Multi-Award-Winning ‘Return Of The Obra Dinn’ Is Sailing To Consoles

An award-winner around the world in categories of design, narrative and art - including at the Gaming BAFTAs earlier this year, where I watched its maker Lucas Pope pick up two awards - spooky ghost ship puzzler Return of the Obra Dinn is coming to consoles this month.

Pope announced the game's imminent arrival on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on Twitter, having received plenty of demand for the ports since Obra Dinn's PC release in October 2018. That release date: 18th October 2019. Mark your diaries now, people, as this is a special game.

Love the way that Pope used the game's unique art style for the announcement. Love it. The devil is in the detail, so we're told, and Obra Dinn is the kind of game that both of those lil' critters on your shoulders should be demanding you play.

It casts the player as an insurance adjuster who... wait, come back...

I'll try again. A ship called the Obra Dinn vanishes in 1803 somewhere around the Cape of Good Hope, only to reappear four years later, in Falmouth, with no sign of its 60-man crew. You, as an employee of the very-real East India Company, have to investigate what happened to those people, seeing their stories play out through flashbacks activated by a not-so-real-at-all magical pocket watch. As the game proceeds you'll uncover all manner of wonderful, personal stories, and slowly piece together the why and the how behind the Obra Dinn's fate.

As for the art style, well, this is certainly a looker. Pope - whose previous game, Papers, Please, was also a critical darling and big-seller in the indie field - uses what's termed a '1-bit' style, to evoke the era of early Macintosh titles (though Obra Dinn is built using the very-modern Unity engine).

Lucas Pope, 3909

Upon its original release, Return of the Obra Dinn received critical acclaim across the board, with Eurogamer naming it an Essential release, IGN slapping a score of 9.2 on it, and PC Gamer weighing in with a 90% seal of approval. Suffice to say this is a great, great game, a true original in the medium, and one that console players should definitely be checking out.

Once again, Return of the Obra Dinn will be available for PS4, XBO and Switch on October 18th. Will you be playing this modern indie classic for the first time? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.