“Hallucinogens, fax machines, parapsychology, and TV guides”: One of the decade’s best detective games is getting a sequel

(Image credit: Color Gray Games)

The Case of the Golden Idol was one of 2022’s best games, a creepy, cultish detective story set among the British nobility of the 1800s. Now there’s a sequel on the way, entitled The Rise of the Golden Idol – and with a playable demo that you can try out right now.

I was lucky enough to get to try out the demo prior to release, and good news: it’s basically more of the game that earned the oh-so-rare “Overwhelmingly Positive” review score on Steam the first time around, with some improvements and tweaks along the way. There’s more dynamic animation in the tableaus you examine now, though the characteristically horsey way in which people are drawn remains untouched, which I was pleased to see.

This time though, we’re in a whole different time period: rather than the machinations of snobbish lords and ladies in the Georgian and Victorian eras, Rise of the Golden Idol’s demo covers a strange series of deaths in the late 1970s: a bloody escape from an asylum, a gruesome industrial accident, and the attempt to cover up a gory scandal connected with a new drug – and that’s just a fraction of the game playable now. Speaking personally, I had a great time, and feel pretty excited to see what the full game has to offer in the age of “an age of hallucinogens, fax machines, parapsychology and TV guides”, to quote its Steam page.

The Rise of the Golden Idol is scheduled for a 2024 release. If you still haven’t played the first one yet, here’s why The Case of the Golden Idol is the best successor to Obra Dinn so far.

You can find even more games to dive into on our list of the 25 best PC games.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.