O.B.O.L Turns Heads or Tails Into a Lovecraftian Death Game on Steam

Released yesterday, O.B.O.L turns a game of heads or tails into something considerably nastier, trapping the player at the bottom of the ocean with an old man who has apparently been sent by CORPORATE to decide whether they deserve rescuing.

The psychological horror game launched on Steam and itch.io on 17 September for Windows and Linux. Developer MrEliptik is also supporting Steam Deck through the Linux build, with trackpad, touchscreen and D-pad controls previously tested by the developer.

At the centre of O.B.O.L is a deceptively simple coin-flipping game. Players wager bottle caps on either the Kraken or Dead Man face, but each round provides partial information about the sequence ahead. Being told that two of the next three flips will land one way turns an apparent 50/50 gamble into a probability and memory problem.

The maximum wager increases as the evaluation continues, while strange items let either participant interfere with the game. These can restore caps, reveal an upcoming result, protect against a loss or even prevent the opponent taking a turn. Lose all of your caps and the corporate evaluation becomes considerably more literal.

The table is only part of it. Players can get up and investigate the rusting underwater cabin for clues, with Steam warning that not everything inside the “coffin of iron” is friendly. The finished game builds a story around those discoveries and includes multiple endings rather than treating the coin game as a standalone arcade challenge.

That makes the comparison with Inscryption’s mixture of tabletop strategy, environmental exploration and creeping horror particularly difficult to ignore. Both put the player opposite an unsettling figure before gradually encouraging them to pay attention to the room around the game itself.

There is some Buckshot Roulette DNA in the high-stakes wagering too, but O.B.O.L is not simply asking players to guess a coin toss. From playing the game for a couple of hours, the clever part is how much information the game gives you before demanding a wager. Remembering which outcomes remain possible and deciding how many caps to risk creates the strategy, while the surrounding horror keeps suggesting that the rules may not be the only thing worth watching.

The commercial release also has an interesting origin story. O.B.O.L began as Charon’s Obol, created by MrEliptik and Woland for the GMTK Game Jam 2025 around that year’s “Loop” theme. Among more than 9,500 entries, the prototype finished 118th for Narrative and 135th for Artwork, before the pair decided to expand it into a full game.

Its original name carries some meaning as well. A Charon’s obol refers to the coin traditionally placed with the dead as payment for Charon to ferry a soul across the River Styx, making a cursed coin game surrounded by death a fairly deliberate choice of imagery. The developers have not publicly presented O.B.O.L as an acronym, so the current stylisation should not be read as one without further explanation from the team.

Interest accelerated considerably before release. MrEliptik reported 5,000 Steam wishlists on 12 August, crediting a large part of that jump to coverage from Markiplier alongside videos from MoistCr1TiKal and Alpha Beta Gamer. By the time the 17 September release date was formally announced on 7 September, the total had already passed 7,200 wishlists.

The launch version supports English and French text, contains 19 Steam achievements and requires just 250 MB of available storage according to its current Steam requirements. It is also available directly through itch.io, where a purchase currently includes a Steam key.

O.B.O.L is currently running a 15% introductory discount until 1 October on Steam. A free demo also remains available for anyone who wants to see whether betting their employment, sanity and apparently their head on a coin flip sounds sensible.