The Rise Of the Golden Idol is a sequel to 2022’s title called Case Of the Golden Idol, made by Color Gray games and published by Playstack. It is a brilliant visual novel like detective game but seemingly hides a much deeper narrative underneath the unique hand-drawn art and animations. It was released on November 14th and is available on all platforms.
Simple Gameplay But It Just Sucks You In
The overarching story is about the Golden Idol, a statue which has some sort of supernatural powers, in the previous game its origins and the quest for a family to get back the idol from whoever has it spans over 50 years and we as the player have to figure out what happened to the idol in each scenario which was the narrative in the previous game.
We still get the same mechanics of gameplay where we have two modes, ‘Exploring Mode’ and ‘Thinking Mode’, in Exploring Mode we point to whichever area of relevance we want to explore and click to go to that area. We can then click on any objects of relevance there too such as documents, chairs, tables, anything that can prove to be of any use to us as the detective.
Clicking on them reveals words and prompts that are associated with them, once we are finished with each level’s objects we then have a moment where we encounter puzzles where most will have us pick the correct words that were collected before to fit into the puzzle.
There is also a variety in the puzzles one has to solve, with each level there are a set of questions related to each chapter the player can attempt to solve. Such as finding out who came in first for a competition or what those seemingly benign symbols actually mean on a document.
A Masterclass In Narrative
This time the story comes forward some 200 years where we are in the 1970s, where the tale of the Idol has fallen into myth. We again play as a detective and start in a mental asylum where after a short cutscene showing the strangling of a guard, we are dropped to flex our skills in examination.
Detaching from the narrative that unfolded in the first game lets us experience a completely new story in trying to track down the whereabouts of the idol and who currently wields its life ending powers.
What remains an interesting piece of game direction is the fact that the individual chapters are not in chronological order, so it’s up to us to figure out what happened before and what happened after encountering the various characters. Most of these encounters where we have to deduce what happened first come a little later in the game as the first few levels serve to get the player comfortable.
A Compelling Narrative And Earns Its Place In Storytelling
A proper improvement when compared to its predecessor is the artstyle, the various characters we encounter now are more distinct and have more features due to its hand drawn style when the original had a more pixelated style that could not do justice to its characters.
It is also noteworthy that the game doesn’t include any voice acting and is carried entirely by its brilliant sound track that never fails to set the mood for the player wherever they are in the story or whatever chapter the player took a break in.
The gameplay is simple which makes it perfect getting it out of the way for its main attraction, the compelling, ridiculous and overall excellent narrative. It is sure to keep you guessing until the end across its 5 chapters filled with amazing puzzles, unique interactions and humorous outtakes.
Overall it deserves a spot in everyone’s library for its ability to put forward a narrative largely through solving puzzles and simple interactions where triple A studios build out expansive worlds but fail to provide anything of substance to its players in terms of story.
