Lucas Pope, the indie game developer behind the award-winning Papers, Please, has finally announced his next game: Return of the Obra Dinn. On TIGSource, Pope announced that his nostalgia for 1-bit graphics resulted in the design; it will have the “black and white look of old Mac games in a real time 1st person game.” On top of that, he will be building this throwback game with Unity 3D, instead of the Haxe/OpenFL he used on Papers, Please.
As for the setting, Return of the Obra Dinn starts off in 1802, where “the merchant ship ‘Obra Dinn’ set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn’t met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea. Early this morning of October 14th, 1808, the ‘Obra Dinn’ drifted into port with sails damaged and no visible crew. As insurance adjustor for the East India Company’s London Office, find means to board the ship and recover the captain’s logbook for assessment.”
It certainly sounds like a mystery thriller, but could it contain elements of horror? As of right now, all Pope will say about the project is that he has a “rough idea about the narrative. I’m hoping to capture a compelling mystery with suspense and twists in the limited space of an old merchant sailing ship.”
Now, it will be quite interesting to see the gameplay that Pope implements with Obra Dinn. He claims that this will be unlike anything he is ever done before and that the actual gameplay takes a backseat to “rendering, story, and a few technical features.” It will not be atypical adventure game, where players need to collect items in order to solve the mystery; Pope then goes on to claim that there is a “cool gameplay hook,” but besides these scarce details, it seems that the award-winning indie developer is keeping his ‘cards close to his chest.’ Or he simply has not progressed enough in the development in Return of the Obra Dinn to confess more details.
What did you think of Papers, Please? Was it worth the hype? Will you be playing Return of the Obra Dinn? Let us know in the comment section below. And for all updates continue to read Gamer Headlines.