The Rise of the Golden Idol Review

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; Rise of the Golden Idol by Color Gray Games tells this classic story excellently.

What is The Rise of the Golden Idol?

In the second game within the Golden Idol series, you follow a new group of folks in the 1970s who discover a mythical artifact that gives them a certain level of influence over others. Through 25 different levels split into five distinct chapters, you will observe the group as they discover the pieces of the artifact, piece it back together and figure out how it works. Then in true Machiavellian fashion, they concoct a grand scheme to submit many people to their will. In Rise of the Golden Idol, you don’t actively affect the story but rather, you act as a detective trying to piece together what happened within each level. Most of the time, the individual scenes revolve around a crime mystery that you’ll need to solve.

This second entry in the series is loosely tied to the first game. You don’t necessarily have to play the first game to play this one, but players who play both will get some easter eggs and fun narrative surprises.

Core Gameplay of the The Rise of the Golden Idol

Much like the first game in the series: Case of the Golden Idol, you’ll need to rely on your deduction skill to make progress. When you start a new level, you’ll need to mouse around the level to figure out what happened. Each time you click on a specific part of the scene, you’ll gather more context. This context is inventoried as words. To progress, you need to use the context from the level and the words that you have collected to fill out a series of fill-in-the-blank puzzles. For my older readers, you’ll be faced with a murder Mad Lib. These puzzles will vary in complexity; on the simple side, you’ll need to gather the names of the folks involved in a scene or describe how someone was murdered. Puzzle types get more bespoke and complex as you make your way to the later levels. The size of the levels in the game varies; some of the simpler levels are a single screen – whereas many of the later levels span multiple screens or even periods.

What I love about the puzzles is that they force you to be observant. You’ll need to see how the different elements of the scene fit together and sometimes even use context that you gathered in a different scene to make solving the current scene even easier. I ended up playing this game with a partner for the entire time. It was really helpful to have multiple brains trying to solve each puzzle. I wouldn’t say that this game has a wildly high barrier to entry or was extremely difficult, but it helped to have multiple perspectives and minds working on it at once. Multiple times throughout my 16-hour playthrough of this one, we had high dopamine “eureka” moments – which is not a feeling that you get in many games. In particular, one of the puzzles caused my partner and I to audibly gasp when we realized what was going on. That realization will end up being one of my favourite moments of the year.

Rise of the Golden Idol is sort of like a great crossword puzzle with an added layer of deduction on top.

Presentation

I liked the presentation of Case of the Golden Idol but I loved the presentation of Rise of the Golden Idol. The graphics have been greatly improved from the original game by giving you more detail in the vignettes especially when you zoom in and look at characters and props more closely. The first game had a LucasArts adventure-game-inspired style, but this game breaks that mould. The characters are drawn in a deliberate cartoonish style but when you zoom in on a character’s face in particular, you move from a flat visualization of the character to a 3d image with way more detail that moves ever so slightly. Beyond the improvements to the art this time around, there have also been some improvements to the UI in the game that make playing a lot easier. In the first game, you had to flip back and forth between different two main screens – one to find clues and get context and another to solve the puzzle. This time around, you’re able to pull up individual windows easily, get context and solve the puzzles at the same time. Quality of life improvements are numerous here – even a simple toggle to minimize all windows goes a long way.

I would wholeheartedly recommend playing this one with a mouse and keyboard or with a tablet on the Netflix version of the game. I played it on a Steam Deck connected to a TV with a mouse and it worked well. The word bubbles in the game can get quite small and it’s just way easier to move those very small bubbles into the right spot with a mouse or your finger when using a tablet.

The Rise (and Fall) of the Golden Idol

I would say that I only have a single major complaint with The Rise of the Golden Idol. I found myself a little disappointed with the final puzzle and where the story ultimately lands – even though I had taken some notes and paid close attention throughout, I felt as though the final revelation didn’t bread-crumb itself well. Additionally, some of the scenes near the middle of the game seemed like prototypes that were shoehorned into the middle of the game to extend its length. Puzzle design was great, but the fit was suspect.

I would go into The Rise of the Golden Idol making sure to enjoy the ride – because a lot of enjoyment in my playthrough came from the individual beats and discoveries that were made along the way. For folks looking for a game to tease their brains and put their deduction skills to the test, please check this one out – it may appear on the list of my favourite games of 2024.

Final Score: 9/10

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The game’s publisher provided a copy of the game for this feature. Reviewed on PC (Steam Deck). 

Looking to solve another mystery and have a laugh while doing it? Check out our review of Duck Detective: The Secret Salami!