Test - The Rise of the Golden Idol: The successor makes one of the best puzzle games even better

After decades of adventure games that let us combine rubber chickens with grappling hooks or forced us to put gears and switches in the right order, the so-called deductive adventures have been enjoying growing popularity in recent years. They are about collecting facts and clues instead of inventory items and deriving logical conclusions from them.

The games in the Ace Attorney series pioneered this game principle over 20 years ago, and the Sherlock Holmes adventures refined it further with each new part. But it was only small indie productions that drew greater attention to it: Papers, Please helped it achieve respectable success, its quasi-successor Return of the Obra Dinn achieved a breakthrough and thereby paved the way for a wave of like-minded peopleto Paradise Killer, from Tangle Tower to, Strange Horticulture and the highlight so far:, whose successor appeared recently.

Colonel von Gatow with the dagger in the library

The game principle is anything but new. What seems like an innovative, consistent further development of the classic adventure gameplay is rooted in breeding grounds whose shoots still sprouted in a completely analog way: especially in the logic trainer puzzle books that enjoyed great popularity in the late 80s and early 90s. There, conclusions had to be drawn based on logical combinations and elimination processes, which, for example, allowed the gifts at a birthday party to be assigned to their guests based on a vague description of clothing, arrival times and preferences. Or exposing the murderer at a dinner party. You wrote down your thoughts on a squared sheet of paper, similar to a crossword puzzle, groaning under the knot in your brain that was becoming increasingly tight.

“Colonel von Gatow with the dagger in the library.” The classic board game Cluedo was undoubtedly the inspiration for The Case of the Golden Idol. On both sides, a criminal case ultimately has to be solved by collecting the clues, linking them and putting them in a sequence in order to ultimately reveal an event and a sequence of events.

And last but not least, I fondly remember the picture puzzles that were mainly printed in children's magazines in the 80s and, like a hidden object picture, told a story that had frozen into a scene and that had to be followed based on the events and details in order to understand what had happened . One, for example, was about a squirrel that had stolen a nut and caused all sorts of chaos in the garden of a suburban family, which now had to be mentally unraveled. Who dropped the milk can in shock? And why did the window break?

The woman with the red lipstick and the blue handbag

The Case of the Golden Idol and now its successor The Rise of the Golden Idol basically work in a similar way, but are a whole lot more sophisticated, complex, sophisticated and incredibly creative and clever. And at the same time arrange their individual criminal cases into a story that takes on nothing less than epic proportions.

In each chapter there is usually simply a corpse lying around somewhere. What is happening outside has frozen into a still image. Two people are arguing, one is leaving, one is coming, someone is surprised, someone else is in a panic, someone else is still completely clueless. Now it is your responsibility to search the scene, look for clues, rummage through the bags of the people involved, read documents, look at objects and finally reconstruct the events so that a coherent overall picture emerges.

To do this, you collect information in the form of keywords, which you then enter using drag & drop into forms in which you record your thoughts until they form a meaningful sentence, which in turn hopefully reflects the sequence of events correctly.

As I said: “Colonel von Gatow with the dagger in the library.” Only much more extensive. Something like this: “AfterCount AnywayimTestamentvonGraf DingenskirchenAfter coming away empty-handed, an argument broke outFürst Dingsbumsaround thegolden idols. When he finally got hisDienerinstructed himgolden idolstosnatch away, the prince defended himself and accidentally stabbed himselfLady Dingenskirchenin a scuffle.” The underlined words were initially blank spaces that you want to fill with meaning for the right solution. By the way, I came up with the example, but it appears in a similar form in the first part.

Golden Idol is one of those games where it sometimes makes sense to keep a pen and paper handy to take notes or even create entire tables. The woman with red lipstick has a blue bag, smokes and has brown eyes. The woman with green lipstick, on the other hand, has a purple bag. What hairstyle does the third woman with the tattoo on her forearm wear?

It sounds complicated and cumbersome, but it isn't, because the game cleverly takes several steps towards you to subtly and gently nudge you in the right direction. On the one hand, it tells you when your solution only has a maximum of two errors. Then you at least know whether you are on the right path or completely wrong. And if necessary, through a bit of trial and error, you can unravel some knots that have twisted your train of thought beyond repair. The moment is almost euphoric when you get a solution correctly on the first try. Overall, Rise of the Golden Idol feels incredibly rewarding and not frustrating.

On the other hand, the game cleverly waves at the fence post by presenting you with exactly the logical connections that you would normally laboriously draw with paper and pencil or desperately try to keep in your head as a form to fill out. There you then enter which woman you think you have, what lipstick, what handbag and what color of eyes. And like a row of dominoes, when one problem is solved, the next one and the one after that often fall over with it.

The first steps usually consist of finding out the names of the people appearing and assigning them to their faces in a graphic. For example, if a person carries a letter addressed to them in their pocket, their name is probably exactly as written on the envelope. As a rule, however, a lot of combination performance has to be achieved first. For example, if a man and a woman wear the same wedding ring, they are likely to be married and therefore probably share the same last name. If there is a stack of chemistry books in the locker of the employee John Doe, he probably belongs to the scientist in the lab coat - and not the manager in the smart suit.

Case and Rise of the Golden Idol take this principle to ever more creative heights, for which your brain will soon need an oxygen tent. You have to assign the residents of a prefabricated building to their apartments, sort the participants in a talent competition into the order of winners and losers, connect the bidders at an auction with the antiques they purchased, or identify the characters of a science fiction movie on the film poster.

To do this, considerations must be made that repeatedly lead to sophisticated and cleverly varied puzzle ideas: Which person at the auction drank which cocktail, what did they pay for it and how does that relate to the murder in the showroom? Which cosplayer in the drive-in theater is wearing which costume, and which of them stole the crystal? And what does the blue color on the back seat have to do with it? Who do the footprints in the garden belong to, and which path did that person take to where? Did she steal the battered bike? But then why was it brought back? And why the hell is the man who tries to put the blood-stained shirt in the washing machine not the murderer? Colonel von Gatow with the dagger in the library.

You are the smartest person in the world!

I just realized that I have a problem. That my stilted description doesn't even come close to doing this magnificent game justice. Because if I were you, dear reader, and had never played the game myself, I know exactly what I would be thinking right now: My goodness, that sounds complicated. Does that sound brittle? Does that sound abstract. Stressful. Bulky. Awkward. Boring. A lot of things, just not fun. A game for people with a penchant for the strange. But not for me. And that's exactly what I thought for a long time, while my colleague Lenzen spent weeks trying, with some success, to make the game attractive to me.

And yes. But no. Yes, you have to be enthusiastic about challenging puzzles and be willing not to give up straight away if the hose you're standing on appears to be broken. You should also have the willpower not to immediately seek help a click away on the Internet in moments like these, but rather have the ability to transform emerging frustration into joy at the challenge. And finally in the triumph of having overcome it. In desperate moments, a clever help function discreetly shows the direction without immediately revealing the entire solution.

Because yes, The Rise of the Golden Idol sets its level of difficulty at a level that, at first, always seems to be out of reach of your own abilities. But no, it never becomes unfair or too difficult, overwhelming or frustrating. Instead, it drags you into an irresistible maelstrom of moments that oscillate between “How the heck am I supposed to know that?” and “I’m the smartest person in the world!” Even though I was tempted several times, I was able to play through the entire game without assistance, and you can too.

Take out the trash, Kai!

Just an example that led to one of my most beautiful aha moments: There is a note hanging on the refrigerator in the empty apartment that says: “Kai, don’t forget to take out the trash!” A man is taking out the trash in front of the front door. So I'm assuming it's Kai. But a few minutes later my thoughts no longer make sense. Information contradicts itself, there must be an error somewhere. I'm close to despair.

But then I notice that there must be a second person living in “Kai’s” apartment. I spot a photo on the wall and it suddenly hits me: a father lives here with his son. And the Kai in question is not the man with the garbage bag in his hand, but rather his son, who is playing with the girl next door and has forgotten to take out the garbage, which is why the father grumpily does it himself.

Again and again, the clever puzzles of Rise of the Golden Idol tempt you to make errors in thinking according to this pattern, which requires that one flash of inspiration before it clicks and the thoughts are released from their jams with a jerk. The game principle only occasionally reaches its limits, usually when the developers want to deliberately lead the player around and thereby think more around a corner than the player is prepared to go. For example, if someone lies and their statement cannot be trusted. Or when scattered clues point you on a false trail that leads to a mental dead end from which the human brain only finds its way back with great effort.

But that's also part of the fascinating experience with the Golden Idol: you learn an incredible amount about yourself and your own thought processes, how quickly you get stuck in deadlocked thoughts, overlook seemingly irrelevant things and no longer question what seems obvious.

Bigger, better, more sophisticated

It also helps that the sequel is now much more accessible than the first part. The Rise of the Golden Idol is a tailor-made sequel through and through. Bigger, better, more sophisticated. In every way. The length is almost three times as long at around 20 hours. (Four DLCs have also already been announced.)

The learning curve, on the other hand, has a much more pleasant slope. While the level of difficulty in Part 1 increased so quickly that the knot in the brain tightened like a seatbelt during an emergency stop, Part 2 now carefully introduces the unusual game mechanics, gradually introduces its variations and problems, and points out simple ones Situations for their possible pitfalls and pitfalls and then gently increases the complexity.

This time the individual chapters are also much more varied and original. While the first part was largely about one noble succession murder after another, in part 2 you experience a wide variety of scenarios: a fire in a drive-in cinema, a fatal accident in a zoo, a fight at a variety show in the style of “Supertalent” or a tragic drug death during a photo shoot on the beach.

Should we still talk about the idiosyncratic graphic style? Oh, you know what: no, if you like games like this, you'll also like this kind of art style. The retro pixel look of the predecessor in the style of oil painting portraits gave way to a colorful watercolor look this time, and for good reason.

From the 18th century to the wild 70s

Because players of the first part who have so far only had a little information about the second part may have been puzzled several times by these descriptions. Where the predecessor took place in the environment of the English nobility in the 18th century, Part 2 shifts its action 200 years into the future to the 1970s and thus, to a certain extent, within the immediate reach of our present.

The events in the predecessor involving Lazarus Herst and his secret society, who abused the supernatural powers of the golden idol to establish a terror regime of oppression, have now been almost forgotten and have been banished by historians to the realm of myths and legends. And with them the knowledge of the power of the idol itself.

But then the research team from a major global corporation suddenly comes into possession of the golden idol and begins to research it, understand its powers and, above all, explore the possibilities of using them for the benefit of humanity. Or for your own profit and maintaining power.

The fact that the game tells such an epic story was only apparent at second glance between the lines in its predecessor. At first glance, the seemingly closed criminal cases seem to have only a vague connection, often only by chance due to the presence of a person you already know from an earlier case. The realization is all the more shocking when you suddenly understand the connections and know how to relate them.

Because that's exactly the real stroke of genius of the Golden Idol games: they nest their story in the same way they nest their puzzles - as connections cleverly hidden in the noise of events, which deliberately hide in plain sight and therefore seem invisible , until they reveal their true nature like an unexpected shock through the careful uncovering of logical connections. And in doing so, they usually reveal a core that hides a secret that you never, ever expected.

The Rise of the Golden Idol emphasizes this aspect even more than its predecessor by regularly asking the player in the sections between chapters to understand and summarize the game's overarching story, to untangle its plot threads and then to put them back together in a meaningful way interweave. And while you still think that you have actually understood everything quite well so far, it comes as a real shock when you suddenly realize that everything is completely different than you thought and that no one is who they seem to be , secret plans working in the background - and you didn't see anything about it, even though it was right in front of you.

At this point at the latest, Golden Idol sheds the impression of being a simple collection of picture puzzles, which it may initially seem like. The Rise of the Golden Idol is a brilliant and unique piece of video game storytelling that tells its puzzles like a story and encodes its story like a riddle. And not the other way around, like other media do. And only video games can do that.