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Recent Playing: Return of the Obra Dinn
Dec. 19th, 2024 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7This game I first heard about as a stub article in an issue of Game Informer (RIP Game Informer, you are missed and your corporate overlords are shit) back in 2018 and I've heard positive murmurs about since, but it took me a long time to commit to getting it, in part because I was put off by the monochrome graphics. I can say now that it was definitely the right choice to get it! The Steam page description is:
In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea.
Early this morning of October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port at Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As insurance investigator for the East India Company's London Office, dispatch immediately to Falmouth, find means to board the ship, and prepare an assessment of damages.
It took me two tries to get into this game, because for whatever reason during my first attempt back in May, I found it too confusing to figure out what I was supposed to be doing to give the game another shot, and I only picked it up again this month because I hate having games in my library I've paid for and not played.
I am so glad I gave this game another chance!
Return of the Obra Dinn absolutely deserves the praise it's gotten. With very limited resources--the monochrome palette, the ship being the setting of the entire game, the limited information available--it crafts a truly captivating detective story. You start from the end and work your way back to the beginning of the Obra Dinn's story, and it keeps you hooked the entire time wondering how the crew and ship got to this place.
Your goal, as the insurance agent, is to correctly note the identity and fate of each crew member. You have the crew manifest and some sketches of "life aboard" drawn by an artist on the ship, and as you use your time-traveling pocketwatch to view a select few scenes from the Obra Dinn's voyage, your job is to match name to face and deduce what became of them.
The soundtrack works very well too, which is key because you will be revisiting these scenes quite a lot. Even near the end of the game I was still noticing details I had missed a dozen times before. At times you are guessing about the identity of the characters, but I
almost always felt that they were at least educated guesses--that I had been given enough information to narrow things down.
Nor are you going to have good luck trying to just brute force your way through the investigation--there are sixty fates to solve, and the game only confirms your success per every 3 identities and fates, so wild guessing is not really a viable option, which made it a better game, to me.
This was definitely a game that once I was into it, I was hooked. The closer I got to solving all of the ship's fates, the more invested I was, and I never lost that sense of triumph every time the game confirmed I had gotten another three fates correct.
Marvelously well-done game, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea.
Early this morning of October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port at Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As insurance investigator for the East India Company's London Office, dispatch immediately to Falmouth, find means to board the ship, and prepare an assessment of damages.
It took me two tries to get into this game, because for whatever reason during my first attempt back in May, I found it too confusing to figure out what I was supposed to be doing to give the game another shot, and I only picked it up again this month because I hate having games in my library I've paid for and not played.
I am so glad I gave this game another chance!
Return of the Obra Dinn absolutely deserves the praise it's gotten. With very limited resources--the monochrome palette, the ship being the setting of the entire game, the limited information available--it crafts a truly captivating detective story. You start from the end and work your way back to the beginning of the Obra Dinn's story, and it keeps you hooked the entire time wondering how the crew and ship got to this place.
Your goal, as the insurance agent, is to correctly note the identity and fate of each crew member. You have the crew manifest and some sketches of "life aboard" drawn by an artist on the ship, and as you use your time-traveling pocketwatch to view a select few scenes from the Obra Dinn's voyage, your job is to match name to face and deduce what became of them.
The soundtrack works very well too, which is key because you will be revisiting these scenes quite a lot. Even near the end of the game I was still noticing details I had missed a dozen times before. At times you are guessing about the identity of the characters, but I
almost always felt that they were at least educated guesses--that I had been given enough information to narrow things down.
Nor are you going to have good luck trying to just brute force your way through the investigation--there are sixty fates to solve, and the game only confirms your success per every 3 identities and fates, so wild guessing is not really a viable option, which made it a better game, to me.
This was definitely a game that once I was into it, I was hooked. The closer I got to solving all of the ship's fates, the more invested I was, and I never lost that sense of triumph every time the game confirmed I had gotten another three fates correct.
Marvelously well-done game, I thoroughly enjoyed it!