Jello Reviews - The Return of the Obra Dinn
Added 2021-06-11 21:12:29 +0000 UTCA review of the video game "The Return of the Obra Dinn"
A review of Lucas Pope's very interesting ditherpunk mystery puzzle game where you play an East India Company insurance auditor trying to figure out how every single character on this strange boat met their fate.
THE SEXY BRUTALE - 8.5/10
If you like...
Papers, Please
The Sexy Brutale
Sudoku
Process-of-elimination puzzles
Nostalgic old computer graphics
Sea monsters
Insurance auditors
...then you might like this game!
EDIT: Since recording this I actually replayed the game (on stream)! While this game is not really meant to be replayed, doing so absolutely made me remember all its little mechanical issues, especially RE: popping in and out of the diorama memories and how long it takes. The book UI/UX is really well-developed, but I think once the player had zipped through all the memories once they should've been able to fast travel between them because the rest of the game is looking at things you've already seen and having to walk between them backwards and figure out how they connect is honestly pretty frustrating and I think I'd probably knock the game down to like an 8/10 or an 8.5/10 instead of the 9/10 I gave it.
Comments
I was under the impression the Golden ending was there to explain how they got the shell off of the ship, and what happened to the horrifying mermaids. Although I agree it still wasn't much of a "bonus for doing everything else" svene.
Xac Mashe
2021-07-18 05:42:06 +0000 UTCY'know I when I was recording this I was like "I remember being annoyed by this. Was that unfair?" and then I replayed it and I was like "No this is absolutely infuriating and definitely should've been a button prompt."
JelloApocalypse
2021-06-18 17:46:22 +0000 UTCI also love this game, and I just wanted to contribute something you might not have realized given that you talked about the ambiguity of some of the causes of death, there's actually a decent number of deaths where you can select multiple different causes and be correct. I won't give specific instances since I also think this game is best played blind (and you're right about the spiked vs speared thing, that is annoying) but it's a fun little fact that I always like to share.
JackofCoins
2021-06-14 14:45:02 +0000 UTCSiv did an excellent job recreating the game's style for that thumbnail.
BedknobsandBookshelves
2021-06-13 02:17:32 +0000 UTCInteresting!
JoeJoeBinks97
2021-06-12 20:38:13 +0000 UTCAt my day job, I work for this company that sells various compliance products, and one of the ones I work on is this website that exists to... there's this thing called the ICD-10, which is a huge index of codes for specifying *every possible medical problem* that a physician might attempt to treat. Insurance companies use it to determine what they do and don't cover and how much they'll pay out for them, and when a doctor makes a claim on a patient's insurance, they need to fill out the appropriate code from this GIANT LABYRINTHINE DEWEY DECIMAL NIGHTMARE or else they don't get paid. My company's product is a site that helps medical coding people look up codes, and *boy* is something like it necessary, because the ICD-10 is way, way more exhaustive than it needs to be. It's got codes like: V00.822: Baby stroller colliding with stationary (not moving) object V86.23: Person on outside (not inside) of dune buggy injured in traffic accident W27.4: Contact with kitchen utensil (Contact with fork, contact with can-opener, contact with ice-pick) W61.3: Contact with chicken W61.32: Struck by chicken X37.4: Tidal wave X37.41: Tidal wave due to earthquake or volcanic eruption Y38.5X3: Terrorism involving nuclear weapons, terrorist injured (as opposed to bystander injured) So it is not at *all* surprising to me that an insurance claims evaluator would have separate boxes he needs to fill out for "spiked" and "speared" or "stabbed (with knife)" and "stabbed (with rapier)". This insurance company's boots on the ground have magical time-traveling death watches and aren't especially surprised by [SPOILERS]- maybe they *do* have to distinguish between "spiked" and "speared" on the reg for determining who is at-fault when they serve liability papers to the [SPOILERS]. (That's not to excuse it as a game mechanic, though- it's still pretty frustrating when you're trying to figure it out in-game, and don't have the ICD-Spooky-Boat-Disasters on hand to determine the difference. If they *did* have some kind of coding manual in-game for distinguishing these things, or any proper hint at the distinction, I'd be more inclined to forgive it because "mundane bureaucracy meets supernatural horror without raising an eyebrow" is always a solid bit.)
Benedict Ide
2021-06-12 14:40:09 +0000 UTCI think you would enjoy Jam and The Mystery of the Mysterious Spooky Mansion, it's a point and click Adventure, with incredibly hilarious writing
Judah Vargas
2021-06-11 23:02:44 +0000 UTCThe main reason so many people, including myself, love this game is because, just like Papers Please did, it brought a totally original concept, artistic style and mechanics to the industry. It is without doubt the game I want to see people copy. Also once you've already seen a memento, when you re-enter them there's always a door to exit. I do agree that having to wait for the song to end every time you enter a memento for the 1st time can be annoying sometimes, but it mostly works because, for example, the low tones that sound in chapter 7 "The Doom" give the perfect atmosphere to the scene you're seeing.
Kradolpher
2021-06-11 22:19:14 +0000 UTC
