"The Case of the Golden Idol" playthrough

New game!

I already started playing The Case of the Golden Idol to take little breaks from Mean Streets, and now I've finished it in a little over six hours!

The first scene! Quite basic, doesn't really prepare you how complicated future chapters can get!

It was perfect for in-between gaming since it's divided into separate chapters, each with a new case to solve.

Finished part one! On to part two!

People have been recommending this game ever since I mentioned loving The Return of the Obra Dinn. And yes, it's somewhat similar but still a whole lot different. Obra Dinn still comes first for me; I spent almost 11 hours on that ship and prefer those graphics over "Beavis and Butt-Head go 18th century"...

Two more words or names to find here... Where the hell are they?!

So, in each chapter of The Case of the Golden Idol, you are thrown into a scene, usually where someone has just died.

Yes, that's a dining room table, and yes, you'll have to figure who sits where...

The game then demands you fill in a whole lot of blanks in a list of facts, quite often asking you to figure out who killed whom where and in what way.

SPOILERS!!! A completely filled out scenario, to give you an idea what it's like. All the colored boxes were blank at first.

You search around the available scenes and you find words you can use in the gaps. Luckily there's a counter keeping track how many words you still need to find, since some are quite hidden.

 

Little comic book style cutscenes in between the chapters.

The list of facts is also divided in sections, and for each section the game will tell you when you only got one or two words wrong.

Oh, they go outdoors too!

Information in one section can also help figuring out the facts in another section. Usually this went well, but sometimes I had to brute force it, trying all available words or names since I had no clue what the right answer was supposed to be.

Oh, they go WAY outdoors, too!

There are two extra DLC stories to play through, both prequels to this game, so I'm looking forward to check those out too (I bought the bundle in this winter sale), but I won't post about them separately here...

The epilogue gives a summary of the game's full story, in case you lost track of the big picture.