#the case of the golden idol

[deeps-repus]

Get gnomed

[theshyghost]

The Case of the Golden Idol

[helshollowhalls]

Nathan getting Gnome'd™ is like the Drawfee version of Rickrolling - Just only for Nathan.

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[itispartoftheplan]

funny guys

[lokebrenna]

do you think david goran and walter keene ever explored each other’s bodies.

[uniquegamerecs]

Upcoming 2024 Releases

Here's some smaller-scale 2024 releases I wanted to highlight. Happy holidays!

I backed Endacopia on kickstarter and it's been a pleasure to see the game come together. Andy Land's animations are such an excellent mix of cute, creepy, and funny.

I've been desperately awaiting this game for years at this point, mostly on the strength of the insanely cute character portraits. I'm picky about farming sims so I hope this scratches the itch.

Look at this trailer and tell me it doesn't kick ass

And finally -- a sequel to the (for me) much beloved 2022 game, The Case of the Golden Idol! I can't wait!!!

Other games I'm excited for that don't necessarily need me spreading the word:

Silk Song (please?)

Earthblade (from the makers of Celeste)

The Mermaid's Tongue (Next game in the series following The Tangled Tower)

Are there any indies you're hype for in 2024? I may stop posting every month next year, depending on how I feel. But I'll be sure to share good games as I find them :^)

[skridz]

ILOVE SPACEHEY

LOOK AT HOWGOOFY

[veggieblt]

EVIL HORSE

Follow for more murder! https://www.twitch.tv/veggiebltail

[petalboundtovanish]

yeah how the hell am i supposed to solve this

[supergreatfrien]

Trying out The Case of the Golden Idol for an hour

Just one more thing, Mr. Cloudsley.  I couldn't help but notice that golden idol you've got over there.  Gosh, it's a beaut, isn't it?  My wife, she's a big collector of that kind of thing.  Never been all that interested personally.  But Mr. Cloudsley, there's just something that bothers me about that.  You've got that golden idol on display, but your contract with Dr. Geller clearly says that the doc would have the rights to any golden statues found.  So then why would you have that idol?

[spectre-ship]

2022 has been an excellent year for video games, by which I mostly mean the weird indie stuff I like (the only major release I played was Elden Ring, actually.) I figure I'll put up a highlights reel of smaller things I liked that came out this year:

- Iron Lung: great little spooky game by the Dusk guy. I really like games like this, little 1 or 2 hour experiences that focus on doing one thing really well. Also a great example of how budget development can be turned in the game's favor--the gameplay revolving around taking grainy photos hides the game world's relative barrenness, and the choice to use an FPS engine for a game where you pilot a submarine does a lot to make the game feel more claustrophobic than something with a dedicated interface would.

- Card Shark: a narrative adventure game telling a picaresque story of 18th century France. It's a little uneven, but it's basically Barry Lyndon's Warioware--I had a lot of fun with it. Has a really gorgeous artstyle as well as a great soundtrack.

- Trombone Champ: I know this was the streamer game du jour back in September, but it's genuinely pretty fun and has some really great jokes, as well as doing a hell of a lot with a largely public domain soundtrack. I think it's a lot more innovative than it seems--it's a rhythm game where you actually play the music note by note, instead of hitting buttons for canned soundbytes.

- The Case of the Golden Idol: a Return of the Obra Dinn-esque mystery game (I think a lot of people, myself included, heard about it when Lucas Pope signal boosted it.) Has a pretty novel method of deduction making and a really ingenious final twist. The plot is more outlandish than I'd expected but it executes some pretty interesting ideas. Also, it has an enjoyably weird artstyle--sort of a grotesque Monkey Island kind of thing.

- Frog Detective 3: I played the whole trilogy in 2 days. Very cute and has some good jokes in it.

- Pentiment: Easily game of the year for me, I beat it day 1 and then posted about it for a week straight. An ingeniously constructed visual novel* about the grand tapestry of history and the rippling effect of our choices throughout our lives and those of others. I don't want to drag this out because I've described my thoughts on it elsewhere and I'd need a whole book on its own to get all of them down, but suffice to say it's an incredible game.

Also an honorable mention to Gloomwood, a promising immersive sim that went into early access in October, and an honorable mention to Dwarf Fortress for its Steam release, which despite a couple minor hiccups has gotten me playing that game more than I have in half a decade.

I haven't finished FAITH 3 or played Norco, but those are also on my list for this year, so I'll reblog with an addendum if I get around to either before January.

*"visual novel" used loosely here. it's somewhere between Night in the Woods and Disco Elysium, but visual novel feels like the most appropriate term due to the amount of reading involved.

[lapsedgamer]

The Case of the Golden Idol (iPhone)

I got myself one of those "Backbone" controllers for my iPhone this week, because I missed using my PS Vita to remote-play games while watching TV (it isn't compatible with PS5) The first-gen Backbone was on a deep discount and fit my phone, and for remote play it works great. In turn this prompted me to see what exciting premium games are available on Apple Arcade.

Turns out it's bupkis.

So I hopped over to Netflix, which has treated me to some excellent narrative games recently, and was pleasantly surprised to see they've added The Case of the Golden Idol. I wasn't all that familiar with it except for a vague memory of its pleasingly grotesque artwork in an Edge "Time Extend" feature a year ago, and that recollection was enough to pique my interest.

It's proven to be a set of inventively structured and ironic murder mysteries. Each case is presented as a set of interconnected tableaux, frozen in time but with maybe a short cycling animation, such as the man in the screenshot above continuing his inexorable descent. Moving between the locales and prodding highlighted points-of-interest reveals clues in dialogue, documents and images hinting at the motive, means, and narrative context of the death(s). To progress to the next case, you must demonstrate your understanding by filling in in the blanks on text "Scroll" using a small directionary of terms also gathered from the environment.

Within this simple structure, the developers Color Gray carefully direct and misdirect the player. Optional Scrolls exist which can be solved to untangle the smaller puzzles which make up the bigger mystery. The text already in each Scroll, and the problems highlighted by the Optional ones, narrow the problem space give a the player a mental scaffolding upon which more challenging solutions can be built.

Conversely, the Scrolls and the dictionaries are written in such a way as to suggest alternative answers which look plausable at first glance but which, on deeper inspection and careful consideration, are deviously constructed red herrings. This is true even where a Scroll seems to be referring to something very specific. A sudden revelation might mean that a sentence relates to entirely different events at an entirely different time, or must involve a character who had previously been written off as an inconsequential conveyer of exposition.

The construction of the puzzles expertly recreates the rhythm of set-up, investigation, suspect, twist, and revelation of great mystery fiction. I boggled at the unexpected circumstances of one character's death, only to then laugh at the irony of it. An important twist about another came to me while I was falling asleep and then, upon waking, I realised how this had been set up - almost too obviously - by earlier dialogue.

The dozen-ish individual cases in this bumper edition link together satisfyingly to tell a story of the hunger for power, buffonery, and intrigue. It's all very colonial British, apparently uncritically at times but with a secret Swiftian edge. A pleasure from start to finish, and notwithstanding a few grammar errors and bugs, a rigorously fair and enthralling challenge.

(So actually I've spent the last week not really using my iPhone controller accessory much at all. Go figure. However it's going to prove very useful on the iPhone versions of Dead Cells and Death's Door, two more great little adventures I'd never quite got around to on console.)

[diversegaminglists]

Brain Melters?

What game puzzles made you feel smrt for beating them?

Or what puzzle made you feel really not-smrt when you beat it?

I recently managed to play all of The Case of the Golden Idol and its DLC without using a single hint and I felt very clever after (if you like logic puzzles, highly recommend).

The Black Watchmen makes me feel very not smrt every-time I beat a puzzle. Esp. since it took me and my bf two hours to beat one of the easier ones because we'd overlooked something really obvious in hindsight.

[imperatoralicia]

I saved this image from The Case of the Golden Idol, and I genuinely cannot remember why, but I’m glad that I did.

[itispartoftheplan]