Return of the Obra Dinn is a puzzle video game developed by Lucas Pope and published by 3909, a Japan-based studio led by American designer Lucas Pope. It was Pope's second commercial game, following 2013's Papers, Please, and was released for macOS and Microsoft Windows on October 18, 2018, and ports for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 18, 2019.
Return of the Obra Dinn is set aboard a fictional East India Company ghost ship in the early 1800s whose crew and passengers have all mysteriously died or disappeared, with the game's objective being to discover how. The player, as an agent of the shipping company assessing what happened, uses a combination of deductive reasoning and the use of a Memento Mortem stopwatch to return to the moment of a crew member's death to determine the identity of each of the sixty crew members, how they died and, if applicable, their killer. The game, played from the first-person view, uses a "1-bit" monochromatic graphical style inspired by games on early Macintosh computers.
Return of the Obra Dinn was praised for its gameplay, art style, and narrative. It was named as one of the best video games of 2018 by several publications, and also was nominated for and won several awards.
Gameplay
In Return of the Obra Dinn, the player takes the role of an insurance adjuster for the London office East India Company in 1807. The Obra Dinn, insured by the East India Company, went missing in 1803 as it was to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, but since washed up in port with all sixty passengers and crew dead or missing. The player is tasked to determine the fate of all of the passengers and crew, including their names, where and how they met their fate, if they were killed, who their killer was, and their location should they be alive.
The game is played out from a first-person view, allowing the player to explore the Obra Dinn, using a monochromatic dithering style that mimics approaches that games on early home computers like the Macintosh had used to simulate shading and color. To help complete the task, the player is given a log book that includes a drawing of all the crew members, the crew roster, and layouts of the ship. They are also given the "Memento Mortem", a pocket watch-like device that can be activated when the player encounters one of the corpses on the ship. The Memento Mortem plays back the audio of the moments before the person's death, and allows the player to explore the area around the frozen moment of death to identify who was present and other visual details. Once players have seen each moment, the log book automatically fills in some of the details of that event (such as the location, the visual identity of the crew members present at the event, and the dialog heard in the moments before death), allowing the player to cross reference this information with other information already learned. In some cases, the Memento Mortem will react following this process to reveal another death, guiding the player to where that corpse lays before repeating the investigation process. Certain sections of the ship are not available until the player has observed all the death moments in a certain area. The player can review all previously seen memories at any time to observe any new clues they might have missed following later investigation.
The game requires the player to search for clues to determine the fate of each crew member; fates are selected from a predefined list of verbs – because some of the deaths are visually ambiguous, the game allows for some leeway and accepts more than one solution. The game does not provide explicit clues for how each crew member died or towards their identity, requiring the player to narrow possibilities down by exclusion. The player can refine their guesses as they gain more information; the game is only over once the player has correctly identified the names and fates. When a player has properly established the names and reasons for death for any three, the game affirms this information to the player, locking those changes and effectively reducing the complexity of the puzzle.
Plot
When the Obra Dinn returns to its England port almost five years after going missing, the East India Company sends an insurance adjuster to determine what happened aboard the ship. Through the Memento Mortem and other clues, the adjuster works out the sequence of events since the ship's launch.
The Obra Dinn had launched with a number of passengers, including two royal Formosans and their guards carrying an exquisite treasure chest, which they claimed would help to repel dangers from the ocean. Initial calamity struck after launch, with one crew member killed by falling cargo, and two others taken by pneumonia. However, a small group of the crew saw the potential of stealing the Formosan chest, and as they neared the Canary Islands, they abducted the royal Formosans and the chest via rowboat. As they rowed away, three mermaids attacked the boats and killed several of the group. The mermaids' attack was quelled when a Formosan pulled a shell out of the chest, stunning the mermaids, but dying in the process. The remaining crew member returned to the Obra Dinn, along with the mermaids captured and the shells they held. As they were brought aboard, the mermaids attacked and killed more of the crew before they were subdued and locked in the lazarette.
The Obra Dinn circled around to return to England due to the number of tragedies and the mermaids they discovered. As they started their return, the mermaids caused a terrible storm to strike, and a pair of sea demons mounted on giant spider crabs boarded the ship with the intent to reach the lazarette, killing more of the crew before being put down. After dispelling the first assault, the ship was attacked by a kraken, killing more crewmen and the captain's wife. The captain went to the lazarette and threatened to kill all the mermaids in hopes of ending the attack. He executed two before the final one called off the kraken. The shells and the surviving mermaid were then tossed overboard, with the mermaid agreeing to send the ship back to England. The surviving passengers and some of the crew decided to abandon the Obra Dinn and set off for the western coast of Africa. The ship's surgeon, knowing that the East India Company will investigate the ship via the Memento Mortem, purposely killed a monkey in the lazarette and kept its paw before he left with the others. The surviving crew turned on the captain, wanting to reclaim the chest and shells as compensation for all their hardships, not knowing he had thrown them overboard. The captain killed the remaining crew, and then next to his wife's body, committed suicide.
Several years later, the insurance adjuster (the player character) learns of all the events by exploring the ship, except those that happened in the lazarette. On return to land, they mail the completed book to the specified address. A year later, the book is mailed back along with the monkey's paw, through which the adjuster uses the Memento Mortem to learn what happened in the lazarette and complete the story of the Obra Dinn.
