TO Macabre Scene: A shadowy figure has just pushed someone into a high-voltage circuit box. The victim is trapped at the moment of death, sparks fly as his body convulses; Downstairs, everyone is frozen in shock the moment the lights went out. As you scrutinize this scene, you must determine who everyone is, where they are, why they are there, and of course, who committed this murder. You examine faces and objects, check everyone’s pockets to see what they have, read notes, posters and letters for clues. Over time, you piece it together and complete a report with the missing words that explains exactly who, what, when, where, and why.
Rise of the Golden Idol is a 1970s alternate reality detective game where each individual scene, once solved, tells you something about a larger mystery. It’s a sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol, set 300 years after that game’s exploration-era mystery, but on the trail of that same cursed object. Some of these scenes are relatively harmless, even funny, like the drive-in where an unexpected fire sends costumed patrons scrambling to get out. Others are gruesome: In the opening case, a choke plays out in an infinite loop like a boomerang Instagram story.
Solving these cases is extremely satisfying, although you better have a good memory for names and faces. Scenes can have 10 or more people and I needed a notebook to keep track. Increasingly obvious hints are offered when you get stuck, but as the game warns, using them robs you of the pleasure of using your deductive reasoning. However, when I figured out the main purpose of a case but couldn’t understand someone’s last name, I was glad for the button that showed me which blanks had been filled in incorrectly in my reports.
It’s the strangeness of Rise of the Golden Idol that makes it so memorable: the intentionally grotesque art style, the characters’ asymmetrical faces and their crazy, shifting eyes, the pen-painted backgrounds. The murders, robberies and other crimes here are strange, the frames disturbing in their eternal two-second loops of motion. I found it difficult to get a scene out of my head until I solved it, which left me staring at my phone screen for half an hour straight, thinking, cross-referencing, and jotting things down. Where does that character’s gaze take me? Why is that rug messy? Where did that stain come from?
The larger story that emerges from these details is worth all the effort. Between chapters, your fillable case reports become fillable summaries of everything you’ve learned from the past few cases, helping you make the connections that make the story full of intrigue. This is not a game you can play with your mind on something else; It requires you to pay close attention, focus your thoughts, and see what your brain can do. I was pleasantly surprised by my own reasoning powers.
The crime scenes are so strange that you never know where this game will take you, but you will always have what you need to solve it.