Color Gray Games' The Case of the Golden Idol is a unique blend of cryptic puzzles and intriguing murder investigations, and despite a few obtuse solutions provides satisfying and cathartic gameplay throughout. Animated in beautiful-yet-grimy pixel art and best played with a mouse and keyboard (controller is included but not recommended), The Case of the Golden Idol tells a story of power, greed, and corruption spread over generations, one which gets surprisingly large in scope near the end.
It's hard to not think about Lucas Pope's Return of the Obra Dinn while playing The Case of the Golden Idol, and a quote from Pope on the game's Steam page praising The Case of the Golden Idol's demo appears to confirm at least one source of Color Gray Games' inspiration. Unlike Obra Dinn, however, TCOTGI splits its central mystery up into separate chapters spanning over 70 years. This works well as a pacing device, as each chapter can take anywhere between fifteen minutes to a full hour to complete (depending on how quickly character motives can be intuited) and rolling directly into a new scenario after just completing the previous one can be a bit overwhelming.
The Case of the Golden Idol's gameplay is simple but engaging. Players are dropped into a situation immediately after a tragic event has happened, and while time stands still they must search the surrounding area to try and ascertain who died, why, and who else was involved. There are two main modes players will swap between, Exploring and Thinking, but it is the Thinking screen where the most important decisions take place.
TCOTGI's Exploring mode (pictured above) is a glorified point-and-click-like pixel hunt where players navigate through multiple screens and click on hotspots to either get a closer look at an item, add the subject's associated keyword to the growing list of clues at the bottom of the screen, or both. The game supplies a hotspot indicator for players to use if they are having trouble finding the clickable areas on their own, but while playing for review there was only one time when I needed to turn it on to find something; the rest of the time, these indicators felt completely unnecessary. There is a surprising amount of depth to these scenes, and players can find themselves clicking on a person to zoom into their pockets, then opening up a book inside that pocket, then opening up a letter inside that book, finding new clues all along the way. Unfortunately, not all of these clues are relevant to the matter at hand.
Thinking mode is where the fun detective gameplay of The Case of the Golden Idol really comes together. In each of the game's twelve chapters players are presented with different "scrolls" which need to be filled in properly, and players must combine what they learned in Exploring mode with the clues they have on hand to figure out the proper order of events. It's quite rare that everything discovered near a murder is relevant to it, and the puzzle comes in trying to figure out through conversations, notes, visual clues, and lateral thinking who everyone is and what they are currently doing. This is also why players want to be using a mouse instead of a controller, as the controller analog stick simply moves an on-screen cursor which must be used to click and drag clues into their appropriate spots.
For situations where players have exhausted all their available options and brainpower, The Case of the Golden Idol also offers a fantastic in-game hint system. It doesn't overreach and offer solutions blatantly, but instead uses phrases like "consider the food on the dinner table, and everyone's personal eating habits" to point confused players in the right direction. None of the puzzles presented in the game are impossibly difficult (except for one late game chapter which suddenly threw maths in, but that could be my own personal shortcomings) and the story it tells about the golden idol itself is delightfully weird and fleshed out despite the game's short runtime. For anyone looking for 3-6 hours of cryptic crossword-like murder mysteries, The Case of the Golden Idol is a solid choice.
The Case of the Golden Idol releases October 13, 2022 for PC. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the purpose of this review.
The Case of the Golden Idol
- Released
- October 13, 2022
