Return of the Obra Dinn

[toasty]

Is anyone else playing this point and click puzzle adventure from the maker of Papers Please?

I saw it at 91% on Metacritic, so downloaded it from Steam to play on the Mac (also on PC).

The premise is you find a ghost ship that had 60 people on board and you have to work out what happened to each of them using your watch which lets you view the crew's deaths at the time.

The 1 bit graphics take a while to get used to but the gameplay is really good and really makes you think.

[toasty]

I absolutely loved this game and have played through twice now (a year apart so I'd forgotten most of the clues).

I'll give some tips but will add spoiler tags so you don't need to get them all at once.

Watch, listen and make notes on each scene.

Keep a log on paper, each chapter is an hour on the clock, each part of those is five minutes. You'll need to get victim, cause of death and killer for each section.
Refer back to the group picture as groups tend to stay together. i.e. races, officers, mates etc.
Refer to the manifest, non-italics records are confirmed
Accents/nationalities can identify people
Bed numbers link up with the passenger number in the manifest
Uniforms can identify people
Languages can identify people
If you can't identify a person in one scene, go back 5 minutes to the previous scene and see if they are there.
If you've got the killer but no weapon, go back 5 minutes to the previous scene and see if they have a weapon there.
Not everyone dies
It's not possible to finish all clues on the first run. get in the rowing boat and travel back for more clues

Persevere as the genius of the game is how well it all links together. It gets easier as you start to make progress, it'll make sense in the end.

Edited by toasty on Tuesday 5th January 16:03

Edited by toasty on Tuesday 5th January 16:13

[toasty]

...and they're not too friendly.

I hope you're enjoying it a bit more now. It can be frustrating at times but it'd be boring if it was too easy.

[toasty]

dibbers006 said:

Tracking people's movements through the layout map somehow gave me that Eureka! moment where tracing the path of someone through time made sense.

I'm whipping back and forth through chapters now following each person's breadcrumbs.

It'd be much easier if everyone spoke like they did in Resident Evil though...

'Jill, here's a lockpick. It might be handy if you, the Master of Unlocking, take it with you.'

'I hope this is not CHRIS’ blood!'