The Case of the Golden Idol

I loved this game.

It masterfully creates an overwhelming feeling; initially, everything just looks like chaos. But by ingesting information, piece by piece, some order emerges.

This is further enhanced by the way the game makes you record your conclusions: questions aren’t leading, and they are often designed to support multiple different but plausible theories. It really is on you to draw the conclusions from the evidence. The fact that it never gets so convoluted that you feel you need to guess solutions is the icing on this cake.

Another standout for me was the story tying all investigations together. It’s not told at you; rather, you have to recognize people from previous scenes and piece together what happened in between for yourself. The stakes slowly escalate, the occult stuff gets progressively weirder, and everything culminates in a satisfying finale.

All of this with a unique and grotesque art style, many clever details, and a nicely escalating difficulty curve. An absolute standout in my recently discovered obsession with detective games.

DLC

The DLC are a direct prequel to the main games events. “The Spider of Lanka” is more of what I already loved. Unfortunately “The Lemurian Vampire” is really not.

If you’ve played the base game, you’ll play this to complete the story. It’s just a shame that chronologically, these will be the last cases you’ll play, and your experience won’t end on a high note.