Return of the Obra Dinn is cited as the origin point for a wave of cause-of-death deduction games, including free releases and browser titles that describe themselves as Obra Dinn-like.
Return of the Obra Dinn is treated in recent coverage as the ancestor of a genre rather than a work with news of its own. A survey of cause-of-death deduction games traces the format to Obra Dinn, with The Case of the Golden Idol and The Rise of the Golden Idol following, and Type Help's text-input deduction pushing a newer wave. The same survey reports free titles arriving in steady supply, among them Death Game Report, Welcome to the Guild Quest Team!, The Gary Residence Incident, The Innkeeper's Register of the Demon King's Castle Front Shop, UNKNOWN PASSENGER 47 and Unsorted Records.
Two of the newer releases show how directly the Obra Dinn model is being borrowed. Maoujou-mae Ten no Shukuhaku Meibo, a free browser mystery from individual developer Tsukucchau Ojisan, released on September 20 and runs on PC or smartphone without a download. Players restore a lodging register from 100 years ago by cross-referencing adventurers' thought wiretap records and entering document IDs built from a date, inn, room number and guild ID. Its official description calls it "Obra Dinn-like."
The Red Pearls Of Borneo, a free detective mystery from Bushmonkey Games, added Japanese subtitles on November 12. It is available on PC via Steam and in browser via itch.io, and the Steam version supports Japanese, selected with the Japanese flag at the start. The game casts Delphine, a psychic, investigating two deaths at a North Borneo tobacco plantation in 1941.
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Bushmonkey Games added Japanese subtitles to The Red Pearls Of Borneo on November 12. The detective mystery is free on PC via Steam and in browser via itch.io, and the Steam version supports Japanese, selected with the Japanese flag at the start. The game casts Delphine, a psychic, investigating two deaths at a North Borneo tobacco plantation in 1941.
Cause-of-death deduction games are multiplying, with free titles arriving in steady supply. The genre traces to Return of the Obra Dinn (2003) and later The Case of the Golden Idol and The Rise of the Golden Idol, while Type Help's text-input deduction format pushed a new wave. Recent free releases include Death Game Report, Welcome to the Guild Quest Team!, The Gary Residence Incident, The Innkeeper's Register of the Demon King's Castle Front Shop, UNKNOWN PASSENGER 47 and Unsorted Records.
Individual developer Tsukucchau Ojisan released the free browser mystery game 'Maoujou-mae Ten no Shukuhaku Meibo' on September 20. It runs on PC or smartphone without a download. Players restore a lodging register from 100 years ago by cross-referencing adventurers' thought wiretap records, entering document IDs built from a date, inn, room number, and guild ID. The official description calls it 'Obra Dinn-like.'