actually creates regular scenes of boredom just like unskippable cutscenes in other games but worse because there is no animation or moving action from the title. I wish the developer had been more considerate of this user experience, but I still have to applaud the work that went into crafting this for us and can otherwise credit the title for it's superb worldbuilding.

Really satisfying murder mystery puzzle game. I wish there was a better way to go into and out of the memories, since that started to really eat up time when I was working through things. Even with that though, it was a fun time. Some of the people were absolutely painful to figure out though.

There're really no other games quite like this one. I wish I could experience this again for the first time. Some of the best sound design you'll ever hear in video games. Some of the most striking ancient Macintosh-style graphics, too! An absolute gem of a game.

Gameplay simples mas ainda sim consegue inovar. Um puzzle de misterios, realmente é muito satisfatório conseguir resolver sozinho, mesmo que leve horas (que foi o meu caso hehehe). Amei a estética, mesmo parecendo estranha no inicio e a trilha sonora dispensa comentarios, maravilhosa e realmente da uma imersão incrivel a historia. Joguem sem medo, pra quem curte puzzle e misterios é uma otima aquisição.

Very intriguing puzzle with an interesting mechanic and well-written story. Instantly consumed me.

A very unique puzzle game, both graphically and mechanically.

For the many, many video games out there, there comes maybe a couple of times in a year a game that stands above all others and sticks out, the kinds where you can play them and tell they are of a unique quality that is not present in most other games. Return of the Obra Dinn is one of these games. Aside from the Macintosh-esque graphics and the olde 19th century nautical theme, the Obra Dinn presents a brilliant piecemeal story of a 60 crew (technically 52 but shush) English ship that goes missing, only to mysteriously return home years later with nobody alive. Your job, as both documentarian and insurance agent, is to evaluate the ship and the fates of all crew members on the Obra Dinn. Using a pocketwatch that lets you see back to the moment of someone's death, you evaluate the crew and their fates in freeze-frame dioramas. That's about as far as I can go without spoiling the game and your enjoyment of it. The game is a brainteaser for sure, and in the end it's the story that becomes complicated, and not the gameplay, which is what gives the game it's fascinating story that leaves you thinking after the book is closed. This didn't win Indie GOTY in 2018, but to be fair it competed with Celeste that year. I bet if Celeste wasn't released the same year, this would have won it.

Score: 10/10

What can I say? There really isn't anything quite like this game, at least not to my knowledge. It's an interesting game, and it took me a little while to get through everything, but I'm satisfied to say I got through it with out having any answers spoiled. It's a thinking man's game. The game feels simple, even though it is doing a lot under the hood. It stands alone in many ways, which is exciting. People often complain about games that hold your hand, and I can promise this game will not make you feel like the game is treating you with kids gloves. So if you want something very different from running and gunning, this game might be for you.

This game was awesome! I just finished it. I loved the art, music, and the story. It felt great to see everything come together and solve it.

This game is a fantastic and addicting puzzle game. I planned on only playing a 4-hour session and ended up playing the whole game instead. Any time I would solve a difficult connection, it really got the dopamine going. 11/10 would recommend

What can I say that hasn't been said about this game. Genuinely unique, and truly captivating game of exploration/deduction. Highly recommended (and don't look up spoilers!)

Beautiful game and excellently crafted story. The premise and art-style is captivating as much as the mystery itself, and the mystery is really a treat to solve from a completely blind entry. There are so many ways to identify people, from names, jobs, relationships, accents, brute-force, and so many subtle clues that any two people will have totally different methods of piecing together the tragedy of the good ship Obra Dinn.

This is a mystery game were every piece of information is useful. All of it. I would highly recommend to anyone who likes any sort of puzzle game, and would even recommend it to those who are not any good at puzzles for just the story of the Obra Dinn itself. The narrative itself of what happened to the ship and crew is amazing, and piecing it together through a mystery game was much more fun than any movie where I had to reconstruct the plot.

And, again, go in as blind as possible.

This game is amazing and I wish there were more games like it. It's a great experience even if by its nature it doesn't have the best replay value. Please play this at least once for your own sake

This game was really cool! The graphics are very stylized and neat. I didn't always understand the "logical way" to solve some of the puzzles, but when I figured it out on my own I felt very smart. A lot of this game is piecing together what you can at the time, and waiting for more information later in the game about early characters (so don't feel bad if you feel like you are missing something, you probably are!). It was a cool journey and I recommend it.

V fun and satisfying game! The soldiers of the sea scare me though, and it's sad how many people died. Makes me emotional sometimes. Tragic. :(

I loved it. It caught me off guard with how game doesn't hold your hands almost at all, but as i spiraled into the mystery and began to make progresses i really enjoyed it.

Also, the aesthetic is awesome. The pixelized output, transitional effects, and as ironic as it sounds, color choice. And much more. Music is top notch, it sounds very traditional yet so charming and unique.

I just want to say i really enjoyed this and want more of it. God i love these kind of puzzle games : D

Absolutely incredible. Very unique, exquisitely put together, wish I could play again. The visuals weren't quite my thing but they grew on me, and I managed to maintain a steady pace of discovery throughout my entire playthrough that never left me feeling stuck.

Would recommend to anyone who's intrigued by the concept.

Return of the Obra Dinn is one of those games where the more you know about the game going in, the less you'll get out of the experience, and not because there is a plot-twist at some point (or is there!?) but because the entire experience revolves around gathering information and then using that information to make progress… In learning more information. As such there isn't much you can really say about the game without spoiling it, but given that the game came out 7 years ago at this point, if you still haven't picked it up, you probably need a few more hooks in you.

Return of the Obra Dinn is, essentially, a detective game. You're not playing as a detective, but rather as an insurance agent in the year 1807 sent to figure out what happened to the ship Obra Dinn that has mysteriously returned after being lost at sea for 3 years. You're given a book that has an index, a list of the crew's names and roles, a picture of everyone on board, a glossary for landlubbers (read: me) and a hell of a lot of empty pages. In addition to the book you're also given a watch that can go back to the exact moment of someone's death - provided you can find their corpse. With just these tools you're expected to figure out not only the fate of all 60 people on board, but also who they are, and here's the catch: the list of names and pictures of the crew are entirely separate and you're only ever prompted with their picture, leaving you to figure out everything else through astute observations and clever deductions.

If you go through all the scenes and write down only what you can directly observe or reasonably assume you'll probably only get 15 people right. And the thing about the game is that it doesn't care if you get 6 or 60 people right: if you decide to end the game, it's over and the credits will roll. But, if you want to really experience the magic of Obra Dinn, to really figure out what happened on the ship and the exact dynamics of the crew, just keep at it from there. It's a bit overwhelming at first, but the more people you guess correctly from there, the more information you have to go on and the fewer red herrings are left to choose from. The feeling of satisfaction from eventually correctly connecting the dots will far, far outweigh the feeling of frustration from floundering around in failure, trust me

a puzzle game so good that in just about 7 years it's inspired like 5 other puzzle games that are all insanely good as well. the modern puzzle genre can effectively be sorted into eras "pre-Obra Dinn" and "post-Obra Dinn," it's that good.

one of the best games I've ever played. It's unique, creepy, atmospheric, and sucks you in immediately. It's challenging, too, and I never got bored. The only thing I'll say is it doesn't really have replay value imo, but nevertheless it's so worth it. You gotta go in completely blind!