The Case of the Golden Idol Critic Reviews

The Case of the Golden Idol is a game of reasoning, elegantly modest in execution – the artwork is rudimentary, but strikingly so – but one that often requires extravagant feats of deduction. Genuinely new and inventive forms of play are relatively rare in video games, a medium that more often trades in refinement than revolution. Which makes this even more thrilling. Its puzzles are inventive, but so too is the way they must be solved, allowing both a trial-and-error approach and pure deductive reasoning. A game of wondrous, Sherlockian texture that plays out in our own imagination as much as on screen.

The Case of the Golden Idol is one of the biggest surprises of this year. I liked the demo a lot, but I honestly wasn't expecting the full game to go far beyond that and offer a completely original and memorable experience like Return to Obra Dinn. You'll be sorry if you miss it.

Some flow hiccups will do little to interrupt the fun for most players, who will instead see a uniquely clever game, full of wonderful idiosyncrasies, that tells a delightful tale of murder and deceit.

Its fun gameplay and coordinated story will have you dive deep into its details until you discover all its secrets.

This is one of those games that make you feel smart, thanks to a fantastic design and very interesting mysteries to solve. Something very unique and easy to recommend if you’re looking for something different.

A challenging and inventive set of mysteries to solve tied together with a brilliant storyline.

The Case of the Golden Idol is a tight adventure with good mechanics, excellent design for all the scenes, and great presentation. Players should try to play a sequence at a time, savor the clues and avoid relying on the hint system as much as possible. Playing with a group of people will probably make the entire experience, with or without hints, even more enjoyable. The Case of the Golden Idol shows what Color Gray Games can do with a solid premise and carefully designed scenarios and I would love to see their set of skills applied to other settings.

The Case of the Golden Idol is a brilliant and original detective point & click adventure, supported by an excellent art direction and some really fresh ideas about its gameplay.

The Case of the Golden Idol is an excellent debut. Color Gray has learned the lesson of Return of the Obra Dinn and reinterpreted it with its own style. The cases to be solved are well thought out and to come to grips with puzzles that require deduction and intelligence rather than skill with the classic mechanics of the genre is quite satisfying. The Latvian developer duo in his first game shows they have personality, including in the graphic style that does not mind being disturbing and in the appropriate background music, all of which conveniently mystery-themed.

As a debut title from a new indie team, it's difficult to imagine how things could have gone better: Gray Color Games has indeed managed to create a charming and well-crafted investigative adventure that every wannabe detective should really consider playing.

A truly great detective story needs a satisfying conclusion - and here the Klavins deliver, and then some.

While I do think there was room for some additional quality of life features here, and it sometimes gets a bit too clever for its own good, The Case of the Golden Idol took me back to my childhood, reminding me of the puzzles I once loved while putting its own spin on things that would only work in a video game. This idol might be cursed, but you should still take a chance on it.

For situations where players have exhausted all their available options and brainpower, The Case of the Golden Idol also offers a fantastic in-game hint system. It doesn't overreach and offer solutions blatantly, but instead uses phrases like "consider the food on the dinner table, and everyone's personal eating habits" to point confused players in the right direction. None of the puzzles presented in the game are impossibly difficult (except for one late game chapter which suddenly threw maths in, but that could be my own personal shortcomings) and the story it tells about the golden idol itself is delightfully weird and fleshed out despite the game's short runtime. For anyone looking for 3-6 hours of cryptic crossword-like murder mysteries, The Case of the Golden Idol is a solid choice.

Another great indie detective game that not only makes solving crimes fun and interesting but has some surprisingly good storytelling to tie everything together.

Triple Click Podcast has been going on and on about this being one of the best unsung games of the year, and it's easy to see why. The ability to get on with, enjoy and progress through this title makes one feel intelligent, and there's even a touch of smugness that's attached to that feeling. On more than a couple of occasions, The Case of the Golden Idol requires some leaps in logic to reach the conclusion, in absence of having all of the information needed to be certain, and this is so well done as one will self-reflect that they are a genius for figuring it out. Otherwise, it is a very slow and rigid title that will no doubt be an acquired taste for many - the last two cases in particular are extremely difficult, and with little flexibility for experimentation it could be easy to run into a hard stop. At the end of the day, there is nothing else in the whodunit genre that represents what it was like to be Father Dowling on an intellectual level any better.

In The Case of the Golden Idol, the mystery-solving is quite engaging up to a point. But overall, the narrative is frustratingly executed and the presentation is unremarkable.

The Case Of The Golden Idol has more of a John Watson vibe – a few steps behind their resident super sleuth, but always in the same ball park, and that's what counts here, I think. This is certainly the closest I've seen another game try and emulate Obra Dinn's grisly murder sketches, and the fact it does them so well, and with such a keen eye for detail and visual flourish, is a credit to Color Gray Games' two-strong dev team. Its gurning cast of ne'er-do-wells may not be quite as nuanced as their nautical rivals, but they'll definitely stick just as long in your little grey cells. And if you've been very close attention, you'll now be able to fill out these blanks right here: The _____ Of The _____ _____ is _____ and I _____ it to bits.

Witty, observational writing and a hands-off approach to deduction elevate this excellent period murder-mystery to a singular work.

The Case of the Golden Idol is a game that makes me feel like a TV detective, slapping photos on a wall and drawing red lines between them. Those strings of yarn crisscross throughout my notebook, connecting characters and murder weapons and motives. It’s easy to get sucked into small details looking for a lead, but the feeling it gives when I’ve locked in the correct answers… It’s like I’m the most brilliant person on earth — even if just for a moment. The Case of the Golden Idol, like other deep detective games, expands past its own boundaries and into the pages of my notebook, leaving me thinking about its clues long after I’ve closed the game.

The Case of the Golden Idol is one of those games that I wish I could forget and play all over again for the first time. I’ve heard it compared to Return of the Obra Dinn, and I also think you’ll like Golden Idol if you’re a fan of games like Sam Barlow’s Telling Lies or Immortality. But I’m hopeful that Golden Idol developers Color Gray Games will use their clever Mad Libs-style system again in the future; even after beating the game, I feel like there’s still a lot we don’t know about the mysterious golden idol.