THE CASE GOLDEN OF THE IDOL

How two Latvian brothers, seeking to build a better tower defence, instead reimagined the whodunnit

- JON BAILES

Anyone who’s played Color Gray Games’ offbeat detective story will know that it revolves around a sinister secret brotherhood, a Freemason-like cult obsessed with sticking to the upper rungs of society. It was a very different kind of brotherhood that brought the game into being, however, as a pair of Latvian siblings – one an artist, the other a programmer and former co-founder of a socialnetworking game firm – combined their talents to produce this indie gem. Not that they necessarily expected to get that far, having set out with extremely modest ambitions.

As we discuss the origin story of The Case Of The Golden Idol with Ernests and Andrejs Klavinš, words such as “dabble” and “tinker” establish a prevailing theme. Ernests had worked for some 20 years at newspapers and a weekly journal providing a range of art, including political cartoons, but had dabbled in game design along the way. Meanwhile, Andrejs’ company, Next Level SIA, had boomed and then gone bust. “For some years we were very successful,” he says. “Then we were tremendously unsuccessful.” He left the game industry disillusioned – but in time, Ernests suggested “it was a great opportunity for us to tinker with game development”.

Rather than starting with a clear concept in mind, then, the brothers initially aimed to “just play around,” Andrejs says, while he searched for a new job. They weren’t even sure what kind of game to make at first – to the extent that, in another timeline, instead of