Return of the Obra Dinn

Ask every crewmate the same two generic questions so none hints at the answer. For all 60 people aboard, the Crew Muster Roll asks only who they are and what their fate was, picked from drop-downs. Players never explain their reasoning or answer follow-up questions.

The name list has 60 options and the fate list is long, sometimes with extra detail like who shot someone or what crushed them. Mark Brown: "That's way too many to guess, and too many to prompt you with a possible answer." Players keep their own notes, so they decide which clues matter.

Confirm fates only after three are right, so guessing one by one fails. The log book stays silent on any answer until three fates are correct together. This gives up the instant satisfaction of single confirmations in exchange for blocking brute force.

Batches of three still give feedback along the way, so players are not left to solve the whole ship in one go. "You really have to know the answer or the game just won't budge."

Multiple choice or linked clue thoughts would have done the deduction for players. Brown sketched two worse versions of the Hoscut deduction: a four-option question 'who is Abigail's brother?', and an inventory of pre-written thoughts like 'Abigail's maiden name is Hoscut' to combine.

The question's wording spoils the line of thinking and four options invite guessing until a win. The thought inventory either hands over the link or feels patronising and discourages critical thinking later: "Why bother if the game is going to do all the hard work?"

One death scene often identifies someone who appears in another. The captain's last words, "Abigail. Your brother. I shot him dead," plus her maiden name on the crew roll reveal the victim as William Hoscut. About 50 death scenes form one web of data where each clue is only a hint.

Another example: a man says "Tell Pete's mother, I tried my best," and an earlier scene shows him holding the rope as another man is blown up, so that man is Peter Milroy.

Lucas Pope hides identities with many methods, each needing different reasoning. Clues include dialogue, uniforms, the timeline, elimination, accents, map location, relationships, surnames, hammock numbers and props like Omid Gul's sword or Emily Jackson's wedding ring.

The three midshipmen (Peter Milroy, Charles Hershtik, Thomas Lanke) are named by combining a spoken line, matching uniforms, an earlier vignette and elimination: name two and the third follows. Brown frames these games as logic puzzles built on cross-referencing, elimination and inference.

Hints signal readiness and difficulty, and nothing blocks progress. Crew faces stay blurred until the game knows you have enough information, and triangles show how hard each fate is. You can keep playing without identifying anyone and even finish with answers incomplete.

Many identities can be reached by several routes, and some ambiguous cases accept more than one answer. "There are no road blocks - you can just keep playing without identifying anyone."

The Case of the Golden Idol confirms each panel separately. Like Obra Dinn's batches of three, panel-by-panel confirmation keeps players motivated and stops a case becoming one overwhelming solve.

A notepad loop of timelines and details produces repeated eureka moments. Players build timelines and jot details until something clicks, then enter the answer. Brown calls it the best detective game ever made and the best game of 2018.

He also points to it, alongside Outer Wilds, Immortality and Tunic, as an indie game that trusts players to think rather than offering spectacle on autopilot.

Ask every crewmate the same two generic questions so none hints at the answer. For all 60 people aboard, the Crew Muster Roll asks only who they are and what their fate was, picked from drop-downs. Players never explain their reasoning or answer follow-up questions.

The name list has 60 options and the fate list is long, sometimes with extra detail like who shot someone or what crushed them. Mark Brown: "That's way too many to guess, and too many to prompt you with a possible answer." Players keep their own notes, so they decide which clues matter.

Confirm fates only after three are right, so guessing one by one fails. The log book stays silent on any answer until three fates are correct together. This gives up the instant satisfaction of single confirmations in exchange for blocking brute force.

Batches of three still give feedback along the way, so players are not left to solve the whole ship in one go. "You really have to know the answer or the game just won't budge."

One death scene often identifies someone who appears in another. The captain's last words, "Abigail. Your brother. I shot him dead," plus her maiden name on the crew roll reveal the victim as William Hoscut. About 50 death scenes form one web of data where each clue is only a hint.

Another example: a man says "Tell Pete's mother, I tried my best," and an earlier scene shows him holding the rope as another man is blown up, so that man is Peter Milroy.

Lucas Pope hides identities with many methods, each needing different reasoning. Clues include dialogue, uniforms, the timeline, elimination, accents, map location, relationships, surnames, hammock numbers and props like Omid Gul's sword or Emily Jackson's wedding ring.

The three midshipmen (Peter Milroy, Charles Hershtik, Thomas Lanke) are named by combining a spoken line, matching uniforms, an earlier vignette and elimination: name two and the third follows. Brown frames these games as logic puzzles built on cross-referencing, elimination and inference.

Hints signal readiness and difficulty, and nothing blocks progress. Crew faces stay blurred until the game knows you have enough information, and triangles show how hard each fate is. You can keep playing without identifying anyone and even finish with answers incomplete.

Many identities can be reached by several routes, and some ambiguous cases accept more than one answer. "There are no road blocks - you can just keep playing without identifying anyone."

Design the fiction around deduction instead of imitating real detective work. Realistic games like LA Noire and the Sherlock titles pick questions, witnesses and places for you and shrink reasoning to multiple choice. Obra Dinn sidesteps this: everyone is dead, so there is no one to interrogate, and you are trapped on a ship.

The premise is openly contrived: a magic pocket watch replays each death and a book knows when three answers are right. Interaction is just picking identities from a drop-down, which keeps the player in control.

Pope wrote the story to fit the mechanic, which took a long time. Lucas Pope told Rock Paper Shotgun that "people have to be dying left and right, and you need a reason for people to be dying constantly," and making that make sense took a long time.

Brown contrasts this with games adapted from a novel or film script.

A notepad loop of timelines and details produces repeated eureka moments. Players build timelines and jot details until something clicks, then enter the answer. Brown calls it the best detective game ever made and the best game of 2018.

He also points to it, alongside Outer Wilds, Immortality and Tunic, as an indie game that trusts players to think rather than offering spectacle on autopilot.

Her Story uses a deliberately bad search system to make deduction possible. A woman's testimony is cut into about 800 unlabelled clips, searches show only the first five results, and the detectives' questions are removed.

Brown pairs it with Obra Dinn as a contrived setup that hands deductive power back to the player.

Ask every crewmate the same two generic questions so none hints at the answer. For all 60 people aboard, the Crew Muster Roll asks only who they are and what their fate was, picked from drop-downs. Players never explain their reasoning or answer follow-up questions.

The name list has 60 options and the fate list is long, sometimes with extra detail like who shot someone or what crushed them. Mark Brown: "That's way too many to guess, and too many to prompt you with a possible answer." Players keep their own notes, so they decide which clues matter.

Confirm fates only after three are right, so guessing one by one fails. The log book stays silent on any answer until three fates are correct together. This gives up the instant satisfaction of single confirmations in exchange for blocking brute force.

Batches of three still give feedback along the way, so players are not left to solve the whole ship in one go. "You really have to know the answer or the game just won't budge."