Platforms:
Xbox One, PS4, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Released:
November 12, 2024
Publishers:
Netflix, Playstack
Developer:
Color Gray Games
The Case of the Golden Idol is up there with some of the best mystery games on the market. I churned through that baby in a single day, so glued was I to my computer chair. It was unapologetically different from other mystery games in all things: art style, gameplay, setting, and tone, and its only crime was that there wasn’t more of it. Its follow-up, The Rise of the Golden Idol, tells a new tale of human hubris and greed, this time set in the backdrop of the 1970s and all its pop culture, corporatisation, and drug paranoia.
Set some 180 years after the events of the first game, the Golden Idol and its mystical powers have become the stuff of myths. The Rise of the Golden Idol opens at the apex of its story, showing you how all the pieces on the game board ended up, before taking you back to the very beginning of things. This foreshadows and sets up some of the end-game concepts, though you have no chance of understanding their significance… yet.
“You need to save all the brainpower you have to solve these conundrums.”
Much of the gameplay is unchanged from the original: you are presented with a moment frozen in time and must explore the scene for points of interest and characters to uncover keywords and names, and assemble them into a sentence within the “Solving Windows” to uncover the truth of the scenario. Only one or two solving windows in each scenario are mandatory; any others are optional, but are recommended to be completed as solving them will help you understand the overall story better (or at least the current scenario). One big quality-of-life upgrade is that inspecting a piece of evidence will automatically collect any relevant keywords, eliminating a lot of clicking. At first, I was sad to see that mechanic go, as being required to pick out possible keywords was an added layer of challenge I loved from the original, but it quickly became obvious that the complexity of Rise’s scenarios far outclasses the original. You need to save all the brainpower you have to solve these conundrums. But when you do, you’ll feel like an absolute genius.
Right from the get-go, these scenarios are quite meaty. As the scenarios go on, more and more moving parts enter the ring that test not only your observational skills but also your logical reasoning as you try to make sense of the provided sentence structure. Investigation games can sometimes suffer from friction when players know the solution, but not how to express it in the way the game expects. Think of old point-and-click adventures where you know what you need to do, but not which item the game expects you to use to achieve your goal. In a similar way, you might know exactly what happened in a scenario, but unless you assemble the right string of words, you’ll get nowhere. The Rise of The Golden Idol is generally proficient at avoiding this, as the sentence structures do a lot to clue you in about what word — or at least what type of word — fits in the blank spaces, but it begins to falter at the last few scenarios where so much of the sentence is obscured that it gets too easy to make a grammatical error that will prevent you from moving on.
The “solving windows” are different from the original, where there was only a single solving screen that could be toggled on and off. The new windows can be opened, closed, and moved around at will. In some respects, this is useful, as you can have a solving window open at the same time you inspect a clue, but in other respects, it can make things more confusing as you try to navigate multiple windows at once, and it’s impossible to fit all windows on the screen at the same time. All things considered, I prefer the simplicity of the original’s solving screen, but I can see plenty of people preferring the smaller windows.
The distinct art style of the series is back and better than ever, with characters appearing like strange lumpy caricatures, made up of striking shapes and angles. The illustrations still have what I can only call an “MS Paint vibe”, where the artwork is somewhat rough looking and lacks fancy lighting or blended colours, but this just contributes to The Rise of the Golden Idol’s visual flair and helps give it a unique personality. I particularly love the character portraits that move uncannily in place when you examine them.
“The distinct art style of the series is back and better than ever.”
As with the original, there is an overarching mystery that ties the individual scenarios together. As you encounter each new case with the new names and keywords it introduces, you can fill in a bit more of the main scenario fields with what you think is going on. This is paced much better than in the first game, which dumped a huge solving screen on you right at the end and tasked you with remembering everything from start to finish. Now, not only is the overarching story more manageable to solve, but easier to digest. And that’s great, because you don’t want to miss the world Colour Grey Games has created.
Frankly, I’m obsessed with the Golden Idol’s fictional world and history. It’s so detailed, spanning thousands of years of history that informs the events taking place. It really makes the world feel like it’s turning outside the brief vignettes we’re shown. This was evident in the original game too, especially the DLC, which explored the history of the Idol and the political and historical tensions between the fictional countries Lemuria, Lanka, and Albion. These are still explored wonderfully in The Rise of the Golden Idol, but I can’t help but prefer the original. The Case of the Golden Idol has an errieness to its atmosphere that is not captured in Rise. The golden idol is present from the beginning in Case, looming in the background of each scenario well before the extent of its magical properties becomes known to the player. Because each scenario involves the death of someone in proximity to the idol, it’s as if the idol itself is causing each misfortune.
The scenarios in The Rise of the Golden Idol are generally not as murderous; some scenarios don’t depict a death, or even a crime, and the idol doesn’t appear until later in the game (as a re-engineered machine called the I.D.O.L, ha ha). The narrative still has some very high highs: the moment I realised what the OPIG Corporation was planning to use the I.D.O.L for, I slapped my hand on my forehead and both despaired and marvelled. It was so stupid, so petty, so greedy, and yet so damned believable. I won’t forget it in a hurry. Or the part where a key function of the I.D.O.L is revealed, and one of the important characters dramatically absconds. The only issue is that the events of the climax don’t quite live up to those highs for me, which made the ending less impactful. Some things had been set up earlier in the game that I think should have had some kind of payoff, and conversely some very dramatic reveals that I felt were not quite set up enough.
The game’s publisher, Playstack, has announced that The Rise of the Golden Idol will be supported throughout 2025, with 4 pieces of standalone DLC in the works. The first of which, called The Sins of New Wells, will feature four new cases involving a city detective and an organised crime syndicate, as well as some ancient Lemurian magic shenanigans. I’m thrilled to be getting more content for this game, but hearing about the roadmap makes me think that some of the lost threads were placed on purpose to lead into DLC; if that’s the case, I guess I’m glad they didn’t just forget to resolve those plot elements, but it’s sad to think it came at the expense of tying up the narrative in the base game.
9
Amazing
Positive:
- 20 more tough-as-nails mystery scenarios that'll break your brain
- The keyword logical puzzles make you feel like a genius when you solve them
- Dramatic yet amusing overarching mystery that tests your understanding of the case
- Unique and stunning visual style
Negative:
- Doesn't quite live up to the greatness of the original in narrative and tone
The Rise of the Golden Idol is a brain-breaking collection of mysteries all wrapped up in one absurd narrative and is a must-have for lovers of investigation games. While it doesn’t quite replace the original game in my heart, the puzzles are bigger and better, the plot progression is more fluid, and it’s all-around beefier. Golden Idol’s unique take on investigation and logical progression is as engrossing as it is difficult, and keeping up with its complex mysteries makes you feel like a master detective when you finally hit that “aha!” moment. I’m waiting with bated breath for those DLCs!
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
