Return of the Obra Dinn is a 2018 adventure and puzzle video game created by Lucas Pope and published by 3909 LLC. It was Pope’s second commercial game, following Papers, Please from 2013. The game first released for macOS and Windows on October 18, 2018, and later was made available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Return of the Obra Dinn received praise for its gameplay, art style, and story. It won awards, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
The game is set in 1807. Players take the role of an unnamed investigator for the East India Company. The Obra Dinn, a merchant ship that disappeared five years earlier, has returned near the coast of England with no survivors. The player’s task is to examine the ship, piece together what happened during the voyage, and determine the fates of the 60 people who were on board. This includes identifying the cause of death for those who died or finding where the living might be. Players use a device called the “Memento Mortem,” a pocket watch that shows how a death occurred. The game is played from a first-person perspective and uses a simple black-and-white graphical style inspired by early Macintosh computer games.
Return of the Obra Dinn received mostly positive reviews from critics. They praised its story, puzzles, and creativity, and compared it favorably to Her Story (2015). Many outlets listed it as one of the best video games of 2018 and later called it one of the greatest video games of all time.
Gameplay
The Obra Dinn, protected by the East India Company, disappeared in 1803 while sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. It later reappeared with all sixty passengers and crew either dead or missing. The player’s job is to find out what happened to everyone on the ship, including their names, how they died, who or what caused their deaths, and where they might be if they are still alive.
Return of the Obra Dinn is like solving a large puzzle. The game is played as a first-person adventure, letting the player explore the Obra Dinn using a black and white pixelated style that looks like early computer games. To track progress, the player receives a logbook that includes drawings of all the crew members, a list of their names, and a map of the ship. They also get a pocket watch called the Memento Mortem, which can be used on a corpse to hear events that happened just before death and to see the moment of death frozen in time. This helps the player see who was present, explore other rooms or decks, and note details at the scene. These tools help connect crew members’ faces to their names and roles. While exploring a death scene, the player can use the pocket watch again to examine the fates of other corpses in the vision.
As the player discovers each death, the logbook automatically adds basic details. The player’s task is to name the people present and accurately describe how they died. Names are found through small clues, logical thinking, and narrowing down possibilities as the game progresses. Causes of death are chosen from a list, and some deaths allow more than one answer. The player can update the logbook as they learn more, but correct answers are only confirmed in groups of three, except for the last six deaths, which are confirmed in pairs until near the end. At that point, the player must correctly record the names and causes of death for fifty-eight of the sixty people who were on board.
Plot
The Obra Dinn, a ship under the command of Captain Robert Witterel, leaves Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1802 with 52 crewmen and 8 passengers heading to the Orient. Among the passengers are Witterel’s wife, Abigail; musician Nunzio Pasqua; wealthy Englishwoman Jane Bird; and two Formosan nobles and their guards, who are transporting a valuable chest. The ship fails to meet its scheduled stop at the Cape of Good Hope and is declared lost. Five years later, the vessel is found near England, but all aboard are dead or missing. The East India Company sends a new chief inspector to investigate the incident. The inspector receives a copy of the ship’s logbook, drawings of the passengers and crew, and a magical pocket watch called the Memento Mortem from the ship’s surgeon, Henry Evans, who lives in Morocco. The Mortem allows the user to see the exact moment of a person’s death when used on a corpse or its remains.
Early in the voyage, a seaman and a stowaway are crushed by unsecured cargo, and two seamen die of pneumonia. As the ship passes the Canary Islands, Pasqua discovers the second mate, Edward Nichols, trying to steal the Formosans’ chest. Nichols kills Pasqua and falsely accuses one of the Formosan guards. Witterel, following Company rules, executes the guard with a firing squad. Nichols and a group of defectors steal the chest, abduct the Formosan nobles, and escape in the ship’s two jollyboats. Three mermaids attack and kill most of the group. One noble uses a magical shell from the chest to stun the mermaids but dies in the process. Nichols, the only survivor, captures the mermaids and returns to the ship with the chest but is shot dead by the surviving Formosan guard. The mermaids, who carry their own shells, attack and kill several crew members before being locked in the lazarette. Witterel’s steward, Fillip Dahl, kills a seaman, claims the mermaids are cursed, and is locked in the lazarette with the mermaids and the chest.
Captain Witterel orders the ship to return to England. The mermaids summon a storm and giant spider crabs ridden by mermen to rescue them. The mermen and their mounts are killed, but the crew suffers heavy losses. The mermaids then summon a kraken, which kills Abigail and many crew members and damages the ship. In the lazarette, Dahl takes a shell from the chest but is killed by a quicksilver-like substance inside. Witterel kills two mermaids before the third sends the kraken away. Later, the third mate, Martin Perrott, and others enter the lazarette to free the last mermaid. The mermaid stabs Perrott, who asks her to guide the ship home in exchange for her freedom. The others return the shell to the mermaid before releasing her into the sea.
Evans decides to abandon the ship with three others, including Jane Bird, and heads to Africa. Before leaving, Evans ties a rope to his monkey’s wrist, sends it into the lazarette, shoots it dead, and uses the rope to retrieve its paw. Evans and his group escape in a jollyboat. A series of fights reduces the ship’s crew to four, including Witterel. The other three mutiny, seeking the shells, but Witterel claims he threw them into the sea and kills the mutineers. Witterel, now the only survivor, commits suicide near his wife’s body.
The inspector records the fates of 58 of the 60 people aboard and leaves before a storm sinks the ship. The inspector writes an insurance report, compensating or fining the estates of lost crewmen and passengers based on their actions, and sends the logbook back to Evans. A year later, Jane Bird, one of the four survivors in Morocco, sends the logbook, the monkey’s paw, and a letter explaining that Evans, who died of illness, requested the inspector be given the means to complete the book as a gesture of gratitude. The inspector uses the Mortem on the monkey’s paw to determine what happened in the lazarette and record the final two fates, completing the story of the Obra Dinn.
Bird reports Evans’s death in all endings but only sends the book and the monkey’s paw if the inspector determined 58 fates. If the inspector recorded fewer than 30 fates, Bird states Evans regretted trusting the inspector. If 30–57 fates were determined, Bird says Evans appreciated the inspector’s effort.
Development
Over the course of his career, American video game designer Lucas Pope developed an interest in "1-bit" graphics, which are simple black and white images used in early Macintosh games. After creating his previous game, Papers, Please, Pope wanted to use this style in a new experimental game. He designed a game engine that allowed players to move in a three-dimensional space, displayed in a vintage style. Pope aimed to make the game visually clear from most angles, which presented challenges in how the game was rendered. He noticed that while 1-bit graphics worked well in on-screen windows, they caused motion sickness when viewed at full screen resolution. To address this, he modified the rendering routines to create a motion blur effect for the dithering style. At one point, Pope considered using a cathode ray tube render effect, but he decided against it.
Once the visual style was established, Pope worked backward to decide what story to tell. His initial idea involved a player character who repeatedly died, with the player viewing the events of each death from the character’s corpse and then returning to one minute before the death to change the environment. However, this idea proved technically difficult, so Pope instead created a story using freeze-frame flashbacks to depict moments of death.
Developing the game’s narrative took the longest time. Pope shared early details about Return of the Obra Dinn in 2014 while finishing Papers, Please, expecting it to release the next year. Instead, it took four more years. In 2016, he released a limited demo for the Game Developers Conference with only six fates for the player to discover. Positive feedback led him to expand the story more than he initially planned. To organize the characters and their fates, Pope created spreadsheets to track connections and ensure players could follow the story logically. This process included writing dialog for scenes and hiring local voice actors who could mimic accents from the time period.
With a more complete story, Pope created a new demo for PAX Australia in November 2016, adding thirteen new characters. However, unlike the first demo, the deaths were shown out of order, confusing players about how to progress. Pope realized this confusion would grow with the full cast of characters. He solved this by using ten key events in the story as triggers for deaths, dividing the narrative into sections and making the plot easier to follow. This led to the creation of a logbook, which acted as a timeline for the game and recorded the ship’s crew in a way similar to the real East India Company.
Pope stated he was not concerned about the game’s financial success because he still earned income from Papers, Please. He viewed Return of the Obra Dinn as a personal project and avoided setting deadlines or focusing on marketing. The game was released for macOS and Windows on October 17, 2018, published by the Japanese studio 3909. Versions for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, ported by Warp Digital, were released on October 18, 2019. Physical copies for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch were later released by Limited Run Games in 2020.
In an interview with YouTuber Cressup, Pope mentioned that the game was originally intended to be part of a series. Completing Return of the Obra Dinn 100% would have revealed clues about future games in the series. However, the long development time led Pope to move on to other projects instead of continuing the series.
Reception
Return of the Obra Dinn received mostly positive reviews, according to Metacritic, a website that collects and summarizes game reviews. Polygon's Colin Campbell recommended the game, saying it uses mystery game traditions to create complex and colorful stories that are both confusing and enjoyable. He called it not just a great game but the result of a highly creative mind. Patrick Hancock of Destructoid said the game was an excellent follow-up to Papers, Please, and that he kept thinking about it even after finishing it. Javy Gwaltney of Game Informer praised the game's visual style and the careful planning behind its design. However, he was less satisfied with the ending, saying it did not match the thoughtful gameplay.
Reviewers praised the game for its uniqueness. Andreas Inderwildi of Rock Paper Shotgun said the game was not only about solving puzzles but also about understanding how people behave in emergencies. Christian Donlan of Eurogamer said the game's visual style made it feel unlike any other, comparing it to Sudoku. Katherine Cross of Gamasutra praised the game's simple design and said the characters felt real. Tom Marks of IGN said the game brought life to its story even though it used still images. David Wildgoose of GameSpot called the game's book-like interface a clever design that trusted players to solve puzzles on their own.
Some reviewers compared the game to Her Story, another mystery game where players piece together events from video clips. Colin Campbell said both games made him want to take notes, and Andrew Webster of The Verge said both games helped players find clarity in confusing situations. He also said players could enjoy the game in different ways, such as solving every mystery or simply experiencing its dark and surprising story.
In a review for Black Gate, Joshua Dinges said the game was well-made but had limited replay value. However, he said the low price was worth it for the enjoyable experience it offered.
Many video game publications named Return of the Obra Dinn as one of the best games of 2018, including Edge, Polygon, USGamer, GameSpot, The Nerdist, The Daily Telegraph, The New Yorker, and The Escapist. A 2023 poll by GQ listed Return of the Obra Dinn as one of the greatest games of all time.