My biggest issue with detective games is that they rarely feel like real sleuthing. Most common of them all are linear stories that hold your hand and hope you’ll feel smart because you’ve managed to fit a square block into a square hole. It’s not a problem, per se. DISCO ELYSIUM is, to a huge degree, such a game - a singular story that wants to be told, but you can arrive at it via many converging stories. The fun there lies in excellent writing, world-building, and characters that feel alive. But sometimes I wish for a detective game where my observational powers would be tested. Where my ability to perceive the hidden, join loosely fitting facts, and emerge with a rationale that fits the narrative would be appreciated.
No wonder that THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL is so beloved, with raving reviews left and right. And I sure as heck won’t try to be the Armond White of game critiques, so my voice will add to this ever-growing pile of praise. Because the game nails this feeling. This injection of rapid euphoria when everything clicks in place, when all the facts emerge from murky waters of obfuscation. When you finally join the pins on your mental corkboard, draw your red string between the morsels of data. The game peaks at those moments, making you feel smarter than ever before - as if your third eye had opened and now you can see beyond sight.
The formula is pretty straightforward. You are tossed into a rather static scene, with someone in the said scene being very dead. You are a floating essence of justice, I reckon, an invisible voyeur that can peek into people's pockets, see through locked doors, and work outside time. Your job is to comb through the scene with obsessive diligence. Take notes. Remember things. Figure out relations between both objects and people present. Conjure dates from clues. And most importantly, find the chain of events that lead to the situation you’re seeing in front of you.
To do that each scenario lets you collect words from your sleuthing, building a little lexicon of terms and names which you’ll then use when your Thinking Cap is on. Every scene has its cards to fill, giving you a little bit of insight into what is expected of you, with some of those scrolls acting more like hint sheets. That is, filling them up first should make figuring out the main mystery easier. The game doesn’t punish experimentation in any fashion, so if you wish to brute force some of the solutions, you can arm yourself with patience and just do it. But I found I never needed such crutches. Initial scenarios are rather straightforward, but the difficulty escalates a lot. Every following scene demands a little more of you. More attention. More notes. More memory is applied to hold a flood of info. But most of all - and a thing I cherish most about this game - it asks you not only to remember the data it feeds you but to be able to extrapolate an event occurrence from visual clues alone. Footprints in the mud. Embroidery on the handkerchief. Paintings in a room. Those elements become more and more important as the story progresses…
Oh yes. The story. It’s a fun and well-executed idea that each scenario is followed by another in some chronological order, each set of three forming a chapter of sorts. The visual art style is a bit crude and smells obsolete with strong MS Paint vibes, but it all serves a purpose - it lightens the mood and, for once, makes the gruesome scenes less so. The music on the other end is excellent, suspenseful, and keeps the atmosphere well in check. All that works well together, tying the individual cases into a rather riveting story of a secret society, mysterious magics from the ancient past, and of course, characters, vying for power and influence by any means necessary to achieve their underhanded goals.
THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL is a lighter game. With a dozen cases, it can be knocked out from start to finish in a single longer evening. It took about four hours to wrap up the epilogue and see the game completed. Of course, your experience might vary. Some of the later cases might stump you for longer. Or you can fly through it even faster. But there’s also a clear-cut accessibility to how you want to complete it - maybe one case every day with a cup of tea? Or a chapter every session? It feels good no matter how you aim to devour this pie.
All in all, I can recommend this title to anyone who wants a game of detective work that does not hold your hand. That expects from you some degree of logical thinking. A keen eye for detail. It delivers neat packages of small, digestible cases that nonetheless will test your perceptions and give you enough of a challenge to feel utterly satisfying to complete. It’s a great game with a lot of charm - and I, for once, am very excited now for the sequel to come.Â
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