The Case of the Golden Idol is a 2022 adventure and puzzle video game developed by Color Gray Games and published by Playstack for Windows and Mac. The game depicts a narrative spanning 40 years in the 18th century, in which players collect clues to piece together concepts, characters, and evidence to provide context to the story. The Case of the Golden Idol received praise for its use of deduction to present its narrative, and has been described as a spiritual successor to Lucas Pope's 2018 game Return of the Obra Dinn. The Case of the Golden Idol was cited as one of the best games of 2022 for its narrative and design

The game was developed by Latvian independent developers Ernests and Andrejs Kļaviņš, who had a decade of prior experience in the game industry. The brothers founded the studio Color Gray Games in 2021, with an objective to build prototypes for their games to see if their titles could be commercially successful. The Case of the Golden Idol was developed as the first commercial venture of the studio.  The developers were inspired to work on the game by the niche of "deduction games" pioneered by The Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story, observing a "lack of games in this mould that exist," and finding appeal to "games that respect the player's time and give them agency throughout the entire process. In response, they aimed to create a game that empowered players to "feel like a detective" through the use of "gameplay and not just through narrative flavor", rather than just as a series of puzzles.

The developers made a conscious decision to pursue a pixel art style to invoke a "sense of nostalgia (for) the classic point and click adventure games of the nineties", with Andrejs Kļaviņš stating "we want(ed) to elicit a bit of nostalgia in those who grew up playing adventure games, but put a new spin on it." Citing the desire to "try something new", the developers pursued the 18th Century as a setting due to the overuse of the 19th Century, and were inspired by the art of Gustave Doré and William Hogarth as aesthetic references when illustrating the art of the game.

The soundtrack of the game was arranged by Ukrainian composer Kyle Misko, and was released for download on Steam alongside game on 13 October 2022. Misko, who arranged the orchestral soundtrack, stated the game's soundtrack was influenced by a creative interpretation of orchestral, neoclassical, ambient and dramatic genres, and aimed to convey the mood of a detective game. The game was the first project by Misko to be released for a video game.

A demo of the game was released on Steam on 25 August 2022, in line with the Steam Next Fest event in October 2022, an event that showcases upcoming games on the platform. The full version of the game was released on 13 October 2022.