Overall, this is an incredible game with an extremely interesting way of going about solving the mystery of the Obra Dinn. As you happen upon different threads and start pulling, you start to realize that even though you're following an overarching plot of the major events on the ship, you're quickly pulled into individual plotlines as you try to identify each character and what ultimately happens to them. You find yourself becoming invested in each scene, slowly starting to go from a very superficial view of just the victim to paying more attention to details the game has been hiding in plain sight from the beginning. It quickly becomes very satisfying to see the book filled out with everything you figured out, regardless of how you reached the outcome because of the plethora of ways to reach one solution. For the full time I was playing, I became fully immersed in the world and found it easy to start pulling at strings and following them without realizing how much time had passed. It's a pretty perfectly structured game that lets you unravel the mystery at your own pace and is presented in such a way that even the ultimately straightforward story is extremely interesting.

I had always been offput by the art-style but man I am so glad I played it. It is so so so fun to go through this game and experience the story how it is told through the deaths of the members of the Obra Dinn in vibrant and exciting scenes that you walk through and uncover. The puzzle element of finding out the name of the crew and how they died is always interesting and thank god for the system that correct you when you get 3 right at a time cause I would of lost mind if I didn't have that. I played this with a friend who had already played it so she helped me out when I needed it but never gave me the answer straight away so I would say a non-spoiler guide can be a help in this game to truly enjoy it while having a interesting, sometimes challenging, and amazing puzzle to uncover in the return of the Obra Dinn.

AHOY!
Ao contrário dos infelizes tripulantes do navio, eu adorei cada segundo dentro do Obra Dinn.

Tudo isso em meio ao caos, suicídios, mortes, monstros marinhos, doenças que assolaram o local, preconceito, pessoas ficando insanas e etc.
A curiosidade é imensa em tentar descobrir as motivações de cada uma dessas pessoas que estavam nesse navio.

Tudo isso graças ao Lucas Pope que é um gênio, e assim como já fez em "Papers, Please", criou outro game que marca uma experiência única e inesquecível.

Amazing deduction game, really enjoyed my time with it.

Was on my radar since listening to the Besties talk about it in their 2018 GOTY, and super enjoyed Paradise Killer as well. This one hits just as hard, although in a more succinct format, and really nails down that mystery deduction. Extremely rewarding, fist-pump shouting moments getting the three more fates correct screen, up until the point I started basically brute-forcing it.

Maybe my fault that the ending bits to me felt a bit anticlimactic and checklist-y though, because of my ending up brute forcing some of the answers instead of realizing I could look at things like tattoos, or shoes in the barracks, or rings, to figure out the identities. Was too focused on getting to the end and seeing what that hidden chapter was - which ended up having fun scenes, but slightly underwhelming compared to what I was hyping it up to be.

All in all, a succinct story, and someday might return to the Obra Dinn to re-experience it. In the meantime, the shared experiences on the subreddit and the memes will do it justice enough.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a very interesting game, the second major game by auteur developer Lucas Pope of Papers Please fame both falling into a genre that I can only really describe as "Puzzle write-em-ups"

You start off as an investigator with a randomly chosen gender climbing on-board to a ship that has docked with all it's passengers either absent or dead, and with the power of a watch that lets you see a moment frozen in time of the events of their death, and you need to solve not only how they died, but who they are and what happened to everyone in general, even the ones you can't find a body for.

The idea is you start with the simple people to identify and going through every memory, and then going through and narrowing down and picking through every placement, nationality, rank, social grouping, hammock number, etc. until you've figured out what happened to every single person
...There's only one major issue though, this means after you've gone through every memory this is really boring, as not only is 60 crew members a lot to worry about, at no point can you just fast travel to memories, you have to walk around and enter each one, and the book menu is slow and annoying to use meaning quickly checking faces, memories and the different chapters is a HUGE pain in the ass.
Going through memories can be a bit annoying too, because you have to wait for the game to tell you that you're done looking and can leave, or it'll tell you to leave as you're checking out a more detailed scene, but it forces you to be railroaded into the next 4 scenes anyways, making figuring out how to get back to that last scene annoying, I have no idea why fast travel and not being forced to stay in/leave a memory being absent was not caught in playtesting to be a major issue.

However, the game is really unique and is a very unique thoughtfully put together puzzle, I'm trying carefully not to compliment the game for it's mystery, as there is none. Once you see the first beast on like the fourth memory (cool reveal though) the game has completely blown it's load on what the mystery is, it's incredibly predictable, Cursed treasure, Evil monsters... and that's about it, unless the unbelievable stupidity of the entire crew is supposed to be a part of that mystery as well.

I played another game with a similar premise to this on Itch.Io called "Once Upon a Crime in the Wild West" a few years ago, and although its execution in terms of function, voice acting and general what-have-yous was not nearly as good, the concept they had going was much more interesting, you're playing out the scenes (with an option to do so on the fly!) and connecting a train on to figure out who murdered who until you've solved the whole case, I feel like Lucas Pope got a bit carried away with the almost bureaucratic elements and it turned the game into a bit of a chore.

The only real criticism about the shallow story that I really have is that the crew are ridiculously stupid, they're accident prone as all hell, have a tendency to fall on their heads or die instantly to the slightest bop to said head, have nasty tunnel-vision, terrible hearing, and worst of all....

[SPOILER for what happened in the final chapter, The End]
All 4 of those guys got killed for no reason, the 3 trying to mutiny did it for absolutely no reason, for some reason assuming the Captain still had the shells, which he obviously did not and had thrown out, and even admits to this, only for them all to attack him anyways, dropping dead one after another without hesitating for a second, with all of the attacks from the sea-monsters already having come to pass for quite some time now, and with the actual chronology of everything, it's something that most of the VERY DWINDLING population of the crew should know about, also the Captain just coldly instakills one of the members of the crew he was implied to be decently close with.

I guess the excuse is that one of the crew members that bargained with the mermaids was killed frankly fucking ridiculously, who just gets spiked when clearly trying to bargain, making sure he dies so he can't let everyone know that everything is chill now, but wow, all this bending over backwards for setting up a shitty set of 4 deaths that serves no value other than being the tutorial, which probably could have been done just as well by moving around the whole scuffle around the first mutiny.

Still, great game and it's worth playing even past the many flaws, give it a try if you like experimental stuff.

Stepping onto a destroyed sailing vessel, your job is to determine what happened that led to the deaths of every soul onboard. You must match bodies to names to causes of death, and in doing so, you reconstruct a symphony of cause and effect through logic and process of elimination. There is a fundamentally unique excitement and satisfaction to that process that makes this game stand out atop the rest of the genre that this game itself created. Unlike anything before or after, playing Return of the Obra Dinn is mandatory for anyone who enjoys games and their design.

Coming into this, I anticipated enjoying the visual representation, given what I'd seen of the gameplay and trailer. However, I was truly surprised by the game's incredible sound design. The sound is incredibly immersive, with impeccable voice acting adding to it, making the experience interesting in both its visuals and sound. Although I found the soundtrack a bit annoying, the art style is undeniably gorgeous and likely a major selling point for the game. Nonetheless, I still found myself struggling to identify things at times.

In terms of gameplay, it's genuinely fun if you're into detective stuff, tho it can become a bit tiring and extremely overwhelming at times. The game unfolds in a non-chronological order as you piece together the fate of each crew member aboard the ship, attempting to connect the dots to uncover their name, how they died and by whom. It often relies on logic, such as examining their social circles, clothing, accents/languages, and surroundings. But at times I found that many of my deductions were based on process of elimination or pure luck rather than strict logic because clues can easily go over your head (surgeon stuff). The need to move back and forth on the ship to view the crew's death scenes can be a bit tiresome.

"ok i know everyone talks about how this game is like their favorite game ever and they wish they could play it again for the first time and whatever but, it's gotta be like a little overhyped, right?" - me, an utter fool, moments before playing return of the obra dinn

this is like, peak video game. what a cool way to present a story. i'm so glad i avoided sort of story spoilers for 6 years, i literally just thought it was gonna be a murder mystery on a boat with a neat gameplay mechanic. the music, the environment, the visual style, the storytelling and detail in each scene, the tedious clue hunting, gradually piecing together the chain of events and eventually being able to name the entire crew off the bits and pieces of info you can gather. it all just works together so so well. normally i'd respect the creators wishes, but damn if there's any game that deserves a sequel or spin off or something it's this.

(if you're into murder mysteries on a boat, maybe check out Why Am I Dead at Sea, i don't actually remember if it's all that comparable, but i was reminded of it quite a bit while playing this game)

The worst thing about this game is that you can only play it blindly one time

Everything about this is perfection, ingenious, creative, and wonderful. The music is fantastic, the presentation and visuals not only are striking but go well with a lower budget game. This is a title that takes full advantage of its limitations.

It has truly shocking and jaw dropping moments. Ones that will stick in your mind long after the experience.

Lucas Pope is a brilliant and incredible game dev. This is a game that defines a career.

I don't consider many pieces of media perfect, but this is one of them. Don't look anything up, just know it will challenge you and force you to be observant and to really think. Must play.

JUEGAZO. Simplemente júntense con un amigo, entren al juego y disfruten de lo que ofrece. Horas y horas teorizando quien puede ser cada persona, disfrutando de TODO lo que logra esta obra maestra. Sinceramente no creo que vuelva a jugar nada comparado en mi vida, porque no tiene comparación con nada. Hermoso en todos los apartados, espectacular juego y mas que sobresaliente en todo. El 9 únicamente es porque hay ciertas muertes que son realmente imposibles de sacar para poder desbloquear el verdadero final más que probar nombres al azar y considero que eso pierde todo lo que el juego inculca al pasar de las horas. OBRA MAESTRA DE LAS AVENTURAS GRÁFICAS MODERNAS