Lucas Pope, most well-known as the creator of the award-winning Papers, Please, has released a very early Windows and Mac demo of his first-person mystery game called Return of the Obra Dinn.
It’s the morning of October 14th 1808, and the ship Obra Dinn has drifted into port with no sails and no visible crew on board. It had left London six months earlier with 200 tons of trade goods, but never reached its destination, causing it to be declared lost at sea.
You play an insurance adjustor for the East India Trading Company and must board the Obra Dinn in order to investigate what happened to it and the crew on board. Your first task is to find the Crew Muster Roll book so that it can be assessed.
Obviously, as this is an early demo, you shouldn’t expect too much from it, but you are able to get a glimpse of what the game’s main mechanic and what you’ll be spending your time doing.
Before that, though, you get a brief conversation with the person who transports you to the ship, who warns that it may be cursed. They then leave to explore the top deck of the Obra Dinn, and then give you a box with pocket watch inscribed with a skull.
Initially, you’ll find a skeleton stripped of flesh and an axe lying near it that’ll provoke some questions. There are also some crew rooms for you to explore. There is more, but I won’t spoil it for you. Other than that, you can admire the 1-bit rendering as well as the eeriness of the creaking ship.
Keep up with the progress of Return of the Obra Dinn on its development log.
