Analysis of The Rise of the Golden Idol – the triumphant return of one of the best detective games of recent times

The Rise of the Golden Idol further develops the original’s unique combination of investigation and biting humor to create another great detective game.

In this section, we’d like to present at the end of each year a selection of games that we think more people should play. In 2022, one of these games was the detective game The Case of the Golden Idol, developed by Color Gray, a studio created by two brothers from Latvia, whose main inspiration was one of the key games of the genre: Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope (Documents , Please”). Beneath the grotesque pixel art was a very clever puzzle game that told a fantastic story through our own observations and deductions. The second part of Golden Idol will be released in 2024 in a completely different context, without the surprise factor. Despite this, it was nice to see that it lived up to everything that could be expected of it and more.

Rise of the Golden Idol is set in the 1970s, roughly two centuries after the events of the original game, and relegates the mysterious Golden Idol and the chaotic events that followed its discovery to a footnote in the book’s history. The reappearance of a powerful artifact has once again shaken dozens of lives: from a team of scientists paid by a megacorporation to a hippie foundation trying to gain sympathy from around the world.

At a basic level, the structure is retained from The Case of the Golden Idol. Each scene freezes a strange moment in time and allows us to calmly explore all the elements present to arrive at names, verbs, adverbs and adjectives; We will need to place each word in the correct place in the sentence to describe what exactly happened. Before we begin to unravel the whole mystery, we can reveal some minor clues that will help us clarify the context; For example, it may be advisable to find out the names of everyone present or establish a timeline before attempting to complete the actions that occurred. As with Return of the Obra Dinn, the game does not automatically check whether each individual word is in the correct position or not, but instead evaluates the entire story. If we miss more than three answers, we will be told that the solution is “wrong” and we will only receive a warning that we are close to correct when the number of errors is less than two.

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Rise has the same doses of caustic humor as the first part, but is amplified by the context in which it decides to place the sequel. The edgy characters who become regular participants in the puzzles retain the cartoonish and greedy nature that Cloudsley and company demonstrated in The Case of the Golden Idol, but the misguided 70s capitalism and cult movements further strengthen the game’s message and give wings to everyone. about funny situations. The variety of situations is even greater than in the first game: of course, we will have murders and accidents, but the new era allows us to move on to bizarre prison breaks, to a peaceful cult demonstration in front of a laboratory, or to the disastrous conclusion of a talent show. Some of them seem disconnected from the idol’s story at first, but we can tell you that Color Gray doesn’t work without a thread.

One of Golden Idol’s greatest strengths is its ability to integrate puzzles with narrative in a way that is reminiscent of language deciphering games like Heaven’s Vault or Chants of Sennaar, as well as diegetic interface-based games like Her Story and Immortality. Although there are small animated scenes between chapters, the story really happens as we solve the puzzle, as each word falls into place and doubts about what happened are cleared up. The Rise of the Golden Idol masterfully introduces all sorts of twists and turns in the scenario that depend solely and exclusively on the gameplay.

The main change from the first game is the updated look, with pixel art giving way to a more vector-based style. Despite this change, Rise maintains the game’s graphical identity with characters deformed and exaggerated to unexpected extremes. Beyond the purely visual aspect, this change allows the sequel to add more movement to the scenes and give more force to the personality of each of the characters we meet. In fact, one of Rise’s most original puzzles is based precisely on the game’s new ability to offer us animations.

Another new feature compared to the first part is the interface, which was previously divided into a research phase and a response phase. Rise offers us a series of “boxes” of puzzles, the visibility of which we can activate or deactivate, allowing us to have several active at the same time and move them around the screen so as not to lose sight of the exploration. It’s a slightly more cumbersome system at first, as sometimes multiple “boxes” overlap, but in return it allows for more complex puzzles to be solved, the solutions of which require more screen real estate. It certainly feels like it’s tailor-made for gaming with a mouse or touchscreen devices; We tried fiddling with the controller and found it quite confusing.

Getting back to the topic of difficulty, Rise has a slightly steeper difficulty curve than the first. Much like the two “Cases of the Golden Idol” DLCs, which assumed the player already had some experience of the original, the sequel plunges us into complex mysteries at a faster pace that invite us to have a notepad handy to clarify and take notes. While you can technically start playing the sequel, the puzzle level seems designed more to keep veterans comfortable rather than overwhelming newbies. As a member of the original group, I can attest that Rise always somehow manages to inject its scenes with a twist to continually surprise during the ten or so hours it lasted me (about twice as long as the original).

At the end of each large chapter, which usually consists of three or four scenes, the game presents us with a large puzzle that allows us to understand exactly how all the previous shots are connected to each other. Chronological continuity isn’t always easy to determine, so solving chapter endings usually requires going back to all the already solved scenes to focus on the little details that add even more richness to the game universe.

Perhaps to compensate for this jump in difficulty, Rise includes a built-in hint system. The way it activates requires us to have some restraint: first it will offer general ideas on what to do when we get stuck (check the word order or look carefully at the scene again), but when we are sure that we want a hint, it will ask us: ” Let’s breathe quietly for a few seconds before giving us up to three clues about each mystery, each clearer than the last.”

However, the only time I had to go on the track was due to a small problem with the translations, which I had already reported to the team; The publisher told us that the localization will still receive some fixes before launch. Tip: If you are absolutely sure that your decision is correct, but the game does not listen to reason, it would be a good idea to play the game in English to check if there might be a problem with the word order or with certain nuances.

In “Rise of the Golden Idol” all the elements that were surprising in the original are developed even further: more complex puzzles, even more Dantean situations, a story even more full of plot twists… This leap in scale could become the reason for the identity of the original was lost by path, but the studio manages to use advances and changes to give even more strength to its unique identity. The result is another absolute must-have game for fans of detective games.