One of our favorite detective games drops its final DLC and a free browser-based demo

Tyler Colp
·2-min read
A group of people on an island with one man holding another on near the sea.
A group of people on an island with one man holding another on near the sea.

The Case of the Golden Idol, aka the best detective game in the last few years, is back again with three new cases to solve and a free demo that you can play in your browser.

Our favorite story of 2022 will come to an end with the final three cases in The Lemurian Vampire expansion, which finishes the events of the last expansion, The Spider of Lanka, just before the start of the story in the base game. The Lemurian Vampire, a title that might spark some theories if you saw the original mystery through, will be available on Steam for $5.99.

Like the original story, the Lemurian Vampire will test your deduction skills when given intricate 2D scenes filled with characters and clues. As you click around, you gather keywords to fill in the blanks of a Mad Libs-style solution. When you move onto the next scene, those same characters and revelations will remain essential to understanding what's going on.

If you haven't played the base game yet and are interested, I'd recommend playing it before the DLC cases, even if they are prequels.. They're surely solvable without knowing what happens in The Case of the Golden Idol, but the years-long trajectory of the titular, magical idol might not hit you the same way.

If you're not quite convinced, you can play the first three missions of the base game in your browser for free via the official site. The demo mirrors the regular version of the game and can even be played in full screen. Any progress you make won't carry over to Steam, but it's easy to quickly re-solve a case if you know where to find the necessary clues.

In our The Case of the Golden Idol review, Chris said it's "one of the most novel and challenging mystery games" he's played in years. Every scene is a web of characters and motivations that reappear over the course of the story. There are cases as simple as a murder mystery in a tiny pub to a manhunt in an underground complex filled with masked cult members. Few games are as weird and intricate and dense as The Case of the Golden Idol.

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