Return of the Obra Dinn is a 2018 adventure game that proves that video games don’t need advanced, hyper-realistic graphics. Created by solo designer Lucas Pope, the game uses a stylized “1-bit” monochrome graphical style. This style highlights the moody and atmospheric tone of the game. Return of the Obra Dinn’s distinctive style has certainly become its biggest selling point. In 2018 it won at the Game Awards for Best Art Direction, and was nominated for Best Indie Game as well. Underneath the award winning art style is a tantalizing maritime mystery. If you’re inclined to sleuth it out, here’s what you need to know about Return of the Obra Dinn.
Return of the Obra Dinn Premise
In Return of the Obra Dinn you play as the unnamed Chief Inspector of the East India Company. In the 1800s, five years after it was declared lost, a vanished ship known as the Obra Dinn reappears, missing all 51 crewmembers and nine passengers. The Chief Inspector is dispatched to determine the fates of the missing or dead travelers. In order to aid you in this task, you possess the Memento Mortem. You can use this mystical pocket watch on a corpse to view the exact moment the body died. From this frozen vision of death, you can identify witnesses and context clues. You can also choose other corpses nearby and view their deaths through the pocket watch as well. With the aid of this tool, it falls on you to name all sixty travelers on the Obra Dinn and identify their ultimate fates.
Return of the Obra Dinn Main Characters
Correctly identifying all sixty crew members and passengers on the Obra Dinn is your ultimate goal. To that end, divulging too much information about the characters is a pretty major spoiler. That said, here are the names of all sixty of the poor souls present for the Obra Dinn’s final voyage. Tracing each one to a body and a demise is up to you.
- Robert Witterel
- William Hoscut
- Edward Nichols
- Martin Perrott
- John Davies
- Alfred Klestil
- Charles Miner
- Henry Evans
- James Wallace
- Winston Smith
- Marcus Gibbs
- Thomas Sefton
- Emil O’Farrell
- Christian Wolff
- Olas Wiater
- Duncan McKay
- Finley Dalton
- Edward Spratt
- Abigail Hoscut Witterel
- Nunzio Pasqua
- Emily Jackson
- Jane Bird
- Bun-Lan Lim
- It-Beng Sia
- Chioh Tan
- Hok-Seng Lau
- Zungi Sathi
- Fillip Dahl
- Paul Moss
- Samuel Galligan
- Roderick Andersen
- Davey James
- Peter Milroy
- Thomas Lanke
- Charles Hershtik
- Omid Gul
- Timothy Butement
- Huang Li
- Jie Zhang
- Li Hong
- Wei Lee
- Nicholas Botterill
- Maba
- Lewis Walker
- Leonid Volkov
- Alarcus Nikishin
- Aleksei Toporov
- Nathan Peters
- Lars Linde
- John Naples
- Renfred Rajub
- Abraham Akbar
- William Wasim
- Soloman Syed
- Hamadou Diom
- Henry Brennan
- Alexander Booth
- Patrick O’Hagan
- George Shirley
- Samuel Peters
Return of the Obra Dinn Cheat Codes
It shouldn’t be too surprising to hear that Return of the Obra Dinn has no official cheat codes. The gameplay consists entirely of walking around and taking notes, so there’s not much there for a cheat code to modify. If you really want to cheat the game and more swiftly obtain your objective, you can always just look up how a certain character died. Beyond that, there’s really not much to change. That said, if you want to conquer the seas somehow, here’s the full list of Steam achievements available for the game.
- Loose Cargo: Solve all fates in Chapter I.
- A Bitter Cold: Solve all fates in Chapter II.
- Murder: Solve all fates in Chapter III.
- The Calling: Solve all fates in Chapter IV.
- Unholy Captives: Solve all fates in Chapter V.
- Soldiers of the Sea: Solve all fates in Chapter VI.
- The Doom: Solve all fates in Chapter VII.
- Escape: Solve all fates in Chapter IX.
- The End: Solve all fates in Chapter X.
- Any 6: Solve any six fates.
- Any 15: Solve any fifteen fates.
- Any 30: Solve any thirty fates.
- Any 45: Solve any forty-five fates.
- Abandon Ship: Leave the ship without solving all available chapters.
- Obra Done: Solve the entire book.
- Captain Did It: Blame all the deaths on the captain.
Return of the Obra Dinn FAQ
Can you beat Return of the Obra Dinn without guessing? It can be tempting, when you hit a roadblock, to just fill in random guesses and try to get it right. The game validates correct answers in groups of three, so if you have two fates you’re confident about, you can just randomly fill in causes of death for a third sailor until the game confirms it for you. This is unnecessary, however. If you’re attentive and perceptive, you can get definitive answers for the fate of every person aboard the Obra Dinn.
How many endings are there in Return of the Obra Dinn? Return of the Obra Dinn has three variations on its ending. The details change depending on how many fates you are able to confirm before you leave the cursed ship for good. While the basic events play out largely the same, if you’re able to solve every available fate the game presents you, you’ll be able to view a secret hidden chapter in order to shed further and final light on the events of Return of the Obra Dinn.