The Case of the Golden Idol (2022)

The moment you solve the dinner party case, the game goes into hyperdrive. I kept looking at the clock being like it's getting late- I should stop. IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY Of course David Gorran was the Darkhand Initiate signalling the poison to Walter Keane with the wine tankard! It's so obvious!!

A really special game so far. I shouldn't have waited so long to give this one a try.

I feel the newest DLC that came out yesterday was not quite as good as the Spider of Lanka DLC. But I did enjoy how the story made everything fully connect.

I thought the thinking puzzles on this didn't have the same spark of creativity that the others had, as I think the focus here was much more on the complexity of the characters and the society in the exploration scenes. I think they just chose to focus on the Exploration screen more than the Thinking screen this go-round, which I'm sure others may like more than me.

There's a huge barrier to describing this game, so I'm not sure I'll be the one that does it well. I would suggest if you are remotely interested to go download the demo.

This game is mostly a Sherlock Holmes detective point-and-click experience where you explore a relatively static scene and collect words that are then used to fill in what happened and solve the scene. There's 11 scenes that all tell a cohesive story, and then an epilog that tie it all together.

The story is odd at best, but very interesting too. The art is unique, though nothing that will tax your GPU in the slightest. I would highly suggest playing with the hot spots turned on so you know where the clues are instead of trying to guess what they want you to click on.

The only downsides are that this game has about zero replayability and that it's short. I literally doled out how much I could play a night so it wouldn't end too quickly.

I hope if you play this, you get as much joy from it as I did.

~David.

Pretty simple review - loved the game, found the gameplay incredibly fun. I liked taking out my notebook and jotting down mental notes, piecing the puzzle together. I figured out the hook at the end a little early and was proud of myself for it. As well the game does not overstay its welcome. The game does exactly what it says it will on the tin, and I love it for that.

The shadow of Obra Dinn looms large, but the golden idol stands on its own!

My last game from the Steam demo showcase, this one's a murder mystery adventure. You scan smallish environments for clues, and these clues then populate a list of words which you use to fill in the blanks on a sort of murder madlib that details the facts of the case.

The demo mysteries were quite short, the pre-completed sections of the madlib basically led you by the hand to the solution, and your word list being limited to objects and people present at the scene feels like it severely limits the kinds of inferences the game can push players to make. But it's still neat to see new ideas crop up in the genre.