Guys, guys, guys. Girls, girls, girls. Enbies, enbies, enbies. Why aren't you playing The Case of the Golden Idol?
If you're into sleuthing and snooping, if you like detective stories and games of deduction, if you enjoyed Return of the Obra Dinn, you should really go ahead and play Case of the Golden Idol. I had seen the lovely people over at
Nextlander play the PC version briefly and I thought it seemed neat, so I gave it a shot when it hit the Switch a couple of days ago.
I didn't really expect to play it much right now, given that I'm busy with the masterpiece that is Tears of the Kingdom, but I actually ended up playing Case of the Golden Idol aaaaalllllll day today. Basically beat the game in one seven hour sitting, just because I couldn't get myself to stop playing. It's that good. Also, my self-discipline is that bad. But mostly, the game is just that good.
At its core, Case of the Golden Idol is a point-and-click style adventure game, where you use your deductive powers to solve mysteries. The game is divided into chapters which in turn are divided into cases that function as levels. Every case is essentially a snapshot of a past (often very macabre) event for you to investigate and contextualize. You won't be able to actually interact with anything or anyone, and you won't be able to affect the outcomes of the events, but you are able to listen in on conversations and examine environments and objects to your heart's content.
"No, stop! Don't jump up here feet first like that, you idiot! You might kick me in the face!"During your investigations you will alternate between the exploration screen that depicts the events, and the thinking screen, which serves as a tracker for the information you've gathered and the conclusions you need to piece together in order to advance to the next case. It starts off easy enough, with one single screen to investigate, one character clearly killing another, and some conveniently placed items to help you identify the respective identities and motives, but the complexity soon ramps up. In time you will have several locations to look around, groups of characters to get to know and chains of events that need to be sorted before you can separate the clues from the red herrings. Case of the Golden Idol does an admirable job of making the player feel clever as they put two and two together, and I only felt that I resorted to trial and error on one single occasion.
This is the thinking screen for the first case. All cases' thinking screens are different because each case's goals are different, which keeps the game from becoming repetitive.The cases seem only tangentially conncted at first, but you'll soon realize that they're all connected to one epic, overarching plot, and the writing is good enough - both in the individual cases and the game as a whole - that you'll want to keep going to see how it all ends. There are grim goings on and plenty of drama, but there's also a lot of subtle humor in there, which is amplified by the borderline naïve art character designs and some truly striking scenes.
Best looking dog in videogames since dogs invented videogames.I honestly don't know what else to say about this game without blurting out spoilers left and right. Look, if you're into puzzles, if you like mysteries and adventure games and you want a cool story to enjoy over a weekend or so, you should totally give Case of the Golden Idol a shot.
