Return Of The Obra Dinn
About
In 1802, the merchant ship "Obra Dinn" set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea.
Early this morning of October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port with sails damaged and no visible crew. As insurance adjustor for the East India Company's London Office, find means to board the ship and recover the Crew Muster Roll book for assessment.
("Obra" is pronounced like "Cobra" without the C).
From the author:
Goals
I want to challenge myself so this'll be a very different game from anything I've done before, including Papers Please. There'll be less creativity with the gameplay and instead I want to experiment with the rendering, story, and a few technical features. Right now I have only a rough idea about the narrative. I'm hoping to capture a compelling mystery with suspense and twists in the limited space of an old merchant sailing ship. It won't be the typical "collect items and look for clues" structure. There's a slightly cool gameplay hook but I won't go into details on that until much later.
Devlog
I'll try to keep this (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.0) devlog lively as I make progress. Because the gameplay itself is more standard, there probably won't be as many creative updates as the Papers Please devlog. I will post lots of pictures and builds as soon as I'm able. Things will likely also move slower than Papers Please did too, at least at the start. P,P still takes a good amount of my time so there's less chance for me to maintain a laser-like focus on one project like last time. The lower bound for finishing this game is around 3 months but realistically I think it'll take me around half a year. My Maya skills are pretty rusty so I expect the modeling/animation to take the most time.
1-bit Rendering
My first computer was a Mac Plus. I've always had a nostalgia-softened spot in my heart for 1-bit graphics. I'd like to capture the detailed black & white look of old Mac games in a realtime 1st person game. I plan to push it grittier and less cartoon-like than those old games; the hard part will be keeping everything legible without it becoming an unreadable mess of dithered pixels. One interesting problem with 1-bit rendering is that it doesn't scale well for images and it compresses to video like shit - so YouTube stuff may look really poor. We'll see how it goes.
Unity 3D
I'm gonna use Unity for this one. I fell in love with Haxe/OpenFL on my last project but unfortunately the 3D situation is not that great there yet. Also, it's time to finally see why 90% of the indie scene is using Unity. I have a good amount of experience with 3D games and the few days I've played around with Unity so far have been pretty productive. The animated title screen scene up there (with post-processing shaders and all) was created in one day. I now have unrealistically high hopes.
System requirements for Nintendo Switch
System requirements for PlayStation 4
System requirements for Xbox One
System requirements for PC
- OS: Windows 7 or better
- Processor: 2 GHz Intel i5 or better
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Discrete GPU
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires 720p or higher output resolution
System requirements for macOS
- OS: macOS Sierra
- Processor: 2 GHz Intel i5 or better
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Discrete GPU
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires 720p or higher output resolution
Where to buy
Top contributors
Return Of The Obra Dinn reviews and comments
That said, I do have a few criticisms for you to keep in mind should you play it:
1) The game can be hard to SEE at times. Like most of the deaths are pretty easy to figure out, but there were a few times when I couldn't decipher what was happening. If you have low vision, keep that in mind.
2) The gameplay can get really repetitive. The gameplay mechanic is basically this: You find a corpse (using the book as a guide in a few cases), flip out your pocketwatch, travel back in time to their death, wait for the scene to end, press the action button to be led to another corpse, repeat.
3) You will either need a guide to complete the game or have a LOT of patience as it's slow paced and difficult.
4) Getting an 100% achievement rate can be annoying as one achievement is basically a joke.
This is a neat game, but it's not for everyone. If you enjoy story-rich games and taking your time, this is definitely checking out, but if the above criticisms seem like they might be a problem, watch a playthrough first and see if this is something you'd like.
- Setting is unique, tightly controlled, and exquisitely detailed. Don't let the art style fool you.
- Things aren't explained for you—attention must be paid to the world. This really sets the game apart as an experience.
Microsoft from Deutsch
Microsoft from Deutsch
Microsoft from Deutsch