The Case of the Golden Idol

I looked at The Case of the Golden Idol previously and wrote it off because of the art style. But I picked it up on sale anyway because of recomendations I got. I was suprisingly hooked from the first moment and ended staying up all night playing through it. The puzzle progression is done really well in that the mechanics of the game are intuitive and you're eased into the puzzles before they get really challening. It feels like you're investigating the events and really putting the pieces together to tell a story. By the end, the mysteries get pretty complicated so that it can take a while once you've found all the clues to really piece the story together. Some of the harder mysteries game me a run for my money and there were a few details I couldn't piece together. The game has a hint function that's gives you a path to go on without just giving you the answer, which I really enjoyed. You just have to play a dumb mini-game to earn a hint. And usually after seeing the hint, it was so obvious and I just missed that one detail. Wishlisted their next game and I'll be looking forward to it.

As others have already stated. this game is an investigation game like the Obra Dinn in that you put names, deaths, locations and so fort in a journal to continue the story. The difference is that the scenarios are chronological in this game compared to Obra Dinns achronologolical order which often means the next scenario you have half of the names of the suspects already filled in before you got a good look on the scene. The game drops you immediately into the gameplay, no introduction whatsoever which is as refreshing as already having newspapers crossword section opened so you can play with the puzzles. The investigations themselves are fairly enjoyable where you find out whoever is at the scene, their motives and their alibis. I found with how chronological it was that again you already know half of what the cast is wanting and doing so there isn't much headwork you half to do when you get to the halfway point of the game. The length itself is very very short, so I wouldn't be able to say in good concious to buy it at 18 euro. but if you're dying of no detective game drought like alot of people I say give it a go.

The Case of the Golden Idol is a great game that goes beyond usual game genres. You are presented with a dozen of murder cases, all playing role in the overarching plot. Your job is to indetify who is who, the sequence of events and the motive of the murderer. You prove that you know the answers by filling the blanks in the script with words that you learn thoughout your investigation. It is almost impossible to guess the answers - you best bet is to use deductions and eliminate wrong answers. The difficulty goes up slowly as you gain experience and gather knowledge of the game world - you'll definitely will be prepared for the last case.

"The Case of the Golden Idol" takes the template established by Lucas Pope in his fantastic "Return of the Obra Dinn" and simplifies it mechanically to support a much more complex storyline. It's a puzzle game which has the player fill in incomplete sentences to put together the plot of the game, scene by scene. Player has to deduce what happened from the available information, being subtly guided by language itself: both the available words and the structure of the sentence. The resulting game is a fantastic gameplay experience with an intriguing storyline. I enjoyed it from start to finish!

I was searching for a pure deduction game for a long time, having played everything there is on the market. This game has so much better of a core mechanic than Sherlock Holmes games and it foregoes all the grind too. I'm playing it in non-highlight mode and I'm absolutely loving every location I've played so far. This is a true masterpiece of modern game design and I sincerely hope that the authors shall take this format and create more stories with it. Perhaps even an online experience where new cases drop and the detectives have to solve them without knowing if they have solved them correctly or not until they complete the whole case (tournament mode). Looking forward for how the studio will scale this! Great work!