If you’ve ever binge watched a TV show, especially a mystery or drama series, then you know how they go. They draw you in. You can’t help but get excited, care for characters, really grind your teeth at others, and freak out when some secret is revealed or someone is about to die. Return of the Obra Dinn is like this in a nutshell, but its not what you’d expect. Its very unique, because not everything is known to you. Names, deaths, disappearances, whole conversations. The drama has played out, and the mystery is yours to unravel of what happened. You have to unearth what caused each and every tragedy onboard.

Its 1807 and you’re just any normal insurance investigator for the East India Company, with you’re job being to investigate the merchant ship, Obra Dinn, which vanished in 1802, and assess the damages and the fates that befell those on board. Of course, this would be boring and kind of pointless if you didn’t have the “Memento Mortem”, a pocket watch that allows you to view the moment at which someone died. This allows you to connect the dots on who killed who, when, how, and who may have escaped or been witness. So you write it all down in your notebook, because if you don’t figure it all out, you didn’t do your job and you’ll disappoint Dr. Henry Evans. Evans was actually onboard the doomed ship but escaped, but is unable to tell the wholes story, and expects you to solve the mystery with the Memento Mortem, journal, and letter he sent you.

The twists and mystery is intriguing as well, although really all you do is just look closely for context clues, use your journal, and elaborate on someone’s death, which for some reason it was less detecting than I thought there would be. Obra Dinn didn’t take me too long, maybe a weekend, which for me is pretty fast, especially when it took a good portion of my evening and next morning/afternoon. It’s quite difficult to pin down what precisely happened, and some of the context clues are pretty amazing to realize the detail that you have to rely on. Some of the work you do is just a matter of elimination and implication. I will say that I feel like in the end when you discover the influence of all the tragedy, it is a little understatedly vague, which I suppose is the point, but its a pretty decently satisfying finish.

The music can blare dramatically, and honestly its perfect for the atmosphere, and it has a very dramatic intensity to each death. It plays well with the chaos going on at sea. The sound effects and voice acting is top notch, and the dialogue sometimes can be a little difficult to hear because of distance between characters and the sea, but it makes you feel like you’re actually there. Dialogue always plays before showing the frozen figures during the moment of death, which you could say is to just save money on animation if you want to be cheeky. The graphics on the other hand.... Yikes. I would give myself headaches the first couple times I gave the game a spin. ZeroPunctuation describes it perfectly, but its so grainy and constant pixel shading and bland color and spots and sparks and frozen-in-motion particles that it can just be kind of hard to look at. Its actually horrible, but since thats the style of the game, and it does look pretty cool, you can’t really fault Lucas Pope, because this game is genius.

So, in sum, this game is amazing, enthralling, enjoyable, a little hard on the eyes, and wondrous. If you were hesitating to buy this game, I do highly advise that you Return to the Obra Dinn; its a ship of mystery and drama, and it's worth every bit of its insurance.

If you’ve ever binge watched a TV show, especially a mystery or drama series, then you know how they go. They draw you in. You can’t help but get excited, care for characters, really grind your teeth at others, and freak out when some secret is revealed or someone is about to die. Return of the Obra Dinn is like this in a nutshell, but its not what you’d expect. Its very unique, because not everything is known to you. Names, deaths, disappearances, whole conversations. The drama has played out, and the mystery is yours to unravel of what happened. You have to unearth what caused each and every tragedy onboard. Its 1807 and you’re just any normal insurance investigator for the East India Company, with you’re job being to investigate the merchant ship, Obra Dinn, which vanished in 1802, and assess the damages and the fates that befell those on board. Of course, this would be boring and kind of pointless if you didn’t have the “Memento Mortem”, a pocket watch that allows you to view the moment at which someone died. This allows you to connect the dots on who killed who, when, how, and who may have escaped or been witness. So you write it all down in your notebook, because if you don’t figure it all out, you didn’t do your job and you’ll disappoint Dr. Henry Evans. Evans was actually onboard the doomed ship but escaped, but is unable to tell the wholes story, and expects you to solve the mystery with the Memento Mortem, journal, and letter he sent you. The twists and mystery is intriguing as well, although really all you do is just look closely for context clues, use your journal, and elaborate on someone’s death, which for some reason it was less detecting than I thought there would be. Obra Dinn didn’t take me too long, maybe a weekend, which for me is pretty fast, especially when it took a good portion of my evening and next morning/afternoon. It’s quite difficult to pin down what precisely happened, and some of the context clues are pretty amazing to realize the detail that you have to rely on. Some of the work you do is just a matter of elimination and implication. I will say that I feel like in the end when you discover the influence of all the tragedy, it is a little understatedly vague, which I suppose is the point, but its a pretty decently satisfying finish. The music can blare dramatically, and honestly its perfect for the atmosphere, and it has a very dramatic intensity to each death. It plays well with the chaos going on at sea. The sound effects and voice acting is top notch, and the dialogue sometimes can be a little difficult to hear because of distance between characters and the sea, but it makes you feel like you’re actually there. Dialogue always plays before showing the frozen figures during the moment of death, which you could say is to just save money on animation if you want to be cheeky. The graphics on the other hand.... Yikes. I would give myself headaches the first couple times I gave the game a spin. ZeroPunctuation describes it perfectly, but its so grainy and constant pixel shading and bland color and spots and sparks and frozen-in-motion particles that it can just be kind of hard to look at. Its actually horrible, but since thats the style of the game, and it does look pretty cool, you can’t really fault Lucas Pope, because this game is genius. So, in sum, this game is amazing, enthralling, enjoyable, a little hard on the eyes, and wondrous. If you were hesitating to buy this game, I do highly advise that you Return to the Obra Dinn; its a ship of mystery and drama, and it's worth every bit of its insurance.