Hello Detectives,
We’re thrilled that The Rise of the Golden Idol has now launched! Out on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, this sequel builds on the world we introduced in The Case of the Golden Idol and draws us ever deeper into the mystery of the eponymous relic.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2716400/The_Rise_of_the_Golden_Idol/
But why a sequel? What more is there to tell? Let’s unravel the development of The Rise of the Golden Idol together…
The Idol rises again
There is so much more of the story of the Golden Idol to explore. We wanted to see where we could take the story and how the Idol’s power might be influential with a whole new cast of characters and in a very different setting.
Against the backdrop of growing enlightenment and cult panic, The Rise of the Golden Idol takes place 200 years after the unspeakable fate of the Cloudsleys in The Case of the Golden Idol. Now in the 1970s, the legend of the Idol has all but faded into the annals of history and myth, as global political tensions and societal unrest dominate headlines.
In a period of great change, one thing remains constant: the desire to utilize such a powerful artifact to reshape the world. We wanted to explore how a more modern world - with phones and television - might influence a person’s use of the Idol - and how the Idol might influence that new setting.
With 20 new cases to untangle, brand new players will be able to step into Rise without having played the first instalment, while players of the first game will definitely be able to pick up some subtle references. Whether you’re a veteran detective or a newly minted investigator, you’ll find yourself immersed in the world of the Golden Idol.
A refreshed visual style
If you’re familiar with our first game in the series, you will notice that the visual style of The Rise of the Golden Idol is different to that of The Case of the Golden Idol and its DLCs.
For The Case of the Golden Idol, we focused on pixel art to invoke the adventure game vibes of games of old, a familiar visual language for indie games. For The Rise of the Golden Idol, we decided to focus on exploring a different style more familiar to co-founder Ernests, who has a background as a painter.
While the visual style of our second game is different, its essence in the characters and environments are still a very recognizable, signature Golden Idol look.
New era, New UI
One thing we wanted to achieve with The Rise of the Golden Idol was for players to have the ability to explore more complex puzzles and have more freedom in how to solve scenarios. Developing Rise in a new engine gave us the opportunity we were looking for to achieve this: a UI overhaul.
We redesigned the game’s UI and moved from the Exploring - Thinking panels to independent panels where players can track the clues they’ve found, characters they’ve encountered, and fill in the story panel separately. This means we were no longer limited to one screen to create puzzles, allowing us to make them bigger and more varied which was really important to us as game developers.
All these panels can be moved to different areas on the screen, and can be opened - or hidden - at the click of a button. You can have as many or as few open as you’d like during each scenario, and it gives you the freedom to solve scenarios at your own pace and not feel overwhelmed, which we felt the previous UI could do. You can also multitask in your investigation, looking at evidence and a puzzle at the same time.
For those veteran detectives who felt more at home in the first game’s UI, in the full version of the game there will be a UI scaling setting, so you can make puzzles smaller, fit them all on the screen and then just toggle all of them just like in the first game.
We are aware that for some, there was a specific satisfaction in gathering the clues one by one. Our new streamlined approach with the automated word collection has been implemented to allow players to reduce clicking, and focus more on what the texts say.
The new panels mean improved readability and navigation, especially at smaller resolutions. This new UI has already been implemented when we brought The Case of the Golden Idol to Xbox and mobile with Netflix as a result of porting the game to a new engine.
We hope you enjoy diving into the next chapter of the Golden Idol’s story, and join us with each new DLC in 2025: buy The Rise of the Golden Idol - Deluxe Edition and you’ll unlock the Detective Pass, giving you all four DLCs and the game OST.
~ Andrejs and Ernests Klavins, Color Gray Games