Rise of the Golden Idol is the perfect commute game
When I train to work, I’m usually a podcast and BlueSky kind of commuter. Landscape mobile games are too involved (sorry, Alto’s Odyssey) and most mobile games are either gachas (no thanks), score chases (not for me), or a Candy Crush (ew).
Netflix gaming has been a bit of a sleeper for my commute though, helping me break those habits with games like Into the Breach and, most recently, Rise of the Golden Idol.
I enjoyed Case of the Golden Idol plenty, but it’s so obvious now that the gameplay is meant for mobile. There’s just something so damn good about the tactile nature of sliding nameplates into the mad-libs-style summary cards. I’d go so far as to say Rise of the Golden Idol is a perfect mobile game.
Gameplay-wise, the game is nearly identical to Case of the Golden Idol. You’ll be presented with an at-first inscrutable scene, then tap on objects and people in the environment to build a list of words. Using those words, you’ll piece together who each person is and what happened here.
New to Rise of the Golden Idol, at the end of four or so levels, you’ll be presented with a few more summary cards to decipher how those past four levels are connected. These were my favorite levels in the game because they forced you to think across scenarios, tying each together and gleaning knowledge only understandable by seeing four scenarios together. These summaries are a masterful way of making each level feel greater than its parts and built wonderfully to the final scenario of the game.
Just like Case, the story in Rise is…absurd. The game plays out across a series of vignettes and timelines showing the kooky goings-on of a band of scientists and their I.D.O.L. It’s a good mix of Sherlockian mystery and absurd 70s procedural, complete with mad scientists, hippies, and an ancient artifact that does some wild stuff.
The most standout thing about Rise of the Golden Idol is how well the layers fold back on themselves. In the first game, I remember recognizing faces for an easy win in a summary card, but Rise takes it a bit further with a consistent narrative that will reward you for inferring and deducing the bureaucratic shuffling going on in the background.
The magic trick is that you don’t need to be consistently focused for an hour at a time to get the most out of the game. I played Rise of the Golden Idol for thirty minutes twice a day for about two weeks, which felt like just enough time to solve one or two rooms a day. Luckily, my commute is end-of-line to end-of-line, because the “just one more try” of solving the room would be itchy enough to make me miss a stop.
If you’re looking for a solid game to while away your commute and feel like your flexing your brain muscles, don’t sleep on Rise of the Golden Idol. Odds are, you have a Netflix account already anyways.
