This month, the game studio Color Gray Games released the new detective game The Rise of the Golden Idol by brothers Andrejs and Ernests Kļaviņš. It is a sequel to their 2022 game The Case of the Golden Idol, which received wide international acclaim and the National Design Award of Latvia 2023 in the digital solutions category. Like the previous game, the new edition invites players to solve mysterious crimes linked by the Golden Idol.
The Rise of the Golden Idol is set in the 1970s, three centuries after the events depicted in the first game, The Case of the Golden Idol. The new release tells the story of a tenacious relic hunter in search of the fabled Golden Idol, which — if the legend is true — has the power to transform the world. The player becomes an observer who investigates twenty strange cases of crime, death, and depravity, gathering evidence and building their own theory of events.
In each scenario, the player is presented with a crime scene that contains various clues that gradually allow the player to reconstruct the course of events, identify the persons involved, and find out their motives. The player’s task is to unravel the events by solving the puzzles and filling in the missing information with the words collected in the crime scene. It should be noted that the puzzles are not easy and require both observation and logic, as well as some serious thinking. At times, players may find it useful to use a pen and paper to summarise the evidence they have collected. If you get stuck, there are also hints available, but the authors encourage you not to use them in order not to rob yourself of the joy of solving the mystery.
Several aspects of the UI design have been improved in the new release. To give players more freedom, the crime scene and puzzles are no longer in separate views — each puzzle and word tray has its own pop-up window that the player can freely move and combine with other windows as they continue to explore the crime scene. Automatic word collection has also been introduced — when a clue is discovered, all the words associated with it go into the tray without the need to click on each one.
Compared to the previous game, which was rendered in a pixel-art aesthetic, The Rise of the Golden Idol has a more modern look that resembles paintings, drawing on Ernests’ background in art. Despite the change in aesthetics, the style of the game is still vivid and recognisable: the scenarios are full of unusual details and expressive characters, this time reflecting the mood of the 1970s. Players will encounter an eccentric cult leader and enlightenment seekers, solve a crime in a drive-in movie theatre, and study several television programmes.
The Rise of the Golden Idol is available on Steam and Netflix Mobile. Publisher: Playstack.
Viedokļi