Some of the puzzles and paths can become overused and tiring after a while, but on the whole it stretches the mind in the right ways. It’s a special thing when a game gifts you a superior experience without traditional or prescribed story mechanics, and from that perspective Obduction prevails completely. No matter the size of the discovery, the sense of accomplishment felt great.

This is part of the allure of Obduction - no matter how frustrating or difficult the puzzles may be, it made the reward of discovery that much sweeter. I delighted in finding notebooks and interactions, but I definitely craved more throughout my time with it. I only wish that there were more story-related touch points throughout my explorations. Obduction’s premise is captivating, providing layers that build upon itself to formulate the overarching narrative. Rather, Obduction was built for you to work at and slowly uncover the mystery by reading between the lines of what’s given to you in documents, interactions, diaries, and other clues. None of this is explicitly given through cinematics or traditional in-game storytelling, so don’t expect the game to feed it to you.

These mechanics mean that backtracking is near constant, but Obduction contains shortcuts to ease the pain.Īs you explore and learn more about the surroundings, a picture starts to form about how these worlds relate to each other, along with the history behind Hunrath and the strange occurrences that lead to where you are. The teleportation swap mechanics also become a puzzle in themselves, adding clever layers on top of the existing puzzles and making memorization a critical part of the game. Eventually, you find devices that teleport you to other worlds which each have their own set of puzzles. Puzzle mechanics range from context clues that unlock certain areas (like making connections through physical clues to find security codes) to more physical puzzles (like moving around a laser beam on a track to destroy objects).

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