However, three mermaids ambushed the boats killing several of the group. However, a small group of the crew saw the potential of stealing the Formosan chest, and as they neared the Canary Islands, they abducted the royal Formosans and the chest via rowboat and fled. Initial calamity struck after launch, with one crew member killed by falling cargo, and two others taken by pneumonia. The Obra Dinn had launched with a number of passengers, including two royal Formosans and their guards carrying an exquisite treasure chest. With these and other clues, the inspector works out the sequence of events after the ship's launch. The inspector has received from Henry Evans, the ship's surgeon, a logbook and the Memento Mortem stopwatch.
The East India Company sends its Chief Inspector to determine what happened aboard the ship. Five years later, the Obra Dinn reappears off the coast of England with every hand either dead or missing. The ship fails to meet her rendezvous at the Cape of Good Hope, and is declared lost. The Obra Dinn, an East Indiaman trade ship, departs from Falmouth to the Orient in 1802 with 51 crewmen and 9 passengers. The player can revise their logbook as they gain more information, but to prevent guesswork, correct "fates" are validated only in sets of three. The causes of death are selected out of a catalogue, and some deaths will accept more than one solution. Naming the crew is done through small clues, inferences, and logical deduction – mainly, narrowing possibilities as the game progresses. The player is tasked only with naming those present and accurately describing their cause of death. With each death, the logbook automatically fills in basic information. While exploring a moment of death, the player can use the pocketwatch again to enter more corpses captured in the vision.
These are used to help connect the faces of crewmates to their names and roles. This is used to identify who was present, to capture moments in other rooms or on other decks, and to make note of details at the scene. When activated, the player will hear the events that transpired in the seconds immediately before death, and can then explore the moment of death frozen in time. They are also given the Memento Mortem, a pocketwatch-like device that can be used on a corpse. To help track their progress, the player is given a logbook that includes a drawing of all the crew members, the crew roster, and blueprints of the ship. The game is played as a first-person adventure game, allowing the player to fully explore the Obra Dinn, using a monochromatic dithering style to mimic the shading and color methods of early computer games. Return of the Obra Dinn is effectively one large logic puzzle. The player is tasked with determining the fate of all souls on board, including their names, where and how they met their fate, who their killer was, and their location should they be alive. It has since washed up in port with all sixty passengers and crew dead or missing. The Obra Dinn, insured by the East India Company, went missing in 1803 as it was to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. The Memento Mortem being used to investigate the cause of death of one of the crewmembers It was cited as among the best games of the year and won several awards, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Return of the Obra Dinn was praised for its gameplay, art style, and narrative, likening the game to Pope's previous work, and Her Story.
The game, played in first-person perspective, uses a "1-bit" monochromatic graphical style inspired by games on early Macintosh computers. Investigation is accomplished through the use of the "Memento Mortem", a pocket watch capable of transporting its user to the moment of death of any corpse located. The player is dispatched to the ghost ship to perform an appraisal, reconstruct the events of the voyage, and determine the fates of all sixty souls aboard, providing a cause of death for those deceased or a probable current location for those presumed living. The Obra Dinn, a merchant ship missing for five years, has reappeared off the coast of England with no one alive aboard. The game is set in 1807 with the player assuming the role of insurance inspector for the East India Company.
It was his second commercial game, following 2013's Papers, Please, and was released for macOS and Microsoft Windows in October 2018 and for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One a year later. Return of the Obra Dinn is an adventure and puzzle video game created by American video game designer Lucas Pope, and published by Japanese studio 3909.