Return of the Obra Dinn is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, one that you wish you could forget it just to experience again. I replayed for research purpose three and half years after my last playthrough and, to my surprise, found myself forgetting most part of the answer, so I got to enjoy the puzzle, which I know is rewarding and challenging, while paying my full attention to appreciate the atmosphere, soundtrack, voice acting and every bit of the details and love poured into this game.
The gameplay and narrative blends perfectly. Narrative-wise the player plays as an inspector for the East India Company, tasked to discover the fate of the entire crew; the gameplay of this adventure puzzle game is to, through inspection and deduction, discover the fate of the entire crew. As the player fills in the last blank on the list, they also reach the climax of the story. Doing detective work is no easy task; hints are delicately placed that, while in plain sight, require effort to be seen, and the game expects and challenges player to find them all. Many truths are hidden behind the striking story and red herrings, only when the player has a better grasp on the crew and the timeline do they find out what exactly happened to each one on the Obra Dinn.
These details do not require superior graphic or ray-tracing. Quite oppositely the 1-bit graphic is this game's most distinctive part. Combined with the sound-only dialogues and manual, the player has to not rely on visual hint only but every piece of information presented. Every second of the gameplay is then, with this less-is-more approach, focused on the thinking and deduction, a goal every puzzle game aims for. The game is not without its issues, and is definetely not for everyone. The set-of-three rule makes the game too easy or too hard depending on who you ask (to me it's a nice little escape hatch), and more than one of my friends wanted to but couldn't enjoy it because of motion sickness. The Hokkien voice acters don't have the best acting skills. But as far as it goes for this game's premise it's in a perfect spot, one change more or one less would shake its balance.
After I finished it again I listened to the enchanting soundtrack (which is, along with the writing, design and programming, composed by Lucas Pope himself. I admire him so much) on YouTube and gladly found many people in the comments reciting their favorite lines in the game–ones I know people, including me, who finished the game would hear the voices vividly in their heads, and that put a smile on my face. I’m going to play it again five years later; maybe this time I can identify Maba faster.