Return of the Obra Dinn

It’s Friday the 13th, the day of Saint Badluck, patron saint of ladders and casinos. And it is a fabulous holiday. Out there, parades are getting ready to be rained on, and children are looking forward to tonight’s shenanigans, when they will dress up as mirrors and knock on doors, declaring: “sweets or I’ll smash myself”. I love Friday the 13th. So many cherished memories.…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Dicey Dungeons, Hitman 2, Life Is Strange 2, Portal 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, Spelunky, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Stanley Parable, XCOM 2.

It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, 2:22AM, 80 Days, Ape Out, Apex Legends, Bernband, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Cities: Skylines, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Crusader Kings II, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Remastered, Deadly Premonition, Devil Daggers, Dishonored 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Doom, Dota 2, Eliza, Factorio, Fallout: New Vegas, Football Manager Touch 2019, FTL: Faster Than Light, Grand Theft Auto V, Hitman 2, Hotline Miami, Into the Breach, Invisible Inc, Mass Effect 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Neo Scavenger, Nidhogg, Outer Wilds, Overwatch, Papers Please, PlanetSide 2, Portal 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, RimWorld, Secret Habitat, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Slay the Spire, Spelunky, Star Traders: Frontiers, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Norwood Suite, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Undertale, Untitled Goose Game, What Remains of Edith Finch, With Those We Love Alive, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Yakuza 0.

Warning: contains spoilers. When Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was trapped in unyielding ice, it was clear the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had taken a bad turn. In late 1915, after months of anxious waiting, the sheer pressure of the ice crushed the most advanced ship of its time “like a nutshell”, according to captain Frank Worsley. Stranded on the ice for ten months, the entire…

Tagged with feature, Lucas Pope, Return of the Obra Dinn.

The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it's time to recycle the cardboard. Below you'll find all of our favourite games from 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Freelancer's favourite games of 2018, The RPS Advent Calendar 2018, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, BattleTech, Celeste, Chuchel, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Far: Lone Sails, Forza Horizon 4, Hitman 2, Into the Breach, Jazztronauts, Monster Hunter: World, Paratopic, Q.U.B.E. 2, Return of the Obra Dinn, Slay the Spire, SpyParty, Subnautica, The Hex, The Red Strings Club, Unavowed, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, Yakuza 0, Yoku's Island Express, Zones.

I realise, at the end of 2018, that I’ve spent much of the year digging back over games released in 2017 and earlier. That’s in part because I’ve been subject to the demands of evil overlord Graham, but also because I’ve been trapped in the gravity well of monster timesinks like Destiny 2 and Divinity 2. When I did reach escape velocity, I cherished my…

Tagged with Activision, Bulwark Studios, Bungie, feature, Freelancer's favourite games of 2018, Kasedo Games, Larian Studios, Lucas Pope, Subset Games, Destiny 2: Forsaken, Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition, Into the Breach, Return of the Obra Dinn, Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus.

I’ve spent 2018 particularly distracted, flitting between games and feeling guilty that I haven’t quite finished them or spent the time they deserved. Maybe it’s because there have been so many good games? Or maybe I’m just awful. Either way, I resolve to take better care next year. Now I look back, I realise that I’ve particularly enjoyed a series of games which gave me…

Tagged with Arkane Studios, Bethesda Softworks, Capcom, feature, Freelancer's favourite games of 2018, Lucas Pope, Sega, Subset Games, Into the Breach, Monster Hunter: World, Prey: Mooncrash, Return of the Obra Dinn, Yakuza 0.

 Look out. The year 2018 is going down in a storm. There are hundreds of games aboard, running, jumping, trying their best to survive the maelstrom. But there’s only one tiny lifeboat, and only enough room for three games. It falls on the sorry shoulders of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, to decide which trio of games clamber onto the life raft…

Tagged with Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Ashen, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Celeste, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Megaquarium, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Hex.

 Esteemed friends. I have gathered you here today to speak about a most terrible crime, perpetrated in this very room. Late last night, the RPS podcast, affectionately known to some of you as the Electronic Wireless Show, was found dead beside the divan. No, do not get up Mrs Leathershaw. The cushions have been washed, I assure you. But less clean than those soft…

Tagged with feature, Podcast, The RPS Electronic Wireless show, Her Story, Return of the Obra Dinn, Sethian, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter.

Towards the end of Return of the Obra Dinn’s four-and-a-half years in development, Lucas Pope had a friend come over to playtest it. He sat him down, explained how it’s a firstperson mystery game in which you discover the fate of the Obra Dinn, a merchant ship lost on its voyage into the Orient. Then he gave him the controls. “He played for a bit…

Tagged with design, Lucas Pope, The Mechanic, Return of the Obra Dinn.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a terrible advert for sea travel and a great recruitment tool for the insurance industry. A boat arrives in port, absent a living crew and with too few remains to represent the 60 passengers in the ship’s log. You’re an investigator who has to fill in the gaps by studying this vaguest of crime scenes. I always thought insurance…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, detective games, feature, Lucas Pope, review, RPS Recommended, wot it think, Return of the Obra Dinn.

Hype gets a bad reputation. If you think of it as nothing more than advertising, then there's always the chance that these screenshots, trailers, GIFs and promises add up to nothing more than disappointment and an empty wallet. But if you think those same things as a form of entertainment and a source of enjoyment in their own right, then you've got nothing to lose.…

Tagged with DevLog Watch, feature, Tim Cosmonaut, Wings of Saint Nazaire, Path To The Sky, Return of the Obra Dinn.