I purchased and played this game on another platform, but I felt the need to rave about this game when I saw that it had no reviews yet. The gameplay is a unique take on the point and click puzzle genre. In a nutshell, you play a pseudo-detective role where you're presented with various dramatic scenes and the general goal is to piece together the "who, where, what, how, and whys." It's... hard to explain the core concept in a way that accurately reflects my experience actually playing this game. I believe there is/was a demo that includes the prologue chapters and gives you a good taste of the actual gameplay. My only complaint (and it's not even a real complaint at all) is that after finishing the game I realized that there isn't another game quite like it, and now I'm starving for more Golden Idol mysteries.
For such a small dev team, I was surprised by how much content was packed into the game. A lot of memorable characters and heart that really conveys how much of a passion project for the devs. Also an impressive amount of voiced dialogue, which is a refreshing change from most of the non-voiced indie point and click games I've recently played. The puzzle difficulty was on the moderate side, nothing particularly complicated or requiring massive leaps in logic. The general plot is a little generic at times, but it's primarily a character driven story and the characters certainly shine here.
Honestly the only thing that carried me through this game was my warped nostalgia of how I remembered it being when it was first released. Looking back now, the story isn't even that good. It's actually very generic and mediocre. I probably thought it was cool when I was 15, but it really doesn't stand up to even a generous critique. The gameplay itself is pretty stale and I'd be totally willing to overlook that if the story made up for it. But it doesn't, so I can't. I really wish I could recommend this game, I do. Some of my favorite titles are heavily flawed gems, but this game just doesn't bring anything original to the table. It's unfortunate, really. I remember being decently hyped for this game, but it really failed to meet expectations.
