4.5/5 ★ – DanteSnowcone's review of The Rise of the Golden Idol.

If Color Gray just keeps coming out with one of these every two years I’d be thrilled. With its improved UI and more intricate approach to storytelling, Rise is a worthy successor to the original and builds on the universe in interesting ways. (I’ll do my best to keep this spoiler-free.) I thought I preferred the purely chronological approach to the first game, but on further reflection I definitely find the structure of Rise to be more mature and effective, setting the scene with seemingly disconnected deaths that all come together by the end. I wasn’t sure how the idol would come back into play after the events of the first game, and I think they handled it well. While it isn’t necessary, I definitely recommend playing the first game before doing this one for full effect. The puzzles themselves are very similar to the first game, and that’s totally fine; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Basically all scenes follow the same premise: identify names, label or sort some other important thing, and piece together what happened. Some of them definitely stand out to me as being more stimulating — I loved the drive-in, the auction house and the apartment complex — but they all work logically and demonstrate the prowess of the puzzle makers on the back end. A significant addition is the grouping of scenes into chapters, which incrementally reveal a meta-puzzle to explain how everything is connected at the end. These were great, because they allowed for more freedom of expression in each scene and created more impactful realizations upon piecing all of them together. Great idea, great implementation. Some other nice additions are the ability to open multiple menus at once, and a built-in minimizer, making it easier to switch from the menus to the scenes. That said, it is terrible trying to navigate all this stuff with a controller; a mouse is pretty much a necessity for this game. Even with a mouse, I often clicked the wrong thing or otherwise had difficulty managing the windows, but I don’t know if that’s a fault of the game or my own disorganization. It’s a great game that I would recommend to anyone looking to solve some mysteries. Even better with a friend, if you’re able to adequately explain things to each other. (My wife and I had a blast, but there were some moments.) Definitely play the first game before this one, but both are a lot of fun and worth checking out. Time played: 9 hours Played on Steam Deck, with TV dock and mouse