Recent reviews by silentStatic

The Rise of the Golden Idol (RGI) is a great sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol (CGI), and a great deduction game in its own right.

The art style has changed (more painterly, less pixel-art), but overall feels more cohesive than how CGI felt, as that game sometimes had some jarring graphical seems. Overall I think that you can easily figure what what things are supposed to be, and the presentation is very evocative of the alt-history 1970’s era it is placed in.

The story itself is more idol shenanigans, but sometimes told in a non-linear manner, making important that you keep dates and causal relations in mind when deducing where you are in the story. To help us, the developers now also require that we deduce/fill out forms for the chapters, and not only the stories themselves (or at the end of the story, as we did in CGI). This helps to hammer home the what, who, why and so on, making the story much more understandable.

As implied above, the gameplay remains the same, you hunt for keywords and then use them to fill out a form to explain what exactly went down in the animated scene you see. You complete the scene when you fill out all the forms explaining what exactly happened in the scene. To help you you have some sub-goals where you can identify things like the name of all the people in the scene, who own what bag, and things like that.

To support some of these new sub-goals the UI has also been changed, and the result is a mixed bag. Instead of having either to toggle between “Exploration” or “Thinking” screen, you are now always on the “Exploration” screen and the questions for that chapter or scene are shown in smaller windows you can toggle and drag around to your liking. On one hand, it was clear by the end of the last DLC of CGI that the developers ambition for complex forms was reaching a breaking point, on the other hand the windows introduce a lot of clutter, obscuring some of the information you need to solve them, so it feels like a three steps forward, two steps back kind of situation, even if you can hide all the windows by the press of a button on the UI or keyboard. Navigation between the different chapters and scenes are however a snap, and you can jump around to get a better understanding of the overall plot.

The music once again great to sell the location and its ambiance.

As far as length goes the base RGI has more cases than base CGI, and took me nearly as long to beat as CGI did with all its DLC, making it a good value proposition in my eyes.

If you like these kinds of deduction games I would heartily recommend getting The Rise of the Golden Idol.

The Case of the Golden Idol is a great deduction game.

The game traces the path of eponymous idol and the deaths and murders that happens in its wake. The game is mostly set in alt-history 18th Britain (in this world called Albion), and is presented in an interesting high-res pixel-art style that uses extensive dithering and limited palate that reminds me of the graphical style of the old Sierra On-Line adventure games.

The gameplay consists of you entering an animated scene, taking in the death or murder, clicking on hot-spots to gain words, or closer inspect an item, and then when you have gotten all words, try to fill out a form explaining what exactly happened in the scene. To help you along with the main objective, the game presents you with non-vital sub-objectives (like naming all the people in the scene) that will help you to answer to final question correctly. The game also helps you by telling you when you have only two wrong answers, a bit like how The Return of the Obra Dinn only validates the crew-peoples fates when you have gotten 3 fates right.

The UI consists of the two states: The Exploration mode and the Thinking mode. In the Exploration mode you can explore the scene (which sometimes consists of multiple screens that you navigate between) and click on hotspots (which can be hidden) to gain words or clues. In the Thinking mode you fill out the form of what exactly went down.

Overall, The Case of the Golden Idol is a great game if you like deduction games, and I feel it tells a good story. I can also recommend both of its DLC, as it provides some interesting supplementary information on the Idol and the world it is in.

Good story, great gameplay, interesting levels, best telekinesis in any game I have ever played!