Try the demo for delightful sandbox mystery The Case of the Golden Idol

pcgamer.com:

Ready to solve twelve gruesome, strange murders in one go? Hope you are, because The Case of the Golden Idol(opens in new tab) has released. Color Gray Games' debut, published by Playstack, is an open-ended detective game where you're forced to investigate, think, and explore freely in order to solve several deaths. We first got a look at it earlier this year(opens in new tab), and its appeal has only widened since then.

Your job is to closely explore, then reconstruct, the scene of each death in order to deduce cause of death, murder weapon, and motive… when there was one at all. You can try that out for free in a nice little demo, and then buy it, because it's out now.

That's quite complicated by the nature of the deaths: They span 40 years, so you can more than guess that this gets real weird, real fast. Golden Idol encourages you to try unorthodox solutions, filling in the blanks of what you know as effectively and thoroughly as you can, as you go, and revising your theory as new evidence arises.

«Reveal the true nature of the mysterious Golden Idol and those who covet it. Follow the journey of a cursed aristocratic family as you untangle a web of deceit and villainy in your hunt for the truth behind this dark conspiracy,» says the official description.

Back when I was playing Return of the Obra Dinn I often thought «It's very sad that t here aren't more games like this» and, now, here is a second game like that. If you loved Obra Dinn's more mystery-driven bits, well, here's a game you should definitely at least try the demo of. (Indeed, Obra Dinn author Lucas Pope endorses the demo on the Steam page.)

You can find The Case of the Golden Idol on GOG(opens in new tab) and Steam(opens in new tab) for $18, 10% off