A detective game about discovering the conspiracy around the golden idol. It all starts with a murder
This is one of those games where discovering the story is the whole joy of the game, so I’ll give a brief gameplay explainer that will only cover the first investigation, and then just leave you with a “if you like detective and puzzle games, go play this one”. As for all my other knowledge based progression recommendations, here are the links.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770 £16.99 (Demo Available)
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/the-case-of-the-golden-idol £16.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/The-Case-of-the-Golden-Idol-Complete-Edition-2677730.html £24.99 (includes all DLC)
A man is being pushed off a cliff, but what’s going on and why. That’s what you’ve gotta try and figure out, and the first step to do so is exploring. Looking around the scene you’ll spot some flashing yellow markers, indicating a clickable location. Click it to open the container or talk to the person or look at the thing, and you’ll either find more clickables, or some details.
And here’s where you’ll encounter the game’s trick: Clicking words and names will add them to your library at the bottom of the screen. You will need these words to form ideas and hypotheses, and fill in scrolls to explain what happens in the story. Well, you’ll need some of these words. It’s up to you to figure out which ones.
Names are always in red, they can be mapped to identities to figure out who is where in the scene, and do be aware that character designs are consistent between investigations, so if you figure out who someone is during one investigation, you can be pretty sure of who they are in another one. Other words are colour coded depending on the investigation, but where they are used in the scrolls will also match the colours.
These words are used in the thinking panel. This is how this game makes sure you’re paying attention and how it makes you feel like a detective, without making it too easy to guess or brute force the puzzles that you don’t know. You’ll be presented with usually a scroll, a list of identities, and some supplimental material, each with a number of slots that you can fill in with the words you collect. You only need to complete the scroll to beat each level and progress the plot (as well as understand the story), but the other panels will help your detective work flow easier and provide more context to the puzzle and the people involved.
Puzzles are validated in sections. The thinking panel is split into usually 3 or more subsections, and filling in every box in that section will mark it as correct (or tell you if you have 1-2 mistakes, or are just wrong) and once correct, it’ll declutter your library by locking the words into the slots. You can still drag words from a solved panel into an unsolved one, so you don’t lose access to the words. It does provide a huge help knowing for sure that the people are who you think they are, as it makes filling in the scroll more streamlined.
Starting in the third investigation, the game does have a hint system, though you’ll have to at least try the puzzle first before they let you use it, as in order to earn a hint, you have to complete a captcha (for lack of a better word) first, which involves pairing off images that are present in the scene with the corresponding words. Some of these are easy like the names of objects, some require mapping names to faces, though you only need first names here, not both names, so once you have enough knowns, you can guess to get the rest.
The Case of the Golden Idol is a masterclass in environmental storytelling, as the entire point of the game is to use clues presented in a mostly static scene to piece together what is going on in the wider story. Rewarding keen observers and detectives with a breadcrumb trail towards a grand conspiracy, and giving story revelations that occur later in the game much more weight by letting them recontextualize earlier scenes.
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