Lost At Sea

Discover the fate of a stricken merchant ship in supremely clever maritime mystery Return Of The Obra Dinn.

- Andy Kelly

The merchant vessel Obra Dinn drifts its way into port, crewless and abandoned, having disappeared some years earlier. You, an insurance investigator, climb aboard the derelict sailing ship, and begin to try and make sense of what happened to the crew—with a little help from a magical pocket watch.

This curious artefact lets you visit the moments before a person’s death in an attempt to establish what happened to them. But with the fates of 60 sailors to determine, this is no easy task—especially as Return of the Obra Dinn, a few lean tutorials aside, steadfastly refuses to hold your hand.

This is a first-person puzzle game from Lucas Pope, creator of Papers, Please. It’s rendered with a bold art style that recalls the dithered visuals of Macintosh adventure games. But Obra Dinn is no less atmospheric for it. In fact, the sense of place created by its hard lines and limited palette is quite remarkable.

You’ll find bones of the former crew, and using the watch near them will whisk you away to a detailed vignette of the seconds before they died—be it an unfortunate accident, a brutal murder or something weirder.