Return of the Obra
Dinn Review

Return of the Obra Dinn (2019) is a narrative puzzle game where you play a shipping company agent assessing what happened on board a fictional East India Company ship where all the passengers have mysteriously died. Exploring the ship, you can revisit the moment of death for each body in order to identify each of the 60 crew members and how they died. It’s an imposing challenge that must be teased apart with patience, deductive reasoning, attention to detail and some guesswork.

Rather than leading you by the hand to the answers, the game trusts its players to work things out themselves. It’s not easy, but arriving at a solution thanks to perseverance is hugely satisfying.

Although there is violence in the game, it's black-and-white visuals and static scenes make this more palatable than you’d think. If you have someone in the family who loves solving puzzles or won’t stop until the crossword is finished, this is a great game to play with them. Like an Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie novel, the joy comes from knitting together the clues and making instinctive leaps of deduction.

One family I know played this over one long evening, into the night, treating it like a murder mystery party, complete with themed food and beverages. One of the players took it upon themselves to take notes while together they worked through the evidence of each death to discover what happened on board the ship.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Return of the Obra Dinn 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 4 months ago.