The Rise of the Golden Idol makes a great puzzle game even better

The Case of the Golden Idol was a rewarding series of point-and-click murder mysteries that became one of my favorite games of 2022. And while I felt there was more story to explore about the titular golden idol, I wasn’t sure if a potential sequel could live up to its clever puzzles and fascinating, slowly unfolding story. Turns out, I had nothing to fear: The Rise of the Golden Idol, the newly launched sequel, easily surpasses the original by improving on just about everything.

At its core, Rise is a very similar game to Case. The new game takes place in the 1970s, around 200 years after the events of the original, and each of Rise’s cases drops you into a specific moment in time, typically during or shortly after a murder. You’re tasked with solving what’s going on. To figure that out, you first have to click around the scene to discover relevant words and names that get saved in a menu. Then you use those words to solve puzzles within the case, like the names of the individuals in a scene, a description of how the murder happened, or even things like how to interpret parts of a dance or who won a game show. 

It’s a clever system. Clicking around to collect all of the words forces you to scrutinize everything that’s going on, and having to fill in the blanks means you really have to think about how elements of the scene might be connected. I’ve come to think of it like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle: while the scattered elements may seem like a lot to tie together, as you slowly solve the disparate elements of the puzzles within cases, it’s easier to figure out how they connect.

There are more layers, too, as you have to solve puzzles encompassing the events of entire chapters, which typically have three or four cases within them, to be able to move on to the next one. A few recurring characters will pop up across chapters, meaning the game is able to tell a holistic story by forcing you to understand their actions across a bunch of different scenes. (You don’t need to have played Case to understand the events of Rise, though there are a few tidbits that will be familiar to fans of the first game.)

The system isn’t perfect. Like with Case, if you’re off the mark after you’ve slotted in words for a specific puzzle, Rise will tell you if your guess is incorrect or if you have two or fewer words in the wrong place. Usually, knowing that I was close meant I could reexamine my assumptions and tweak a few words to get things right. But as I also did with Case, if I couldn’t figure out the two or fewer incorrect words on my own, I would just brute-force a bunch of guesses until I got things right. 

Rise has some tough puzzles, but so far, I’ve been able to solve all of them without turning to an online guide like I had to do with the final few cases of Case. Rise also has an improved hint system that offers up to three hints for a specific part of a case, and often, checking those pointed me in the right direction when I was stuck. I’d also recommend having pen and paper handy to write things down, especially because some cases scatter details across multiple areas. And if you can play with someone else, that helps, too — my wife saw a bunch of things that I completely missed.

I will warn you that the game can be grotesque. Case generally erred on the side of creepy with its old-school pixel art style, but Rise looks more like a painting, and that means you’ll be seeing slightly more realistic dead bodies. Scenes and characters move in short loops, which makes them feel alive but also means you’ll see certain uncomfortable movements over and over again. The first case opens with a man actively strangling somebody else; another shows a person getting electrocuted. If you have a fear of birds, there’s one case you’re really not going to like. But like a good scary movie, those twisted scenes are part of what makes the game compelling. Every time I started a new case, I was always eager to see what terrible things I’d come across.

I’m not quite done with Rise. After more than 15 hours, I’m on one of the last of the game’s 20 cases, and this one is taking me a couple of days to muddle through. I think the eventual thrill of figuring it all out will be worth the pain, though, as there’s nothing better than that lightbulb moment of slotting the final word into the right place of the puzzle. And even when I’m done with all 20 cases, there will be four DLC packs to look forward to next year — perhaps there’s even more that we don’t know about the mysterious golden idol.

The Rise of the Golden Idol is now available for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and on mobile with a Netflix subscription.