7 ms·

I love seeing the interplay of story and mechanics, the game started as an idea for a mechanic mostly, with a little bit of story on top. When that mechanic was

I love seeing the interplay of story and mechanics, the game started as an idea for a mechanic mostly, with a little bit of story on top. When that mechanic wasn't enough, asking questions about the story led to new mechanics. Obra Dinn is a top five game for me. If you haven't spent a weekend binging it I can't recommend it enough.

mock-possum 4y ago
Obra Dinn is a must-play. Even if you don’t like the genre, even if you don’t like the aesthetic, even if you don’t like video games, you should sit down with Obra Dinn and check it out. It’s an incredible work of art. it belongs in a museum
- b0afc375b5 4y ago
  That sounds questionable. I'll put this to the test as soon as the next GOG sale.
  - frogulis 4y ago
    As a vote in favour of that comment, it has to be one of the most consistent and best games I've played recently. Trying to say as little as possible, it has gameplay that made me feel clever, _fantastic_ sound design, effective use of its restricted graphical style, and a story that had me intrigued from end-to-end. Savour it though, you can only play it "for real" once.
  - the_af 4y ago
    You are right to question such statements, but let me add more input: I think everything Lukas Pope does is a work of art. The man is an artist. An artisan. He makes no two games the same, and he is not a copycat. He really explores the design space and comes up with something novel. I think he is the best game designer of this age. Sorry if it sounds hyperbolic, and you'd be right to doubt it -- but he truly is.
    - Plasmoid 4y ago
      One of the best ways to describe a lot his work is making compelling games out of painfully banal work. Obra Dinn - You're an insurance adjuster filling out paperwork Papers, Please - Dystopian document simulator, you're a low ranking customs agent in a soviet style country.
      - selimthegrim 4y ago
        Dystopian document thriller, no?
- DougEiffel 4y ago
  My wife doesn't like video games. if I sat her down to play Obra Dinn, she would hate video games forever with no hope of reform. Obra Dinn was an incredible work of art, but it's not accessible by any definition of the word. I don't think anyone would enjoy it if they weren't already deeply in love with video games and puzzles. The Outer Wilds (not worlds) is another one that I think rivals Obra Dinn, and is more accessible. It might be the best narrative-focused puzzle game ever made.
  - sanitycheck 4y ago
    I tried this with my wife, after 10 mins she had a headache and never wanted to touch it again. I love the graphics but they are jarring to a lot of people. (My wife's not a "gamer" but has spent hundreds of hours in Borderlands and Minecraft over the years.) She got all the way through "The Case of the Golden Idol" though, which is a totally different experience but probably uses similar bits of the brain. I'll try her on Pentiment next, but I suspect she'll get bored quickly. I think Outer Wilds is brilliant, but the ability required to precisely control that spaceship is way beyond any casual player.
    - pferde 4y ago
      You mean those casual players who, after a bit of time spent familiarizing with controls, can control things like Flappy Bird or all those running-jumping-three-lanes-with-obstacles mobile games with near-pixel perfection, putting even seasoned "serious" players to shame? :) The Outer Wilds ship controls are not too complicated, but the player needs motivation to get used to them initially.
      - sanitycheck 4y ago
        Hmm... In Outer Wilds your ship is moving in 3D space, close to objects with gravity (some of them moving) and you control thrust and rotation on multiple axes while looking through a small porthole. In Flappy Bird you repeatedly press a single button to flap. I don't think they're remotely comparable, but YMMV!
      - 4y ago
- NBJack 4y ago
  It's very much a unique and artistically sound game, but geeze that aesthetic really wore on me to the point of physical fatigue. I suspect it was in part because of the crisp screen I played on (heavy contrast of light and dark). It was hard on my eyes, and the gameplay mechanic of "elminate the suspects" wore on me in an entirely different way. In the end, I respect the work, but I certainly can't recommend it broadly.
karmelapple 4y ago
The game is so realistic and engaging that after playing it for two hours, I honestly felt a bit seasick. I had to turn it off and haven’t come back since, but I still very much intend to!
germinalphrase 4y ago
I got sucked in by Obra Dinn, but at one point I kind of got stuck with no path forward and fell off. A touch more linearity might have been nice.
- rsaarelm 4y ago
  There's some slack with just guessing randomly when you're down to something like three candidates for who someone might be. Some of the definite hints get very obscure and a normal playthrough will probably end up using a bit guesswork.
rbits 4y ago
I tried playing it a while ago, and it was just really boring at the start, I couldn't push through it. There was no idea of what my goal was, there was no explanation of what was happening or an idea of how I'm supposed to find more information. It was just "this person died, and there's no info on who they are" a bunch. I assume it gets better, so I'll probably give it another try soon, but yeah, the start of the game didn't hook me
- danpalmer 4y ago
  How long did you play it? I think the "intro" is designed to show the core gameplay loop quite explicitly – find a dead body, see the vision of the past, find another, see a clue, find a third, put 1/2/3 together and know what happened, and have that confirmed by the game. This took me 15-20 mins while reading the tutorial and notebook content and at the end it was pretty clear to me what came next. I've seen similar experiences in reviews of the game. If you quit before the end of that loop it would be pretty unclear, but it's fairly short so do try to push through. If you did complete that and aren't hooked, that's fine, maybe it's not your sort of thing. If you completed the loop and didn't understand what was going on then it might be worth playing through it again and taking more time to read the instructions as it's all fairly explicit.
  - rbits 4y ago
    Yeah no I didn't play it much, cause I just wasn't motivated. I will try it again some time though
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  It’s essentially one of those “Alice, Mary, And Bob could be at one of three locations” puzzles, just with more than 70 people, a much more complex set of things for the locations, and instead of simple sentences as clues you have last words and frozen movements in time as your clues. The way the game sets up its clues is brilliant but ultimately that sort of game isn’t for everyone. You do have to figure out a lot from small bits of information.
  - 4y ago

mock-possum 4y ago

Obra Dinn is a must-play. Even if you don’t like the genre, even if you don’t like the aesthetic, even if you don’t like video games, you should sit down with Obra Dinn and check it out. It’s an incredible work of art. it belongs in a museum

b0afc375b5 4y ago
That sounds questionable. I'll put this to the test as soon as the next GOG sale.
- frogulis 4y ago
  As a vote in favour of that comment, it has to be one of the most consistent and best games I've played recently. Trying to say as little as possible, it has gameplay that made me feel clever, _fantastic_ sound design, effective use of its restricted graphical style, and a story that had me intrigued from end-to-end. Savour it though, you can only play it "for real" once.
- the_af 4y ago
  You are right to question such statements, but let me add more input: I think everything Lukas Pope does is a work of art. The man is an artist. An artisan. He makes no two games the same, and he is not a copycat. He really explores the design space and comes up with something novel. I think he is the best game designer of this age. Sorry if it sounds hyperbolic, and you'd be right to doubt it -- but he truly is.
  - Plasmoid 4y ago
    One of the best ways to describe a lot his work is making compelling games out of painfully banal work. Obra Dinn - You're an insurance adjuster filling out paperwork Papers, Please - Dystopian document simulator, you're a low ranking customs agent in a soviet style country.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Dystopian document thriller, no?
DougEiffel 4y ago
My wife doesn't like video games. if I sat her down to play Obra Dinn, she would hate video games forever with no hope of reform. Obra Dinn was an incredible work of art, but it's not accessible by any definition of the word. I don't think anyone would enjoy it if they weren't already deeply in love with video games and puzzles. The Outer Wilds (not worlds) is another one that I think rivals Obra Dinn, and is more accessible. It might be the best narrative-focused puzzle game ever made.
- sanitycheck 4y ago
  I tried this with my wife, after 10 mins she had a headache and never wanted to touch it again. I love the graphics but they are jarring to a lot of people. (My wife's not a "gamer" but has spent hundreds of hours in Borderlands and Minecraft over the years.) She got all the way through "The Case of the Golden Idol" though, which is a totally different experience but probably uses similar bits of the brain. I'll try her on Pentiment next, but I suspect she'll get bored quickly. I think Outer Wilds is brilliant, but the ability required to precisely control that spaceship is way beyond any casual player.
  - pferde 4y ago
    You mean those casual players who, after a bit of time spent familiarizing with controls, can control things like Flappy Bird or all those running-jumping-three-lanes-with-obstacles mobile games with near-pixel perfection, putting even seasoned "serious" players to shame? :) The Outer Wilds ship controls are not too complicated, but the player needs motivation to get used to them initially.
    - sanitycheck 4y ago
      Hmm... In Outer Wilds your ship is moving in 3D space, close to objects with gravity (some of them moving) and you control thrust and rotation on multiple axes while looking through a small porthole. In Flappy Bird you repeatedly press a single button to flap. I don't think they're remotely comparable, but YMMV!
    - 4y ago
NBJack 4y ago
It's very much a unique and artistically sound game, but geeze that aesthetic really wore on me to the point of physical fatigue. I suspect it was in part because of the crisp screen I played on (heavy contrast of light and dark). It was hard on my eyes, and the gameplay mechanic of "elminate the suspects" wore on me in an entirely different way. In the end, I respect the work, but I certainly can't recommend it broadly.

karmelapple 4y ago

The game is so realistic and engaging that after playing it for two hours, I honestly felt a bit seasick. I had to turn it off and haven’t come back since, but I still very much intend to!

germinalphrase 4y ago

I got sucked in by Obra Dinn, but at one point I kind of got stuck with no path forward and fell off. A touch more linearity might have been nice.

rsaarelm 4y ago
There's some slack with just guessing randomly when you're down to something like three candidates for who someone might be. Some of the definite hints get very obscure and a normal playthrough will probably end up using a bit guesswork.

rbits 4y ago

I tried playing it a while ago, and it was just really boring at the start, I couldn't push through it. There was no idea of what my goal was, there was no explanation of what was happening or an idea of how I'm supposed to find more information. It was just "this person died, and there's no info on who they are" a bunch. I assume it gets better, so I'll probably give it another try soon, but yeah, the start of the game didn't hook me

danpalmer 4y ago
How long did you play it? I think the "intro" is designed to show the core gameplay loop quite explicitly – find a dead body, see the vision of the past, find another, see a clue, find a third, put 1/2/3 together and know what happened, and have that confirmed by the game. This took me 15-20 mins while reading the tutorial and notebook content and at the end it was pretty clear to me what came next. I've seen similar experiences in reviews of the game. If you quit before the end of that loop it would be pretty unclear, but it's fairly short so do try to push through. If you did complete that and aren't hooked, that's fine, maybe it's not your sort of thing. If you completed the loop and didn't understand what was going on then it might be worth playing through it again and taking more time to read the instructions as it's all fairly explicit.
- rbits 4y ago
  Yeah no I didn't play it much, cause I just wasn't motivated. I will try it again some time though
NineStarPoint 4y ago
It’s essentially one of those “Alice, Mary, And Bob could be at one of three locations” puzzles, just with more than 70 people, a much more complex set of things for the locations, and instead of simple sentences as clues you have last words and frozen movements in time as your clues. The way the game sets up its clues is brilliant but ultimately that sort of game isn’t for everyone. You do have to figure out a lot from small bits of information.
- 4y ago