Lara Makrianis October 10th, 2018 - 12:50 PM
Lucas Pope, the dev for the highly acclaimed dystopian game Papers, Please! has finally announced the date of the follow-up game, Return of the Obra Dinn. …Four years later. An article about its first announcement was made here. A game that he has stated during his first announcement that it would take him a year and a half to create, has resurfaced another couple years after the expected time. But, the amount of detail in the images and scenes of this “1-bit” first person mystery thriller and “insurance adventure” go to show that the four years brought us something much more than we imagined.
After four and a half long years, “Return of the Obra Dinn” is finally done enough to call. October 18th, PC+Mac, $19.99 pic.twitter.com/ZlverFyNQm
— Lucas Pope (@dukope) October 10, 2018
The trailer that was released today shows off the style of the new game, an updated depiction of the “1-bit” style, something more enhanced than just the one frame of the Papers, Please! room. Pope describes in his tweets that he was using Unity instead of Haxe (the program used for the previous game), as he wanted to try it out and was happy with the results.
Haxe/OpenFL was great for Papers Please but I wanted to give Unity a try for this one. Really happy with it.
— Lucas Pope (@dukope) October 10, 2018
Given the trailer of the upcoming game, and the reactions of fans on Twitter, it’s safe to say that everyone seems happy with the look and design of the game. The “1-bit” style is reminiscent of early PC games such as the 1987 classic Shadowgate, and it seems to help in this type of story.
The game follows an insurance agent for the East India Company who is dealing with a ship, the Obra Dinn, that arrives with damaged sails and no crew. Obra Dinn was claimed missing a few years prior, but shows up at the game’s start in 1807. The player is given a compass that allows them to see (or travel back in time?) the deaths of each crew member. Each clue will be revealed so the player can unfold the mystery to see what fate had fallen upon the crew of the Obra Dinn.
Return of the Obra Dinn finally has its release date of October 18, and will be available for $19.99. It will be available for PC and Mac.
