Lucas Pope — the creative mind behind last year’s astute, harrowing and critically-acclaimed point-and-click title, Papers, Please — has launched a demo for his latest game, Return of the Obran Dinn, which is available to download free of charge on PC.
It’s worth noting that, while fully playable, this is an early build of Pope’s sophomore effort and should be approached with the right mindset. For instance, the version is yet to be QA tested and players won’t be able to save their progress as they explore the titular vessel.
With all that said, here’s hope Pope chose to surmise his maritime adventure:
“In 1802, 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 Crew Muster Roll book for assessment.”
We haven’t had the chance to test out Return of the Obra Dinn just yet, but given the level of quality found in Pope’s previous title — which many considered to be Game of the Year for 2013 — we have high hopes for the dot matrix-styled game.
After all, Papers, Please had a gut-wrenching ability to pull you in to the post-apocalyptic and totalitarian world of Arstotzka, so much so that weighing up each would-be immigrant became a moral conundrum.
Return of the Obra Dinn can be downloaded for free on PC through Pope’s official website.
