The Crimson Diamond Review
Solo developer Julia Minamata’s new Sierra-style text parser adventure game The Crimson Diamond evokes a bygone era of PC gaming.
The Crimson Diamond. (Credit: Julia Minamata)
The Crimson Diamond is an adventure game played with a text parser in full EGA color glory that could have come straight from 1988. Julia Minamata developed the game in the popular engine Adventure Game Studio as a solo project starting in 2018, and finally released it earlier this year. It’s a labor of love, and it shows with its wonderfully written dialogue and attention to detail in its puzzles and design.
The Crimson Diamond. (Credit: Julia Minamata)
Nancy Maple is an amateur geologist and a clerk at the Royal Canadian Museum in Toronto, Canada. When a fisherman in the ghost town of Crimson, Ontario, catches a fish that has swallowed a large diamond, she travels there to conduct a geological survey for the museum. When the only bridge to the area collapses, she gets trapped with a cast of eccentric characters at the Crimson Lodge. She'll solve other mysteries along the way as she investigates whether the area is indeed rich with diamonds.
The Crimson Diamond. (Credit: Julia Minamata)
The game’s mystery is charming, with wonderfully written dialogue for its colorful cast of characters. There’s a lot you can miss because there are parts of the game where you can eavesdrop on other characters’ conversations if you’re in the right place at the right time. Things like this add depth to the game’s story and characters and can give you hints on what to investigate or do next.
While you can click to move around the scenes, most of your interaction with the game will consist of typing out commands, which is explained in an optional tutorial. For example, if you want to search a room, you might “open drawer” and “look in drawers.” You’ll usually have to stand near the object you want to examine or even be more specific in your commands. Since the commands beyond the basic look, examine, open, talk, ask, etc., aren’t always spelled out, you must be observant and creative to discover clues and solve the game’s puzzles. I was often stumped and had to consult the game’s online hint book. Your score at the end of the game and parts of the ending can change based on how thoroughly you investigate the game’s central mystery and the area's geology.
The Crimson Diamond. (Credit: Julia Minamata)
The game’s graphics are authentic to the EGA, 16-color look of the heyday of text parser adventure games. While the look is charming and well-executed, I’ve always found the style rather unattractive. Having grown up with a Mac and playing games nearly exclusively on consoles, I have no nostalgia for the look. That’s not a knock on the game because it flawlessly achieves what it set out to do. The only downside, which is true to the gameplay style, is that you can’t rely on visuals to communicate details in the game’s environments. You’ll always get more helpful information from commands such as “look.”
The Crimson Diamond. (Credit: Julia Minamata)
While my love for adventure games is rooted in my experiences playing LucasArts point-and-click adventures, I still enjoyed The Crimson Diamond and hope Julia Minamata develops more games along these lines. I would joyfully play another Nancy Maple mystery or anything else she creates. This was the first time I’d played a text parser game from start to finish, and I loved it.
The Crimson Diamond is available now on PC and Mac via Steam.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Mac
