I like videogames and I like writing reviews, but sometimes I don’t have deep enough thoughts on the latter to write particularly deep examples of the former. Time for another roundup of PC games I’ve been digging lately. This time, I’ll look at a spooky insurance mystery rendered in gorgeous 1-bit graphics, a classic Star Wars first-person shooter, and a CRPG classic given a new lick of paint.
Return of the Obra Dinn
It is the early 19th Century; the Obra Dinn, a ship that had gone missing somewhere off the coast of West Africa has finally sailed into port – with all sixty of its crew and passengers dead or missing. The ship had been insured by the East India Company, and you are the insurance investigator sent to figure out what happened. It’s a tough job – but you are helped by two items. The first is a logbook containing all the names and roles of the people who were on the ship, and some sketches of life onboard ship which show most of their faces (the obvious exception being the shipboard artist who made the sketches).
Your second helpful bit of kit is the Memento Mortem, provided by the same party who was able to send through the logbook; this is a strange pocketwatch which, when used in the proximity of a corpse (or a place where a corpse has been – indicated, once you’ve discovered it, by the fuzzy form of the body in question), allows you to enter and explore a static snapshot of the immediate surroundings in the moment the relevant person died. Your task is to put names to all of the faces, and specify how each and every individual onboard ship died – giving the exact cause of death and, where the death was not due to ill health or accident, the party responsible.