This is part of my Gaming Book Club.

The setting - boats are small. Game maps have been getting big. The setting is something relatively uncommon in the world of video games. It is a very small, very static game world. All colors are monochromatic, almost nothing is interactable, and the whole game world is roughly 15250 square feet. The entire game (from the player's perspective) takes place on one afternoon. The scale of everything is small to help drive the focus of the game on the mystery, the characters, and the art of story. The most rich element of this game is the sound design. The wood creaking, the cutscenes that are heard, not seen, the authentic maritime sea sounds.

The storytelling is also unique in a few ways. It's in a video game, which is a medium that lends itself well to interactive storytelling. However, it tells its story in a way a book would. The way you progress is linear, the player does not interact with the events, and the events are literally read to the player. The freeze-frames are an interesting hybrid where the player can walk around the crime scene, recognize faces, connect dots, piece story elements together.

Ok, so I am bad at playing games habitually. This causes me to constantly forget what i was doing, what I had previously collected, what mission i was on, etc. Outer Wilds became difficult for me, simply because I kept losing track of what the hell was going on. Obra Dinn's book/journal format was incredibly nice... It standardized all of the scenes, organized them chronologically, and made it easy to determine progress, remember where I was at, and organize my thoughts.

Finally, I love this game from a game development perspective for one reason: It's damn simple. Remove the art and the sound, and what you're left with is a deceptively simple game loop. It's practically a walking simulator. progression is gate kept by simple triggers. I don't know how this game was made, but the total sum of the code required to make this game probably took a month, then they were able to make assets, build scenes, and write a compelling story.