I came into this game looking for more Obra Dinn deduction puzzles and Golden Idol delivered. Calling this game "more Obra Dinn" is obviously reductive, but Golden Idol strongly holds up to its inspirations.

The highlight for me was the straightforward clue hunting, murder mystery approach of the first half of the game. Even in the more simple form, you feel like a genius slowly piecing together solutions. The "fill in the blanks until you lock in the right answer" mechanic is one of my favs in any puzzle game. Golden Idol is also an aesthetic departure from Obra Dinn, with a cozy color palette and soft pixel, point-and-click style presentation.

Later scenarios get a bit bogged down by dense rule sets and information dumps, with reliance on a more traditional pen-and-paper logic puzzle word problem approach. This ramping complexity might be enticing for others, but I found it pretty exhausting to even get started on some of the last scenarios. I had to rely on hints for some of these, but the in-game hint system has a great balance of pointing you in the right direction without spoiling the gratification of solving.

I came into this game looking for more Obra Dinn deduction puzzles and Golden Idol delivered. Calling this game "more Obra Dinn" is obviously reductive, but Golden Idol strongly holds up to its inspirations. The highlight for me was the straightforward clue hunting, murder mystery approach of the first half of the game. Even in the more simple form, you feel like a genius slowly piecing together solutions. The "fill in the blanks until you lock in the right answer" mechanic is one of my favs in any puzzle game. Golden Idol is also an aesthetic departure from Obra Dinn, with a cozy color palette and soft pixel, point-and-click style presentation. Later scenarios get a bit bogged down by dense rule sets and information dumps, with reliance on a more traditional pen-and-paper logic puzzle word problem approach. This ramping complexity might be enticing for others, but I found it pretty exhausting to even get started on some of the last scenarios. I had to rely on hints for some of these, but the in-game hint system has a great balance of pointing you in the right direction without spoiling the gratification of solving.