Lucas Pope, best known for his amazingly gloomy bureaucracy simulator Papers, Please, has finally announced a release date for his next project – Return of the Obra Dinn.
Well, maybe “release date” is a bit generous. It’s more like a release window. According to a tweet by Pope, Return of the Obra Dinn should be finished “sometime this fall.”
In case you’re not familiar with Pope’s new project, this black-and-white adventure is about the Obra Dinn, a merchant ship that disappeared In 1802. Five years later, the ship suddenly appears in the port at Falmouth, England, with the crew missing.
You are an insurance adjuster for the East India Company’s London Office, tasked with solving the mystery of the Obra Dinn and its crew. It’s up to you to piece together what happened, and what fate befell each of the 51 crew members (and how much will it cost the company).
Playing an insurance adjuster might not sound very glamorous or exciting, but so does playing an immigration inspector in a fictional Eastern European country, and yet Lucas Pope managed to make it so in Papers, Please.
In Return of the Obra Dinn, you’ll explore the ship, discover the corpses of the crew and watch their last few seconds of life through a flashback. During those flashbacks, you’ll need to figure out who the person died, and who was involved in his death. There’s a lot of exploration, investigation, and deduction in the game, so if you love a good mystery, this one is probably for you.
The art style is also unique. It’s inspired by the 1-bit graphics on old Mac computers, something you don’t see today.
You can download a demo of a very early build through the game’s official website, or visit the Steam page to add it to your wishlist or just follow its progression.
Return of the Obra Dinn is coming to PC this fall.
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