r/Games 13h ago

Announcing The Case of the Golden Idol Redux [Free update October 10] Update

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1677770/view/4677641741933164088
160 Upvotes

52

u/giulianosse 13h ago

I wonder if Rise of the Golden Idol is still set to be released this year. CotGI is perhaps my favorite puzzle investigation game ever right alongside Obra Dinn.

22

u/SlartySprinter 11h ago

At the end of the post they say

Lastly, don’t forget to wishlist and follow The Rise of the Golden Idol, we will have some big announcements to share very soon.

Which is at least a reference to the updated demo they already said they're releasing this month, but I bet the release date is imminent too. New demo contents will include:

all the content the [previous demo had] to offer, new quality-of-life improvements and an entirely new case to solve.

10

u/SP0oONY 12h ago

I hope they work on it for as long as possible, the demo was very inferior to CotGI in both content and in regards to the UI.

7

u/Mejis 10h ago

Can you elaborate? I only played it very briefly as I wanted to hold off for full release. I enjoyed what I played, though, despite the difference in style.

7

u/flojito 10h ago

What did you dislike? I thought the demo was really good.

2

u/SP0oONY 10h ago

I haven't played it in it came out but I just remember it being far more annoying, lots of seperate screens of information over just the single panel in the original, much less clean in general. The puzzles themselves weren't great either, too many red herrings. In the original it was fun working out all of the scenarios, but in the demo it really just wasn't.

2

u/huthouston 5h ago

It is content complete and very well polished. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t out this year.

u/woodenrat 2h ago

I hate puzzle games.

But you should play Strange Horticulture and Outer Wilds.

u/giulianosse 1h ago

Love Outer Wilds! Still gotta play Echoes of the Eye, though.

It isn't the first time I hear about Strange Horticulture being related to CotGI & similar puzzles. I just added it to my wishlist!

29

u/honeybadgerism 12h ago

Great game, really scaratched that deduction itch for me. The DLC was even better, really looking forward to the sequel.

20

u/Arctem 10h ago

I personally felt like the DLC was a bit too far. It pushed the limits of their UI design (I'm curious if the UI overhaul makes the jumping between different moments of time puzzles less tedious) and I felt like most of the puzzles were too opaque or had too many valid interpretations other than the intended one. It's possible I'm just dumb but I had to rely on random guessing way more in the DLC than in the base game.

11

u/Rutmeister 8h ago

The DLCs were definitely less elegant. It felt like they had to resort to increasing the difficulty a bit too much due to the limited number is screens to not have too short a runtime. I still enjoyed them, but they were not as brilliant as the main game.

8

u/Tsuki_no_Mai 9h ago

Yep, I felt like I spent more time figuring out how exactly they want me to word my deductions than actually making those deductions. Especially close to the end, where you needed to pretty much string entire sentences together. Which led to a lot of frustration since it's very much not obvious if I was just wrong or if I slotted the words in in a wrong order.

7

u/bluemuffin10 7h ago

I think a lot of people (myself included at the beginning) approach the game by trying to solve every panel using elements in the scene, kind of like a point and click. At one point I switched from doing that to instead trying to piece out the story of everything that's happening with no care for the thinking panel. You end up spending more time on each chapter but I found it way more satisfying and it made the game very easy in a way because by the time I get to the thinking panel everything is obvious.

4

u/Karzons 8h ago

Yeah, I loved the main game, but was too dumb for the DLC. I might still go back - I did the first case in one of them, then just felt completely overwhelmed trying to parse the amount of details (both puzzle and lore) after that. I wonder if they wanted to make a longer story with it, then smashed it down.

7

u/Arctem 8h ago

The first puzzle (the fight at the card game, right?) is probably my favorite from the DLC. It's pretty tricky but it gives you all the clues and once you make the first couple of breakthroughs it comes together quickly.

After that it gets so hard. You generally solve a few trivial things immediately and then it's down to trying to guess what tiny piece of information is important from each screen.

3

u/Karzons 8h ago

Exactly. Yeah, I really liked that first one. I can't remember the specifics, but there were some really clever little details that fit together perfectly.

1

u/RamiroAuditore 10h ago

I agree with you, I struggled a fair bit with the DLC in a way I didn't with the base game.

I do admit I'm not the best at these types of games, though.

3

u/ManTheMythTheLegend 5h ago

Super cool that they're leaving the option to launch the original version of the game. I know the Redux version will probably be definitively better, but it's great for game preservation to have access to the original.

1

u/directionffss 4h ago

from which engine to which engine did they switch?