The Rise of the Golden Idol and its predecessor are some of the most beloved and popular thinky games of the last few years. Between the two games and their DLC (which is continuing throughout this year) there's an impressive number of cases to solve, but if your ravenous appetite for wordy mysteries cannot be sated, maybe City of Voices should be on your radar.
Coming soon and designed by one of the several designers who built cases for Rise of the Golden Idol, the game is described as a "short Golden-Idol-like" where you'll investigate scenes to solve puzzles in the role of a young girl in school and camping settings in suburban England.
Here's some of the description from the City of Voices Steam page:
A short Golden Idol-like deduction game about a young girl who is catapulted from her suburban life into a mysterious adventure. Investigate a series of moments frozen in time. Examine clues and solve puzzles to uncover a story full of twists and turns.
Investigate a series of moments frozen in time. Examine clues and make deductions to uncover what happened in each scenario. Piece together a heartfelt story full of twists and turns.
From the trailer and screenshots, the gameplay looks to indeed be pretty reminiscent of the Golden Idol games, but perhaps on a smaller scale: click around and investigate environments to gather information needed to fill in blanks or answer questions in your "detective" work.
Even the general aesthetic of playful pixel-art graphics remains intact in this unofficial spin-off from the series. The game advertises 9 cases which ramp up in difficulty, and is aiming for an average playtime of around 5 hours. A nice little bite-sized mystery perhaps good for a wait between other Idol case releases.
There's no release window announced yet for City of Voices, but you can wishlist the game on Steam to keep up with any updates.
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