Return of the Obra Dinn is a 2018 adventure and puzzle video game created by Lucas Pope and made available by 3909 LLC. It was Pope’s second game sold to the public, following Papers, Please from 2013. The game was first released for macOS and Windows, and later made available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Return of the Obra Dinn was praised for its gameplay, art style, and story. It won several awards, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
The game is set in 1807. The player takes the role of an unnamed investigator working for the East India Company. The Obra Dinn, a merchant ship that disappeared five years earlier, has reappeared near the coast of England with no survivors. The player is sent to the ship to examine it, find out what happened during the voyage, and determine what happened to the 60 people who were on board. The player must provide the cause of death for those who died or the likely location of those still alive. Investigation is done using a "Memento Mortem," a pocket watch that shows how a death occurred. The game is played from the player’s perspective and uses a black-and-white graphical style inspired by early Macintosh computer games.
Return of the Obra Dinn was first released on macOS and Windows on October 18, 2018. Critics gave the game mostly positive reviews, praising its story, puzzles, and creativity. It was compared to a similar game called Her Story (2015). Many outlets listed it as one of the best video games of 2018 and later called it one of the greatest games ever made.
Gameplay
The Obra Dinn, protected by the East India Company, disappeared in 1803 while traveling around the Cape of Good Hope. It was later found again, but all sixty passengers and crew were either dead or missing. The player’s goal is to discover what happened to each person on the ship, including their names, how they died, who or what caused their death, and where they might be if still alive.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a large puzzle game played from the player’s perspective. The game lets the player explore the ship, using a black and white pixelated style that looks like early computer graphics. To track progress, the player receives a logbook with drawings of all the crew members, a list of their names, and a map of the ship. They also get a tool called the Memento Mortem, a pocket watch that can be used on a dead body to hear the events of the final moments before death. This allows the player to see the moment of death frozen in time, helping them identify who was present, examine other areas of the ship, and note details. These clues help connect crew members’ faces to their names and roles. While exploring a death scene, the player can use the watch again to examine other corpses in the vision.
As the player finds each death, the logbook automatically records basic details. The player’s task is to write the names of the people present and describe the cause of their deaths. Names are discovered 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 multiple possible answers. The player can update their logbook as they learn more, but correct answers are confirmed in groups of three, except for the final six deaths, which are checked in pairs until near the end of the game. At that point, the player must correctly record the names and causes of death for fifty-eight of the sixty people who were on the ship.
Plot
The Obra Dinn, a ship commanded by Captain Robert Witterel, leaves Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1802 with 52 crew members 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 along with 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 ship is found near England, but all aboard are dead or missing. The East India Company sends a new chief inspector to investigate the events. The inspector receives a copy of the ship’s logbook, drawings of the passengers and crew, and the Memento Mortem—a magical pocket watch—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 from pneumonia. As the ship passes the Canary Islands, Pasqua discovers the second mate, Edward Nichols, attempting 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 traitors 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. He is fatally shot by the surviving Formosan guard as he approaches. The mermaids, who also carry shells, attack and kill several crew members before being locked in the lazarette, a section of the ship. Witterel’s steward, Fillip Dahl, kills a seaman and claims the mermaids are cursed. He 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 retrieves a shell from the chest before dying from 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 crew returns 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 and sends it into the locked lazarette. He shoots the monkey and uses the rope to retrieve its paw, planning to use the Mortem on it later. Evans and his group escape in a jollyboat, leaving the Obra Dinn with only four crew members, including Witterel. The other three mutiny to find the shells but are killed by Witterel, who claims he threw them into the sea. Witterel later commits suicide near his wife’s body.
The inspector records the fates of 58 of the 60 people on the ship before a storm sinks the Obra Dinn. The inspector writes an insurance report, compensating or fining the estates of lost crew members 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 and the monkey’s paw back to the inspector, along with a letter explaining that Evans, who had died from illness, wanted the inspector to complete the book as a sign of gratitude. The inspector uses the Mortem on the monkey’s paw to determine the final two fates, finishing the story of the Obra Dinn.
Jane 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 that Evans regretted trusting the inspector. If 30–57 fates were determined, Bird says Evans appreciated the inspector’s effort.
Development
Lucas Pope, an American video game designer, became interested in "1-bit" graphics used in early Macintosh games. After creating his previous game, Papers, Please, he wanted to use the simple, vintage-style look in a new experimental game. This led him to build a game engine that allowed players to move in a 3D space, displayed in an old-fashioned style. Pope wanted the game to be easy to see from all angles, which made some parts of the design challenging. He noticed that while the 1-bit graphics worked well in a window on the screen, they caused motion sickness when viewed at full screen. To fix this, he adjusted the game’s rendering to create a motion blur effect. At one point, Pope considered using a cathode ray tube style, but he decided against it.
Once the visual style was ready, Pope worked backward to decide what story to tell. His first idea was a game where the player would experience the same death repeatedly, then go back in time to change events. However, this idea was too difficult to make. Instead, he changed the plan and used freeze-frame flashbacks to show moments of death and tell a story.
Creating the game’s story took the longest time. Pope shared early details about Return of the Obra Dinn in 2014 while finishing Papers, Please, planning to release it the next year. However, it took four more years to complete. In 2016, he released a limited demo at a game conference with six story events for players to solve. The feedback was positive, so he expanded the game’s story more than expected. To organize the story, Pope made spreadsheets to track characters and their fates, ensuring players could follow the connections between events. This led to writing dialogue for some scenes and hiring local voice actors who could copy the accents of the time period.
With a more complete story, Pope created a new demo for PAX Australia in 2016, adding thirteen new characters. However, the deaths were shown out of order, confusing players. Pope realized this problem would get worse with more characters. He solved it by using ten key events to divide the story into sections, 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 like the real East India Company did.
Pope said he was not worried about the game’s financial success because he still earned money from Papers, Please. He considered Obra Dinn a personal project and did not rush its development or focus on marketing. The game was released for macOS and Windows on October 17, 2018, by the Japanese studio 3909. Versions for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, made by Warp Digital, came out on October 18, 2019. Physical copies for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch were released in 2020 by Limited Run Games.
In an interview with YouTuber Cressup, Pope mentioned that Obra Dinn was originally meant to be the first game in a series. The ending would have given a hint about future adventures if players completed the game fully. However, the long development time made him decide to work on other projects instead of continuing the series.
Reception
"Return of the Obra Dinn" received mostly positive reviews, according to Metacritic, a website that collects game reviews. Polygon’s Colin Campbell recommended the game, stating that it uses mystery game elements to create complex and interesting stories that are both confusing and enjoyable. He called it not only a great game but also the result of strong creativity. Patrick Hancock from Destructoid said the game was an excellent follow-up to "Papers, Please," and that he kept thinking about it even after finishing. Javy Gwaltney from Game Informer praised the game’s art style as visually striking and appreciated the careful planning of the game’s structure. However, he noted that the ending did not match the quality of the rest of the game.
Reviewers highlighted the game’s uniqueness. Andreas Inderwildi from Rock Paper Shotgun said the game involved more than just solving puzzles, as it also required understanding how people act in emergencies. Christian Donlan from Eurogamer compared the game’s visual style to Sudoku, saying it felt unlike any other game. Katherine Cross from Gamasutra praised the game’s simple design and how the characters seemed real. Tom Marks from IGN said the game felt lively despite using still images to tell the story. David Wildgoose from GameSpot called the game’s book-style interface a clever design that lets players solve problems on their own.
Some reviewers compared "Return of the Obra Dinn" to "Her Story," another mystery game where players piece together events from video clips. Colin Campbell said both games made him want to write down notes, while Andrew Webster from The Verge noted that both games help players find clarity in confusing situations. He added that players could enjoy the game by solving its mysteries or simply by experiencing its dark and surprising story.
Joshua Dinges from Black Gate said the game is well-made but has limited replay value. However, he said the low price makes it worth playing once. Many video game publications, including Edge, Polygon, USGamer, GameSpot, The Nerdist, The Daily Telegraph, The New Yorker, and The Escapist, listed "Return of the Obra Dinn" as one of the best games of 2018. A 2023 poll by GQ named it among the greatest games of all time.