https://obradinn.com/
Windows, Mac, XBox1, PS4, Switch
I remember reading C.S. Lewis'
Voyage of the Dawn Treader when I was eight or nine, and being fascinated with the illustration of a ship that was found inside the novel. It had labels indicating different parts of the boat. And it was drawn with black ink cross-hatches as though stamped to the page from a woodcut, rather than a 1970's offset press. Here's what it looked like:
https://narnia.fandom.com/wiki/Dawn_Treader?file=The_dawn_treader_1k.jpg
The style of
Obra Dinn is similar - deliberately antique, dark brown and white, dithered to show shading. It seems a shame to deconstruct it as shader code on a video card. Much like the 8-year-old me, I'd rather imagine I'm being granted vision into a murky past.
The visuals don't so much impress as charm. They are thematically perfect and oh-so-carefully constructed to convey information. The game also has an excellent soundtrack that relies on orchestral instruments and variations on leitmotifs. There's not a shred of camp in the music - it's a proper, high-drama soundtrack. I was happy to find it on Spotify.
The gameplay itself is solely deduction. You'll spend your time in one of three modes - walking through an ocean ship empty of all inhabitants (unless you count corpses), viewing frozen-in-time memories, and flipping through the pages of a lengthy book that tracks your Rumsfeldian knowns and unknowns. There are clues in all of these places.
The real accomplishment in the gameplay is that it works both as a story and a deductive puzzle, with the two intermeshed seamlessly. If you hear a voice in a recording that has a Scottish accent, you can scan through the crew manifest and maybe find one unguessed identity of someone from Scotland.
If you've played the Everett Kaser games or the classic boardgame
Clue, you understand the basic format of a deductive reasoning game: Use clues to narrow down possibilities until you've guessed the solution state. A guess is made along multiple dimensions, e.g. for
Clue the location, weapon, and murderer. In
Obra Dinn, you are guessing for each person on the boat, their identity and fate. But you aren't told the kind of intermediate guesses you'll need to make. E.g. If you see a man washing dishes, is he the chef's steward? (fake example to avoid spoilers) Nearly anything you'd use for a guess in real life is appropriate to use in
Obra Dinn. And unlike real life, the game is designed to reward "
probably true"
guesses. E.g. a captain would probably not wash dishes and wear an apron, so you can safely rule him out as the identity of the dishwasher.
The game doesn't reset randomly to a new solution after you solve it. It's the same story and everyone has the same locked-in fate. That's sad because replaying it while you remember the correct guesses will spoil the fun. But the single solution gave the author, Lucas Pope, an ability to create a satisfying story that unfolds as you play.
-Erik
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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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