I was torn between buying this and Papers, Please before realizing they were made by the same guy. I'm super biased to things concerning 1600s-1800s history and seafaring things, so I chose this first-- I'll get to Papers, Please sometime soon. :)
Obra Dinn is a large scale interactive logic puzzle challenging you to witness and solve the 60+ deaths / disappearances of all the crew members that were aboard the ship. You need to match names to faces, determine causes of death, and furthermore find who murdered who given the extremely limited information you start with. Some things will be obvious, some things are going to take process of elimination and even just a bit of guessing. A lot will be blank until you come across later scenes that may tell you.
Everything here is in a 1-bit style and you've got multiple palette options based on different old monitors, which you can view here. I personally stayed with the default Macintosh setting. It fit the vibe for me.
Things can be incredibly difficult at times, and I think there are just a few things that could use a little more information- what qualifies as spiked vs. speared sometimes? What crosses the line between enemy and beast? Those were two things I had to inquire about because in certain spots, the line is a bit blurred. Certain portions can feel a bit too long as well. Every time you first witness a death, it will play through the scene, then make you sit there for a minute and just wait. Certain useful features aren't available in that scene either, and it eventually closes out, so I wound up being a bit irritated with it, especially toward the end. Totally not a dealbreaker though.
I'm not doing any spoilers, but there were little twists and turns forming this overarching plot I found really need. FANTASTIC voice acting as well. There is a lot of talent and skill here. Easy rec to anyone into logic puzzle games like this, or who are as taken by the atmosphere as I am. Genuinely going to leap into Papers, Please because of the quality of Obra Dinn alone.