This game is an absolute treat. If you haven't heard of it, because not many people have, it's a game by the creator of Papers Please where you investigate the mystery of the Obra Dinn, an East India Company ship where all hands were lost at sea. You have a list of the crew, a few photos, and have to piece together who is who and how they died by traveling back to the moment of their death using a magical watch. Since people don't usually shout their names, what killed them, and who all the observers are from left to right, you have to use everything from uniforms to marks on the wall to make your deductions. The amount of clues and the cleverness of their placement is jaw dropping, and even minor crew members usually a solid clue to go off. The problem is it's "usually" instead of "always". While I didn't have to check a guide, I tallied up my solutions and only 3/4ths were done with direct deduction, and the rest were "I know your position or your race, and I'm sure of a few other people, so I'll just swap the information around until the game clicks into place". The game won't let you guess everyone, as you need to solve three at a time for the entries to lock into your solution notebook, but it's also loose enough to suggest the game is fully aware that some clues are way too hidden away and a couple characters are too ambiguous to be decisive until the end. The game's pacing certainly doesn't help, as you're forced to experience every memory before you're able to freely investigate. The other black mark on the game is its interface, presented as a book you're writing notes in. It's such a clunky way to navigate information that it feels like you're solving a rubik's cube with your elbows, and it took me a couple hours before I really understood how to navigate it. Even with the issues though, I love this game so much. It trusts players to be smart to a very gratifying degree, and I felt genuinely accomplished when I sorted out the mystery of the ship and each individual crewman. Absolutely play this game if you're even a little interested. It took me 7 hours to finish and it was so gripping I did it in one day. Really. Play it.

Reviewed on Jan 03, 2021


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