Short game with a interwoven and engaging thread throughout revolving around the titular golden idol. Engages with a lot of themes and has good world building around it - expanded in the DLCs.

Visually it's kind of ugly - but in a sort of detailed way that works, one of the central premises is the greed and ambitions of people driving them to heinous lengths, so like maybe that's an intentional choice.

Gameplay is fun, though easily subject to brute forcing if you get stuck - though I guarantee anyone playing will have a moment where the solution (or indeed twists in the plot) will click and you'll feel like Neo seeing the code of the matrix - I honestly wish one could bottle that feeling and sell it. It's likened to the Obra Dinn, which to my understanding (having not played) has a narrative reason for your investigation, this does not - you're very much an outside perspective.

Ultimately, the game (and it's DLCs) provide a short but engaging narrative journey. It doesn't overstay it's welcome and I look forward to future work by these devs.

Playtime: 6-7 hours. %100.

A refreshing murder-mystery with a multi-layered story that touches family drama, colonial exoticism, 18th century politics and more. I especailly liked how the characters switch allegiances, evolve, or reappear throughout, kinda like a classical novel. I liked it a lot! Similar to Obra Dinn but I liked this more.

Recommended for adventure fans and anyone who is simply fed up with triple A gaming.

Adoro los juegos de misterio. Desde Obra Dinn, siempre he esperado la oportunidad de jugar juegazos que desafíen a la mente con misterios trepidantes y resoluciones que hacen explotar tu cabeza.

Y Golden Idol es todo eso. En un sistema SUPER CÓMODO, y recalco esto, de investigar diferentes escenarios de un crimen, avanzas en una historia que va creciendo y creciendo cada vez más. Cada giro y cada descubriendo que acabas haciendo te acaba sacudiendo con mucha fuerza. Es alucinante.

The Case of the Golden Idol es uno de los mejores juegos bajo la categoría ''misterio'' que he jugado en mi vida. Y os lo recomiendo a todos.

A really cool spin on what could be misconstrued as just a typical point-and-click mystery game. It was pretty well-balanced for me too, where no puzzle felt like it took too long or was too difficult - I was surprised at how in-depth some of the mysteries went, and the connections you had to make.
The DLC also helped to expand on the base game and round everything off, so I'm glad I didn't have to wait for those to release! The music and artwork all felt consistent and thought out, and I'm glad there was an option in the settings to toggle an indication for what was interactable, as I am not interested in wasting my time pixel hunting.

I'm delighted to see more deductive reasoning/"Obra Dinn-likes"--although in some ways it felt like a step back from Obra Dinn's ingenious logbook form of deduction. Instead, Golden Idol takes a "mad lib" approach: so as a necessity the game must rely on directly giving words to bank for solutions and explicitly providing information (for example, telling me directly a sword is clean or a latch is broken in tool tips) instead of allowing me to deduce.

Still, this allows for a wider variety of mysteries with more complicated stories playing out over many years. You'll come to recognize the same characters weaving in and out of the story and your general knowledge of the secrets of this world evolve alongside it (but not entirely paying off for me--I guessed the major twist early on). Golden Idol makes it easy to hop back to earlier scenarios to refresh your memory like you're Columbo coming back for "just one more thing"--although I couldn't always shake the feeling I was cheating when I did this.

I love games that compel me to pull out a notebook and start writing things down, which I was definitely doing here--although due to the heightened complexity of the type of mystery you're trying to solve, at times it felt more like rote information gathering, especially whenever the game would dump a pile of clues on my head. On that note, I do wish the game had let the player log a personal clue bank, like notes or diagrams that the player thought was valuable information.

The DLC saw a marked visual and musical upgrade, an improvement I'm excited to see Color Gray Games taking into their sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol.

the core gameplay isn’t particularly distinct from your run-of-the-mill point-and-click mystery game and does become tedious when playing for awhile. however, the story is super compelling and well-constructed without taking itself too seriously—a whimsical exploration of aristocratic control, desire, paranoia, and ruthlessness borne out by the enigmatic power of the titular idol. there was an incredible moment of clarity between the final level and epilogue that will stay with me long-term. loved the grimey and exaggerated aesthetic too

Tenía ganas de más juegos de deducción detectivesca al estilo de Obra Dinn y este juego me ha gustado bastante.

Se basa en una serie de viñetas de crímenes en las que debes conseguir pensar bien en la secuencia de hechos utilizando distintas palabras. Me recuerda a mecánicas de Tangle Tower. ¡Y funciona muy bien!

Cada viñeta es un misterio con un tono diferente en el que realmente se ponen a prueba las habilidades de razonamiento y deducción del jugador. Estar atento a pistas, información, textos y relaciones es crucial para resolver puzles que van más allá de "Quién ha matado al señor, dónde y con qué arma".

También he jugado los DLCs y me han sorprendido para bien. Se nota una mejora de ciertos valores y proponen cambios interesantes en sus mecánicas.

Bueno, si queréis un juego de detectives, ésta es una buena opción.