Golden Idol Investigations: The Sins of New Wells (DLC) review

• Reviews by Sean Parker
• Published:

The first expansion taps into the same great content with new ideas that will leave you greedy for more

Last year, Color Gray Games proved that The Case of the Golden Idol was no lightning-in-a-bottle fluke: The Rise of the Golden Idol was a terrific follow-up that blazed a trail in a totally new setting, while keeping the spirit of the addictively simple drag-and-drop deductive gameplay intact. Players still poked around crime scenes to add names, nouns, and verbs into a linguistic inventory used to fill in the numerous blanks that summarized the events of outlandish crimes, but the story got a big chronological leap forward from the 1800s to the 1970s.

Now we're back to solve more mysteries in the political-intrigue-laden “Allied States of Hesperia” with The Sins of New Wells, the first of a whopping four planned expansions to The Rise of the Golden Idol. That's double the amount of DLC that the original game ever got. Fortunately, any concerns I had about the developers potentially biting off more than they could chew were quickly wiped from my mind as a wildly inventive new mystery unfolded, bringing in some underutilized past characters in satisfying ways while very much creating something fresh. The result is a nearly essential experience for series fans that's on par with the high bar set by Case's DLC.

While the original game's two add-on chapters formed a totally optional prequel that was only tangentially linked to the main story, here the developers have taken a firmly different approach. The Sins of New Wells is a bona fide sequel to The Rise of the Golden Idol – at least, a miniature one. It takes place shortly after the events of Rise, and while it doesn't feel like a necessary part of the story to fill a void in the base game's narrative, it’s crucial to play the base game to understand what’s going on here. It’s also a total blast that was well worth every moment of my time.

The Sins of New Wells retains the same painterly art style and musical feel of Rise. Returning character art is reused, and the numerous new characters mesh seamlessly with them. The settings are dark and dilapidated, taking place in the world of underground crime, with abandoned buildings and grimy mob fronts aplenty. The score is just as effective and evocative as ever, with a nice array of new atmospheric tracks that hit the same high standard we’ve heard before.

Golden Idol Investigations: The Sins of New Wells (DLC)

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Crime solving
Perspective:	First-Person
Graphic Style:	Stylized
Gameplay:	Investigative, Puzzle, Deduction
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium

Of all the Golden Idol adventures, this one definitely feels the most "detective-y" – and I'm very much here for it. The plot follows up on the crime-solving escapades of detective Roy Samson, a minor character who disappeared early in the story of Rise's base game. His absence always felt like a missed opportunity to me, so getting an expansion entirely focused on him is a real joy. And unlike his appearance in the base game (or the out-of-his-depth detective who shows up for a hot minute in The Case of the Golden Idol), here we really get to see just how good a detective Roy is, with the player playing constant catch-up with him, figuring out how Roy's connected the dots to pursue new leads surrounding the nefarious gangs he's investigating.

Since you follow his investigation fairly closely and the clues are (by and large) things that Roy also discovers in his case, it really feels like he's the protagonist of this expansion. It gives this chapter a unique feel within the Golden Idol series, which has always been known for the player character being a nameless, identity-free voyeur observing the events.

The most tangible way this is felt is when interacting with other people during investigations. In previous Golden Idol adventures, clicking on a character gave you a small snippet of their conversation with someone – usually only a sentence or so, and often without the context of who spoke first. But in The Sins of New Wells, nearly every character offers a decent-sized transcript of their conversation with Roy, usually answering at least a few of his questions. These interviews give a lot more info from each person than we typically get – the Golden Idol games have never been known for verbose dialogue. It's a noticeable switch-up from the usual formula without going overboard at all, and greatly contributes to the overall detective feel of the game.

Following on from the brainwashing themes of Rise's base game, The Sins of New Wells expands into a mystery involving the power of memory scrambling. Players are required to decipher the scattered minds of several characters who have been exposed to this new society-threatening technology, which leads to some really fun scenarios where people's perceptions of time and space are totally jumbled through a borderline nonsensical cartoon filter of reality. These memory scrambling puzzles are hugely entertaining and used to great effect; they’re actually some of the most fun I've had across the entire franchise. They're unorthodox, thoroughly wacky challenges that strike the right balance between goofy and believable. Initially they seemed quite daunting, but thankfully I found they were entirely solvable without relying on brute force or hints.

For being the first of four DLC expansions, The Sins of New Wells is a little bit longer than I was expecting, clocking in around five to six hours for me. And impressively, it justifies the length with a stellar assortment of creative scenarios and a deeply engaging mystery. There are four "cases" here, including a rather lengthy final one that elegantly ties everything together – although players who don't have the key events of the Rise base game fresh in their memory will struggle with some of what the game asks them to recall.

The second scenario (taking place at a mob-owned dog racing track) is very difficult and gave me a bit of concern about where the expansion was headed after I exhausted every hint available in the in-game system, but the following cases were extremely satisfying, creative, and had just the right amount of challenge without needing to resort to hints or a walkthrough. Based on the amount of content on offer here, it seems likely that the full "Detective Pass" for all of Rise’s DLC is likely to add up to an entire Golden Idol game's worth of playtime when all is said and done, which is a very exciting prospect to tide us over while we await news of what Color Gray's next project might be.

Final Verdict

The Sins of New Wells is yet another piece of evidence supporting my theory that we can never have too much Golden Idol. Despite being a fraction of the size of the base game, the story here is great – full of many twists and fabulous leaps of logic that somehow manage to stick the landing. Puzzles are fantastic, with a progression from "Huh?" to "Ah ha!" that's sublimely balanced. The ending is also rather rewarding, moving the plot forward in a fun, heartwarming, and genuinely hilarious way while subverting the usual "total idiot accidentally saves the day" formula that the series has leaned on in the past. The door is very much left open for intriguing follow-ups, should the developers choose to bring these characters back for more... but based on the cryptic details shared in their roadmap for upcoming DLC chapters, I have a feeling we could just as easily be surprised by more fresh directions instead. Wherever they take things: in Color Gray I trust.

Sean played Golden Idol Investigations: The Sins of New Wells on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.