1802: The merchant ship Obra Dinn becomes lost at sea. In 1807, it drifts into port at Falmouth with no living soul on board, and all the crew and passengers dead or missing. An insurance investigator for the East India Company's London Office boards the ship to determine what has happened.
Return of the Obra Dinn is a first-person detective game. The player's task is to figure out the fate of each of the 60 people on board the ship. The player can explore the entire ship, from top to bottom deck (although some locations are initially inaccessible). When the player comes across a corpse, they can use the Memento Mortem to view the moment of death.
This allows the player to hear the last few things said by the person and explore a time-frozen diorama that depicts the exact moment of their demise. Additionally, if the diorama includes older visible corpses, the pocketwatch can be used to generate an illusory image of these corpses elsewhere on board, which in turn can be used to access their death scenes.
The player's task is to fill in the identity of the deceased person, the means of their death, and (if applicable) their killer. The log-book includes a list of names, group portraits, and a map of the ship; it also allows quick review of certain details from previously seen death scenes.
Determining the identities and fates of the people on board is not easy, and often requires careful consideration of the clues present in the death scenes. For instance, the player may need to identify people's roles based on their behavior, clothing or relationships with other people.
The game uses a graphical filter that mimics retro 1-bit graphics, such as those found in early Macintosh games.
