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jp's The Case of the Golden Idol (PC)
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| [June 14, 2023 11:19:21 PM]
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I'm really enjoying this. I think I'm 10 cases in or so - and it's stayed as interesting as the first few cases, which is a good thing since sometimes these kinds of games can sort of fall apart when the difficulty or complexity ramps up. So far so good here! (and yes, difficulty and complexity have ramped up, but are still what I would call reasonable - wherein the solution to each case makes sense and I've been able to figure it out even after some mistakes or missed clues).
What has impressed me most, in terms of the design, is how the game handles clues and goals. Each case consists of one or more screens (if there are more than one they're connected spatially such that it makes sense) and in the scenes are object/locations that (when they have a blinking star) you click on to look at things, get clues, etc. I call this the observation/clue gathering view and generally what you want to do first is click on everything clickable to populate the other view - this is the "solving" view (the game has another pair of words for the difference between these views, and you can toggle between them easily).
The solving view consists of a single screen broken up into two or more panels. The left-most panel is a sentence/pargraph that's sort of like a mad-lib page. There some words but most of it is blank spaces you must fill with clues you drag/drop from either the other panels or your "clue collection" section at the bottom of the screen. Each panel in this view is a goal for you to complete - with the final goal the left-most panel which is a description of what happened in the case (e.g. "John Smith went to the library to get a gun he then used to stab Jack Smith with in the pantry"). The other panels are sub-goals to the main one, and once you filled out all the slots - if correct - they turn green indicating that progress has been made. It's sort of like you're collecting notes and figuring things out - before you're ready for the final reveal.
The panels serve both as intermediary goals that are evident to the player and a way to "check" your progress by verifying your sense-making of the clues gathered so far. It's a neat form of scaffolding I don't think I've seen before and it really prevents you from going off on a completely wrong track (while also guiding you towards a solution, which might make things too easy for some?)
The cases are all connected, and there's characters that carry over from one to the next - but, they are all self-contained in that prior knowledge helps, but isn't necessary.
I've found I can't really do more than one or two cases a day (the first one doesn't really count, it's so short) because I get a bit tired. BUT, I've enjoyed the process of sort of "snacking" on them... I wonder how many more there are? (the trophy list is probably a dead giveaway, since so far I've gotten a trophy for each case)
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jp's The Case of the Golden Idol (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Friday 9 June, 2023
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