Return Of The Obra Dinn (Nintendo Switch) Review
Searching for clues aboard a ship that's come back from a disastrous journey with nothing but a notebook and magic pocket watch. In this respect Return of the Obra Dinn plays out like a convoluted version of Guess Who?, whereby implicit logic and stereotyping must be applied to solve the overall puzzle. The Obra Dinn, a merchant ship, left a port in London in 1802. If the prospect of having to do all of the detective work yourself doesn't turn you off, then Return of the Orba Dinn is right up your alley.
And unlike those two studio mystery titles that I mentioned before, Return of the Obra Dinn made me feel like I was truly in control of an investigation, and I felt the freedom to approach it from different angles rather than selecting something from a multiple choice question.
But a crew manifest is handed to players, which shows the names, ship rank, and ethnicity, the deceased must tally with the names in the manifest for a proper audit. Return of the Obra Dinn is the most engrossing puzzler on PlayStation 4 since The Witness Putting you in the shoes of an investigator, you're sent aboard the titular ship, let's play which has reappeared after being assumed lost five years earlier.
The goal is quite simple - log the names and cause of death for each of the 60 people aboard the ship. Some mysteries are significantly more difficult than others, but Return of the Obra Dinn gives you the right amount of information to go about this, at least for the most part.
This isn't much of an issue because of how incredible the soundtrack is for the game, but I wish there were some more songs to listen to. One thing that got annoying much faster however is an echo that happens when you open the book while the music plays.
It becomes more of a puzzle than a mystery, and logging three correct fates†in the book will have them all confirmed and give a satisfying music jingle. This is why Return of the Obra Dinn†has been on my radar (and sonar, of course) for quite some time now.