As a lifelong lover of period dramas and detective games, I’m excited to start Golden Idol and find myself in media resources, watching the murder unfold on the screen. No explanations, no friendly tutorial popups, and no handheld – my favorite (and arguably best) way to start the mystery. The game’s chapters are made up of brilliant graphics that tell the story of the Cloudsley dynasty – one of which appears in the first opening scene – and how they left their mark on the fictional version of 18th-century England. The aesthetic is pixel-perfect nostalgia – a vivid hand-drawn style that evokes the comic-like angles of Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, as well as the satirical prints of editorial cartoonists like William Hogarth, who chronicled current events in 1700s London.
Golden Idol plays with basic intuition and common sense, and while it took me some time to warm up to the game, I quickly developed a real admiration for its simplicity. When I checked out the first scene – a completely frozen moment with a powerful little animation – a few exploratory clicks were enough to get started. One was pushed off a cliff, and some hot spots around the screen invited me to dig deeper. I can switch between exploring and thinking modes, both of which are easy to pick up.
In explore mode, I search the current scene and look for clues to explain what’s going on – who is the mover and who’s being moved? What items does the pusher carry that might identify him? I collected key names, locations, and verbs, and they filled the lower part of my screen like a strange set of refrigerator magnet words. These key terms come into play in the thinking mode, where I have to fill in the blanks on the story scroll to explain the scene and identify the people present.
Once I get into the exploration/thinking groove – around the second or third scene where things really start to heat up – discerning the shape of the big picture becomes a little easier. In each scene, I solve one murder at a time against a backdrop of generational greed, betrayal, and secret conspiracy. There are strange cults, accidental poisonings, and working-class uprisings brewing. The Cloudsleys have several generations and a strong supporting cast that I quickly learned to recognize by face alone, which became very helpful in later chapters. Everything revolves around the titular Golden Idol—a mysterious device that can be used to manipulate matter—from a foreign tribe whose weary representatives are forced to perform colonial song and dance for their oppressors.
As with all point-and-click genres, there’s a neat touch of humor running through the writing – the hilarious one-liners and hilarious settings maintain a subtle sense of frivolity throughout the game. Even with mostly static character art, the developers managed to fill the scene with a sense of tension — someone was killed, everyone was on edge. There are plenty of red herrings and seemingly innocuous phrasing designed to throw you off course – in one case, the maid’s bizarrely deliberate comment about her master’s guest satisfaction stirred my already budding suspicions. Everyone is a suspect, especially when money and power are involved.
There are times when I hit a cognitive wall with Golden Idol and have to let it go to recalibrate my brain and enthusiasm for its ambitions. The puzzles get more complicated, and later chapters contain multiple scenarios where you have to flick between different rooms and locations; the mental model of these harder parts can feel a little intimidating at first and has to be neurotic madlibs booklet to fill out multiple sections – it’s quite different from the anxiety you might feel staring at a blank page before a deadline. I scribble handwritten notes, which is useful to a certain extent – I end up taking a screen shot with my phone for reference in “post-game” scenes that require some basic math. Still, even when Golden Idol is overwhelmed, I find myself reveling in its attention to detail, and its Hogarthian take on London’s political and social commentary.
There is brazen sarcasm at the disconnect between the upper classes and the common man, such as the former’s complete inability to understand the problem of widespread illiteracy. Everyone loves to make fun of bureaucratic procedures and mediocre forms of record keeping. And of course, there are tons of cartoons and comics—the bedrock of satire that transcends class divisions and makes us all fools. A good example of the game’s irony is the portrayal of Rose – apparently, she was materially and culturally enriched by the British Empire’s overseas expeditions. When you click on her “Inventory” to see what kind of items she holds, you’ll find a wide variety of exotic foreign paraphernalia; her use of Hindi words is also affected, which are apparently made via Colonial adoption into her circle. She also has a book by Shamal Bhatt – a (real) medieval Gujarati poet whose work may have inspired some of the fictional aphorisms that appear in the game.
The golden icon follows a linear trajectory, with each chapter increasing the stakes over time—the Crowsley family’s petty succession squabble pales in comparison to larger national changes, such as totalitarian parties ascending to political office . Even as the years go by, there’s a vibrant, banging sense of momentum that conveys a wonderful sense of urgency thanks to the minimal but incredibly effective score, without making me feel rushed. There’s even a bit of a Victorian parlor game vibe, and I can imagine people at the time – this fictional middle-class Londoner – playing speculative social games about who might have assassinated these public figures. There’s a right answer or a wrong answer – no grey area to guess – which sometimes triggers frustration when I stare at the screen for too long. It’s natural – it’s an experience that requires care and focus to get things done. There’s a rather obscure hint system, though there’s a built-in “works for your help” mechanism that involves matching known faces and objects to their correct names.
The game’s ending feels like a collision of moving parts where all the key players end up coming together – we don’t get the final reveal until the epilogue chapter (more savvy players might piece it together before me). Perhaps if I hadn’t immersed myself in the immersive quality of the world of Golden Idol, and its dastardly, scheming inhabitants, I’d be more focused on the big picture, which is certainly not the point – I’m content to follow the crumbs, Let the story take me where I need to go. At the end of the day, it’s a familiar and devious story about how absolute power corrupts, hidden at the heart of a clever, beautifully crafted, gorgeous project that draws on the rich historical irony and Cartoon art. For me, Golden Idol’s greatest triumph is the understated writing — a story that’s so confident in the player’s deductive abilities that it elevates it from a basic murder mystery game to a unique narrative art.