The Case of the Golden Idol

I love playing as a detective and The Case of the Golden Idol is one of the best detective games I have ever played. It took me a while to get the time to play this game, but when I did, I was hooked and I mean hooked right from the start. The game throws you in at the deep end and you never come up, you truly feel like a detective trying to piece together all these strange murders all the while uncovering the secrets of the golden idol itself.

50 Years In The Making

The story of The Case of the Golden Idol is awesome and it sees us playing a detective who needs to solve a series of murders (there are 12) that have occurred over a 50 year time frame that are all connected to this strange thing called the golden idol which is a powerful and magical relic in the possession of this very rich British family. The story has a great sense of humor about it and it is sure to make you smile a great deal, especially with some of the character interactions and as you learn more about each case and the characters involved.

Working The Crime Scene

The Case of the Golden Idol starts you off with a guy who has been pushed off a cliff and it just throws you right into this murder and you need to figure it out. The way the game presents its story is very clever and most people refer to another game, Return of the Obra Dinn as that was a huge inspiration for this. The game does not just hold your hand the whole way through, it makes you feel like a detective as you piece the story together little by little. I love this kind of stuff and was hooked pretty much right from the start, but at the same time, I can understand and appreciate how this form of storytelling is not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

The World’s Greatest Detective

That was a cheesy reference to Batman: Arkham Knight, but it is actually very fitting. When the case starts, time freezes and you are free to click around and go where you want. You can click on a person and see what they have in their pockets. You can go to a room and ransack the place to search for clues. It is all about finding the right clues and the right evidence, but then you need to piece it all together. You unlock words such as push, killed, exploring, character names, and so on when you enter “thinking mode” and it is here you put together the case of what happened, who did it, and why. Some cases are harder than others. What I liked was that I figured out you should literally go through everything in each case as some cases have the same characters and learning more in one case can help you in the next.

No VGA Adapter Needed Here

As someone who grew up in the 90s, I adore the whole visual style that The Case of the Golden Idol has going on. It looks like a high end point-and-click-adventure game that would have been on PC or the Amiga. The game has a ton of personality and it is like a very high end kind of pixel art. I love the humor that the game has and this is very evident in the way the characters look in certain situations. I also have to say that the art style actually makes you have to do more detective work, finding a tattoo or seeing something that you missed before are all intentional things that have been done to make you really look and scrub each scene you are in to try and find the clue that can crack your case wide open.

Pros:

• This is one of the greatest detective/puzzle games I have ever played
• I got a huge kick out of the visual style of the game
• The puzzles are tough, but they are all solvable with a bit of detective work!
• I loved the whole mystery around the golden idol

Cons:

• Some cases are close to being a tad too cryptic
• If detective/puzzle games are not your cup of tea, this may not win you over

The Case of the Golden Idol is a detective Point & Click, a crime cartoon adventure with puzzle elements, where the player must turn on deduction to get to the bottom of the crime.

Gameplay:

• The player finds himself at the scene of a brutal crime
• Act as an investigator, collect evidence - examine the safe or the box, look into notes and letters, consider the bloody knife
• Complete mini-quests. Find out the names of the actors, find out how the guests sat at the dinner before the murder - solving small puzzles, you will solve a big case