Return of the Obra Dinn: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan
01What this origin is
Return of the Obra Dinn is a first-person mystery and deduction game created by Lucas Pope and published by 3909 LLC, released for Windows and macOS in October 2018 as Pope's follow-up to Papers, Please. Casting the player as an insurance investigator reconstructing the fates of a ship's crew through frozen-moment scenes and pure logical deduction, and rendered in a 1-bit monochrome style, it is a defining origin of the modern logic-deduction puzzle adventure.
02Sources
03Buried gems that carry this root
Welcome to the Guild Exploration Party! Buried gem
A deductive logic puzzle that asks you to restore a guild's lost records. The guild has reached its 1000th day, and the data on who belonged where is gone, so you reconstruct it: 78 adventurers, 20 parties, and the ending each of them met, worked out from the fragments of guild records alone. No math, no note-taking required, just your reasoning and a cute assistant. Like an armchair detective, you fill in one cell of a grid at a time and lock it down, until every assignment is forced to be true with no contradictions. Made by the Japanese solo creator Palsonic (circle name Parusoni Koubou), who came up through Japan's free-game scene and made the popular freeware Kagami no Majoritia. Overwhelmingly Positive in Japan at 975 reviews and 98 percent, yet the West has barely found it: only 9 English reviews out of 975, under 1 percent. There is no English version, the store supports Japanese only, so the language itself is the wall.
Stellar Code Buried gem
A Japanese doujin SF mystery where you read scattered clues and reason out cosmic puzzles yourself. Very Positive in Japan at 471 reviews and 97 percent, but with no English support, so the West has barely found it (only 6 English reviews).
Murder Mystery Paradox: Fifteen Years of Summer Buried gem
A murder-mystery adventure where you are not shown the culprit. On a small island of a few hundred people, you cross testimony against testimony, then accuse by pure deduction. Very Positive in Japan at 266 reviews and 86 percent, but it has no English support, so the West cannot read it yet (only 2 English reviews).