Is Murder Mystery Having A Revival?
Over the course of the last few weeks, I have written about how murder mystery and detective fans have been eating well. Well, it turns out not only did we have Murderous Muses to give us a look at FMV randomized sleuthing, or Shadows of Doubt that let us live out our Detective in a slum dream in a world that is filled with dread and murder. We got to eat again this week when Case of the Golden Idol released its downloadable content Spider Of Lanka…
Color Gray Games knows precisely what its player base not only wants but needs when they were queuing themselves up for this release. Now, this is developed with seasoned Golden Idol players in mind, so if this is your first time, make sure to play the base game first. This is only so the scale of difficulty and conclusion you will learn to make escalates overtime during the base game, whereas here in Spider of Lanka, it was some of the most challenging problems and puzzles that are in the game.
This DLC serves as both an excellent excuse to return to Case of the Golden Idol and a reminder to everyone who did not go hands-on with easily last year’s puzzle game of the year to play Case of the Golden Idol and experience the crazy twists and turns that happen throughout the game. Some of you might remember I wrote about Case of the Golden Idol last year, in which I threw around terms like “ What a game, Unique and special” The same remains true for Spider of Lanka. Although last year when I wrote about it, I hadn’t even finished the base game, and things have changed. There are innumerable threads and points that tie the scenes together. I am not here to talk about how amazing the base game is or even really review the DLC. I am here to talk about the detecting involved and how it takes its new spin that is present in its base game and further pushes it out to create these rich, dreadful tapestries covered in death, betrayal, and, well, murder.
The story takes place a few years before Albert gets his hands on the Golden Idol and leads up to those events. Because of this, you won’t see the political conspiracy trying to throw hierarchy over. Moreover, it is weirdly kind of reassuring we won’t be taken on the same mental trip to a point, anyways, that the base game went on. But in order to deduce some even the intro puzzles here, you will have to be intimately familiar with the wordplay, murder-solving style of Case of the Golden Idol, and how to search for information. This includes your general gathering of everyone’s name and cause of death and even looking at the hands of cards and trying to figure out who won.
Even with this advanced knowledge of the game required, it helps that even for some folks like myself, who might be a little on the rusty side, having played Case of the Golden Idol months ago, there is a system in place for multiple answers sometimes work out in the same way. You can always come back once your detective skills are back to being sharp and able to pick up on the slightest clue, no matter how insignificant it seems at first.
Back again is the fantastic music and the art. Oh, the art in Case of the Golden Idol is by far one of my favorite things. It was able to express the particular amount of torture and bleakness, which maintained a more simplistic look. Even though it looks a bit simplistic, the amount of knowledge, world-building, and intrigue being put into each one of its frames is outstanding. It hit when one of the first rooms was just littered with corpses, and as per typical, it was up to us to figure out what the hell happened.
Ultimately, detective fans are really thriving right now; seemingly every couple of weeks, we are getting these outstanding, devilishly surprising games that really get into our brains and make us examine every piece of evidence laid before us. I am sad that eventually, we will have to go awhile before we eat this well again, but in the meantime, if you haven’t played Case of the Golden Idol, do it right now. Then roll immediately into the DLC. With this being a prequel, it might dampen some of the stories, but I played the two just far enough apart that I was still fully invested in seeing where it would take us and figuring out who the Spider was. Or I could just be a terrible detective. Either way, these murder mystery games need to keep coming out.
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