Return of the Obra Dinn is a stunningly clever thing and one of the best puzzle games on PC. I won’t go into specifics about what befell the crew, because getting to the root of that is the core of the game, but I can say that this has to be the unluckiest merchant ship in the world, with so much chaos and calamity occurring on-board it’s amazing the thing is still floating. The game paints a vivid picture of life aboard the Obra Dinn, and with each chapter-unlocked by exploring and locating more bodies-a larger story begins to take shape. But knowing those moments of clarity were waiting to emerge kept me playing, even as the mind-map I was creating of the crew grew increasingly massive and unwieldy. A lot of my time with Return of the Obra Dinn was spent wandering the ship, tugging at loose threads, and seemingly getting nowhere. These moments of success are rare, but all the more satisfying for it. And in a brilliant Sherlock-style flurry you’ll snap more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together and make the image a little clearer. A moment from a previously-visited death scene that suddenly resonates with the current one. You’ll be fumbling around in the lower decks, bouncing your head off the oak hull, when something slides into place in your mind. But it also left me feeling at a loss sometimes, with no indication that I was hot or cold with my (sometimes way off the mark) theories.īut then something hits you. This stops you brute-forcing your way through the game, randomly selecting names for each crew member from the manifest in the hope one sticks. Whenever you make three accurate deductions, the notebook etches your conclusions-name, cause of death, and in some cases their killer-into the book permanently. Here you can cross-reference your deductions with a manifest outlining the roles and nationalities of the crew, an illustration of them all gathered on the deck, and a glossary that explains some of the obscure, archaic nautical terms you’ll have to tangle with: often important clues to who a person is. Things are rarely that simple in this game.Īs well as the watch you have a notebook at your disposal. It’s safe to assume the guy in the workshop sawing a plank of wood is the carpenter, for example.

Or you’ll have to look at where a person is on the ship, or what they’re doing, to establish their identity. In some death scenes there’s a short snippet of dialogue, and you might hear a name being called out.

There are a few ways to find out who someone is.

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