Case of the Golden Idol – Review

Making an artistic work is often discussed in film, literature, and music. It’s as if Kubrick wrought each negative by hand and Bowie sculpted each crotchet; the word “craft” suggests a skill, even a vocation. However, video games are a newer art form that emphasises design and mechanics, which are best described as industrial processes that eliminate the need for a human’s fallible touch. However, in The Case of the Golden Idol, the pieces of the puzzle are so precisely shaped that they evoke a jigsaw that was cut by hand.

Explore a series of murders that span 40 years and multiple chapters in this alternative 18th-century England. In each chapter, you’ll be presented with a still image of a crime scene from which you’ll need to draw conclusions about what happened. In one of the earliest chapters, for instance, I get to attend a fancy dinner party as a guest of honour. Guests at the dinner table cluster around a body lying motionless on the Chaise Longue. The servants are grumbling about their master and a mysterious young man named Pip is hanging out in the stairwell.

A watch, a handkerchief with a monogram, and a poison pen letter are among the items I don my deerstalker for as I begin to sift through the evidence. As a result of following some of the clues, I have added highlighted words to a deck at the bottom of my screen. I enter “Thinking” mode once I’ve looked over every possible lead. I see several incomplete sentences here. I use the cards in my hand (and my sleuthing skills) to figure out who did it.

Although a whodunit, The Case of the Golden Idol is about much more than that. It’s a test of your ability to think creatively by forcing you to look for answers beyond those provided in the text. To give just one example, I have no idea where the murder occurred in the first chapter. I pause, re-examine all of the clues, and focus on the window until I see a yacht cruising by. My mind suddenly clicks back onto the map on the wall, and I make a mental note of the one village that actually has a view of the river. This game is so goddamn clever that it never fails to give me a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

Just like Bez on a dreary Tuesday morning, the high quickly fades. More so if you find yourself in a bind. Thanks to one of the best hint systems in a puzzle game, I was able to complete The Case of the Golden Idol. Instead of just giving you the answer, the game gives you a few hints that make you look at the evidence in a different way. If you insist, we can give you a small puzzle to solve in exchange for one. Each hint is intentionally cryptic, providing only a token prod in the right direction. That, however, is the point. The game is so sure of itself (and rightly so) that it actively encourages you to take your time and experiment with different strategies.

The level of difficulty and complexity increases dramatically after the first few chapters. Initially, it may seem like too much to take in. A murder scene that began in one room has spread throughout a Manor house. Although there are more textual clues to uncover in this section, the game throws in a few false leads, and since there are often several words that could theoretically fill in any given blank, brute forcing a solution is problematic. Which I will freely admit I have tried multiple times out of impatience. Then I remember that the Case of the Golden Idol specifically requests that I take my time with it.

However, there are times when the game’s bugs and glitches become an obstacle. Due to the simplistic nature of the pixel art, it can be difficult to recognise familiar faces in the Thinking screen. The absurd nature of the game is complemented by the outsider art aesthetic, which gives the game’s seedy watering holes and ostentatious mansions a genuine feel.

While the gameplay has been compared to Return of the Obra Dinn, the game’s visuals are more akin to Papers, Please, with their crude and dehumanising portrayals of citizens living under a totalitarian regime. In a similar vein, the politics of The Case of the Golden Idol are resembling more of the Soviet Union than of England. When you solve each murder but can do nothing to prevent the next one, you feel helpless. Still, political elites pull rank to protect their own, leading to the punishment of innocent people.

Gameplay in The Case of the Golden Idol is both difficult and absorbing. Deftly woven through tales of political intrigue and the macabre is a puzzle that will test even the most seasoned puzzle solver. The rough pixel art can be distracting at times, but the game’s skilled development makes up for it.