The Case of the Golden Idol is an adventure-style detective game developed by Color Gray Games.
The gameplay is split into two sections, "Exploring" each case for clues to put in your notebook, and "Thinking" to fill in the blanks to try and figure out what happened and why.
A DLC, Golden Idol Mysteries: The Spider of Lanka, was released on May 4th, 2023. The DLC serves as prequel to the main game, taking place one year before its first scenario.
A second DLC, Golden Idol Mysteries: The Lemurian Vampire, was released on August 31st, 2023. This DLC takes place some time after The Spider of Lanka and ends immediately before the main game's first scenario.
The game's strange alternate universe - and a certain idol - will return in 2024's Rise of the Golden Idol - a 15-case mystery set in the 1970s.
Be warned that the spoilers here are even more extreme than usual for a murder-mystery game — due to the nature of the gameplay (which revolves around identifying individuals), it's impossible to even mention people's names without potentially major spoilers. As such, all spoilers on this page will be unmarked.
The Case of the Golden Idol [blackmailed] us into [displaying] the following tropes:
- Alliterative Name: Willard Wright, Robert Redruth.
- Alternate History: Britain is still called Albion in the 18th century, and its currency is the franc. Oh, and the theoretical continent of Lemuria is real, and its civilization still exists. All this is, of course, nothing compared to what happens in the story.
- Artifact of Doom: The titular golden idol. While it's apparently Lost Technology rather than explicitly magical, everyone who gets their hands on it suffers a painful death.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game keeps a notepad below of all the important names, places, verbs, etc. that the player has collected. The player can organize them however they want in that area so, for example, you can put the first and last names of characters next to each other.
- Different categories (names, places, verbs, etc.) are color-coordinated so players don't spend too long trying sentence combinations that don't make sense.
- If you're playing with highlights on, the game will track what important details you've clicked on by changing the yellow star to red. This effectively lets you explore the scene(s) in each case without worrying about forgetting a detail the developers wanted you to see.
- If you have all slots of a scroll filled in and all are correct except for one or two slots, the game will tell you "two or fewer slots are incorrect."
- Though they're still puzzles and need to be solved, most of the additional puzzles are designed so that working through them will help the player solve the main puzzle and vice versa, sometimes specifically targeting a tricky part of the mystery to add steps to picking it apart.
- During Case 11 and the Epilogue, the game adds a panel that lets you go back to previous cases without having to return to the Scenario Selector, which is helpful since they have so many callbacks to previous cases.
- Artistic License – Chess: The scenario "The Interrupted Weekend at the Doctor's Salon" features a rather strange chess game. A black pawn is on the back row, both white bishops are on black squares and both black bishops are on white squares. This is a clue about the skill of the players.
- Bizarre Gambling Winnings: The final scenario has someone gamble away a cannon over a game of cards to a drunkard. Said drunkard later proceeds to fire it at point blank range, killing the main antagonist.
- Booby Trap: One of these is created by using the idol's powers to add air to a sealed vase, causing it to explode and kill two attacking thugs.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Most of the characters figuratively stab someone in the back at some point.
- Culture Police: Lazarus Herst and The New Order Party had doctrines based on austerity to the point that they instituted a system where each member would be aged down if they performed virtuous acts (moderation, spartan lifestyle, and honesty) and aged up if they committed sinful acts (excesses, art, and literature).
- Connected All Along: The epilogue reveals that the existence of Lemuria isn't just for flavor — the idol is a Lemurian artifact, and the civilization's decline is what inspired Edmund Cloudsley to get into politics in an attempt to prevent his own nation from experiencing the same fate.
- Dark Reprise: The background music for Case 10 (after the Order Party has taken power) is a darker version of the game's title theme. The background music for Case 8 is a darker version of the bar song from Case 4.
- Disproportionate Retribution: One of the acts which is punished by the Order Party is improperly showing extreme emotion, which goes against their First Virtue. Violating this authorizes the party to take a whopping seven years off a person's lifespan using the Idol's powers. One unfortunate gentleman, Gideon Bell, is punished for "bursting into tears ten times" during an interrogation for an unrelated offense, causing him to be aged an extra seventy years and dying immediately once his sentence is carried out.
- The Dragon: David Gorran is a loyal coachman and covert agent for Edmund Cloudsley through the entire story, participating in many of the killings.
- Equivalent Exchange: The idol works this way. It has many powers, but they always consist of absorbing something, no matter how abstract, then putting it somewhere.
- For example, the "combustion spell" requires the "freezing spell" to be used first — it's just taking heat and putting it elsewhere.
- The "life spell" is able to affect living things by aging or de-aging them. In order to return life to something, however, it needs to take it away from something else, first. Late in the game, the Order Party takes away "years" from those who break their Virtues, giving them to party members instead.
- Featureless Protagonist: It's not entirely clear if who the player is even exists. None of the investigations impact the ongoing plot as other characters are able to clearly lie about circumstances, and there's no clear explanation for how the Freeze-Frame Bonus style investigations are even plausibly done.
- Foreshadowing: In Case 2, you can see a Proudbeast mask hanging on the wall and Master robes lying on the top level of the bed, which can't be examined; and starting with Cases 2 and 3, you can find ruby rings in characters' inventories. You don't learn about the significance of these until Case 7, and the fact that Sebastian Cloudsley was a Proudbeast Master doesn't become important until Case 10.
- Fountain of Youth: The idol has the power to make people younger — at the cost of taking years off other peoples' lives. Edmund Cloudsley utilizes this power to create a new identity for himself, faking his own death and becoming Lazarus Herst.
- Frame-Up:
- Escaped convict Robert Redruth is framed for Willard Wright's murder using a graffiti message.
- Dr. Turner and General Koch successfully frame the Loyalist party leader for the murder of the Moderate party leader, effectively beheading both parties.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In each scenario, the player must investigate a frozen instant occurring just before or after a person's death to find out what happened, so most clues in the game are examples of this.
- Gem-Encrusted: The Golden Statue has a gem on the front that changes color.
- Iconic Item: Several characters carry specific items (or types of them) that can be used to identify them even in disguise: David Gorran's tobacco pouches, Walter Keene's hat fashion magazines, and Edmund Cloudsley's monogrammed handkerchief (until he gives it up), for instance.
- Interface Spoiler: A meta example. The Steam trading cards spoil the names of the characters, especially the Darkhand, Proudbeast and Watersnake Cultists.
- Kill It with Fire: When Peter tries to apprehend Willard Wright in Case 3, Wright uses the idol's powers on one of the stablehands, causing him to spontaneously combust.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: The titular Golden Idol ends up getting destroyed, completely by accident, by cannonfire in the final level.
- Notice This: The game has a mode (enabled by default) that puts a gold star over all clickable areas so that the player doesn't have to pixel hunt, with the star turning red once the player examines the area. Items with incompletely-examined descriptions or subsections (e.g. a person's inventory with multiple objects) will still have a gold star so the player doesn't miss them or can return to them later if they want to look at something else.
- Plot Device: The game's plot is driven by the eponymous golden idol, which has mysterious magical properties that can grant its wielder considerable power (provided they know how to use it). Many people are murdered in the quest for various groups to obtain the idol.
- Posthumous Character: Several cases begin with one or more dead bodies. Often, the deceased have not been previously introduced, which brings the challenge of trying to identify who is dead and why.
- Red Herring: Every level has wrong answers designed to confuse the player, except for the Epilogue.
- Regime Change: After the Moderate Party leader is killed and the Loyalist Party leader is accused of his murder, Lazarus Herst's Order Party dominates the government, where they set about transforming the country. Unbeknownst to everyone else, Herst planned out the entire thing, having used his allies to murder the former and frame the latter.
- Retreaux: The art-style and UI would fit right in with the point-and-click adventure games from the 90s.
- The Reveal: In the Epilogue, it is revealed that Lazarus Herst is really Edmund Cloudsley, who used the idol to de-age himself. It's possible to figure this out early, and doing so is vital to fully understanding why the story ends the way it does.
- Shout-Out:
- As mentioned above, Monkey Paw Island is a reference to The Monkey's Paw.
- The mermaid carrying a spear at the inn is likely a reference to Return Of The Obra Dinn. Like Obra Dinn, this chapter also features characters named Robert, Henry and Evans.
- The country house chapter is a Whole-Plot Reference to Small Change.
- A painting in the epilogue, presumably of an ancient Lemurian flying city, strongly resembles Laputa.
- Show, Don't Tell: Each case is presented to the player with almost no context: it is up to the player to use environmental and narrative clues to piece together exactly what's going on.
- Spanner in the Works: With this a mystery game with plenty of schemes and Gambit Pileups, there's a few plans that go awry for unexpected reasons:
- The Brotherhood sends an agent to eliminate Edmund Cloudsley and recover the stolen idol. The agent bribes a disgruntled servant to poison Edmund's tonic at a dinner party at Edmund's manor, assuming he'd be the only one to drink it. One of the other guests, Edmund's sister Rose, takes a sip of tonic first and dies instead.
- Lazarus Herst's plan to overthrow the monarchy and secure his power indefinitely is mere hours away from being carried out, when Lazarus (actually Edmund Cloudsley under a new identity) takes a brief detour to abduct Mary, a woman he unsuccessfully tried to court years ago. Mary's husband (Edmund's half-wit nephew Peter) fires a cannon at the intruder in a drunken panic, reducing Lazarus to a charred corpse, reducing the Idol to scrap metal, and unraveling the coup entirely by accident.
- Whodunit: Also, a "Whatisthecontextbehindhowandwhytheydidit". Each case takes place at the exact point of a person's death, and the player is tasked with finding out who killed them, why, and what events happened directly preceding it.
The Spider of Lanka [revealed] the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Oberon Geller retroactively becomes this for the base game, as his machinations result in the deaths of nearly every victim of the DLC.
- Call-Forward: The DLC chapter ends with Oberon Geller escaping Lanka with knowledge of the golden idol's location, recruiting Albert Cloudsley for the ill-fated expedition that kicks off the events of the base game.
- Culture Chop Suey: The Lemurians have elements of Aborigines and Indian culture, the latter being more pronounced with their influence in Lanka island being a nod to their influence among Tamils of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian kingdoms.
- Decoy Getaway: Having been tipped off to a raid from the local authorities, Oberon Geller forces Yupik Kerra to switch clothes with him and wear a mask — while the soldiers are occupied capturing Yupik, Oberon kills the lone soldier guarding the front door and escapes.
- Engineered Heroics: Oberon Geller helps Zubiri Kerra escape a fatal Gambling Brawl after he's accused of cheating in a card game tournament. The brawl, and the tournament itself, were orchestrated by Geller so that the young Kerra would be indebted to him.
- Foregone Conclusion: The DLC is a prequel, so it's obvious that Geller will nearly succeed at obtaining the idol and survive up until Albert Cloudsley kills him.
- Leitmotif: The title theme shows up in the second part - fittingly, as it turns out Zubiri's father bartered the location of the Golden Idol for Zubiri's life.
- Red Herring: Every single shareholder of the Seven Seas Trading Company is listed in the final case, but literally none of them matter except for Oberon Geller, not even Albert Cloudsley. None of those names are ever used in the solution, in order to obfuscate the identity of the Spider and the fact that Zubiri and Yupik Kerra are the only important people that Oberon met.
- Sham Ceremony: Under the guidance of a Lemurian priest, two children of a Lankan raja undergo a test to see which is worthy of becoming his heir, with the winning candidate undergoing a second ritual where they are "killed" and reborn. It's sleight of hand — a Lemurian servant hidden inside the ritual chamber is supposed to pull the would-be victim out of harm's way and fake a mortal wound with red paint. A third party sabotages the ritual by tricking the losing candidate into killing the servant, causing the winning candidate to die for real.
The Lemurian Vampire [delivered] the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Tissa Gamini, who takes the position of Sentinel after Sutul Vaito's death and proceeds to abuse his power by demanding lavish gifts.
- Bait-and-Switch: Surely the figure in the tower using the Golden Idol to take peoples' lifespans is the Lemurian Vampire, right? Ha ha no.
- Bluff Worked Too Well: Oberon Geller demonstrates a parlor trick where he claims to be able to read people's minds. While it works well enough to convince the villagers that he has genuine powers, his partner Albert Cloudsley is spooked as well, and once Geller obtains the Golden Idol, Cloudsley's fear of Geller's power (both real and imagined) leads him to kill Geller (as seen in the main game's first chapter).
- Evil Matriarch: Lavu Mata, the Lemurian Vampire herself. In her role as Guardian of Children, she has shaped the villagers' culture and psychological development towards a single goal: maintaining absolute control over them forever. She teaches them not to ask questions about how things work (so she can retain control over mysteries such as the signboard and the Tower Dweller itself) or even ask each other what their age is (so no one will ever catch on that the Sentinels are much younger than they appear after repeatedly having their lifespan stolen - or that she is much OLDER than she appears, having taken their stolen lifespans for herself). She even votes against Kruplu's horticultural experiments out of sheer obsession with maintaining her utopia precisely as it currently is. In addition to stealing the lifespan from generations of Sentinels, by the end of the DLC story, she's also personally murdered Tissa Gamini in order to thwart Zubiri Kerra's effort to destroy the Tower Dweller.
- Friendship Trinket: Downplayed; the villagers carry wooden "promise cubes" which are split into two pieces, and one half is given to someone else as a sign of a promise made. No two promise cubes are split the same way, so someone carrying half a promise cube not only indicates that they have made a promise to someone, but whom they have made a promise to.
- Karma Houdini: Kula Stirna stands out, having promised Tissa Gamini a night with Sahilia Een in exchange for voting in her favor at council meetings. In the end, Zubiri Kerra even saves her when Oberon Geller holds her hostage.
- Leitmotif: The title theme shows up in the final part, now that Geller has his hands on the Golden Idol, kicking off the main campaign's plot.
- Lost Technology: The automaton and the golden idol itself, as well as the message board that the Tower Dweller uses to threaten the community. These are all relics left over from a past era when the Lemurians had advanced technology, but most of the islanders don't even know the true nature of these devices.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Tissa Gamini's death, Zubini Kerra reveals the secret of how to defeat the Tower Dweller for good - by giving the override command, followed by the commands "destroy tool / destroy self". Unfortunately, the person he tells this to is Lavu Mata, who uses the override command, but then tells the Tower Dweller to give her the Golden Idol instead of destroying it.
- Outside-Context Problem: First the arrival of Zubiri Kerra, who knows enough of the Lemurians' technology to realize what the Tower Dweller actually is and how to deactivate it, and secondly, the arrival of Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller, who have not only the motive but the means to destroy the Tower Dweller outright. Both of these events pose an existential risk to Lavu's plans, and while she succeeds in thwarting Zubiri by killing Tissa Gamini, only Zubiri's unwitting assistance allows her to claim the Golden Idol before Cloudsley and Geller destroy the Tower Dweller.
- Poke the Poodle: Vyrlis says some ominous things about the gift he is going to be sending to Tissa, who dies shortly after. Turns out he was just sending green fish which taste horrible.
- Really 700 Years Old: Lavu Mata, on account of stealing the villages' lifespan using the power of the Golden Idol. As the Guardian of Children, she even teaches all the young and impressionable islanders that it is the height of rudeness to question an adult about their age, ensuring the entire village grows up not questioning her seemingly eternal youth.
- Red Herring: The main story uses a frequent pattern of blanks, PERSON wanted to VERB the NOUN NOUN, which is always STEAL the GOLDEN IDOL. The second case of this DLC provides the appropriate verbs, but the true answer is PRESERVE the ANCIENT PRACTICE.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The Tower Dweller isn't real; it's an ancient Lemurian automaton which operates the Golden Idol. Lavu Mata figured out everything about it except how to get the automaton to give her the Idol itself, so she created the myth of the Tower Dweller to trick the villagers into willingly surrendering their lifespan so that she could extend her own life indefinitely. The incantation the villagers think supposedly subdues the Tower Dweller is actually a voice command which translates as "take matter lifespan 36 (months)". By this point the player should be familiar with how the golden idol works and knows once it takes it cannot do it again without giving, meaning Lavu has been sneaking over to the tower after these sacrifices, speaking the command which translates to "give matter lifespan" and retaining her eternal youth.
- Shipwreck Start: The story begins with the protagonists shipwrecked on Monkey Paw Island. Much of the story involves how they integrate into the small but self-sufficient village there, and how the arrival of the ship's survivors changes the lives of the villagers.
- Stripped to the Bone: Tissa Gamini, though not in the way that Lavu Mata made it appear. She faked a supernatural cause of death courtesy of the Tower Dweller by stealing the bones of a long-dead Sentinel from one of the burial urns and placing them in Tissa's bed after killing him; as for Tissa himself, she disposed of his body by throwing it into the lake, where it was quickly shredded by flesh-hungry red snappers.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: The villagers on Monkey Paw Island have many gemstones and coins lying around, presumably left over from the days when the Lemurians had a sophisticated civilization. The villagers don't assign any value to them, and consider them to be shiny playthings for the children. Some of the outsiders who come to the island wish to hoard up the gems, which bewilders the locals.
- Younger Than They Look: Implied to be the case with Sutul Vaito. As the Sentinel is actually the chosen victim whose lifespan is being stolen, under the auspices of protecting the villagers from the Tower Dweller, he's had his life robbed from him 36 months at a time, so while he looks to be an old man, his actual chronological age is presumably much younger than he appears.
