The Crimson Diamond is an EGA text parser mystery adventure game where you play as amateur geologist and reluctant detective Nancy Maple. Nancy is born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where she works as a clerk for the Royal Canadian Museum. She dreams of attending university to study geology and min...
The Crimson Diamond is an EGA text parser mystery adventure game where you play as amateur geologist and reluctant detective Nancy Maple. Nancy is born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where she works as a clerk for the Royal Canadian Museum. She dreams of attending university to study geology and mineralogy, and she's prepared to venture into the unknown to achieve her goals!
Follow Nancy as she travels north to the ghost town of Crimson, Ontario to investigate the discovery of a massive diamond in the area. Eavesdrop on conversations to learn more about the eccentric cast of characters who find themselves gathered at Crimson Lodge. Explore the lodge and its environs to evaluate the diamond claim, and maybe solve a mystery or two along the way! The Crimson Diamond is a cozy mystery that encourages reading and engaging in the story over devious arcade challenges.
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If you love the old murder mystery games like the Laura Bow Mystery Series, you will enjoy this game by Julia Minamata – The Crimson Diamond. The art style will give you that sentimental feel of the first Laura Bow Mystery, The Colonel’s Bequest. If you relish the nostalgia of the ‘old games’ -- perhaps taking you back to your childhood – this game will do it for you! It has the requisite feel of an Agatha Christie novel, set in the early 20th century. It even has a parser interface, so that you can question the other characters that you meet, develop your hunches, and write your notes along the way . It’s an observational, detective-type of game, and for those who love mysteries and suspense, you should really give this game a chance. To coin an old phrase: It’s the ‘bee’s knees!’
Roberta Williams – Director & writer of The Colonel’s Bequest, co-founder of Sierra On-Line
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- Explore Crimson Lodge and the surrounding wilderness
- Listen and talk to a cast of characters with different personalities and motivations.
- Uncover secrets, discover hidden areas, solve mysteries!
Haven't played a text parser game before and this was a good introduction to that style. I can only imagine how finicky text parser games were way back when. This game clearly has a lot of quality of life improvements, but wow especially at the end I was so thankful for the official walkthrough. Getting to the end is not hard, but getting a perfect ending is tricky. The story was predictable, but filled with heart and love and well-crafted.
The charming retro style and text parser reminds me of playing Quest for Glory II for the first time and the story brings back memories of playing The Last Express for the first time (especially eavesdropping on the character's conversations). Also the main character nerding out about rocks was actually very interesting. The puzzle to get everyone in the house's fingerprints was a really fun puzzle and creative.
The Crimson Diamond is reminiscent of vintage adventure games that actually predate my personal experience by a few years. It comes with EGA-like graphics in glorious pixels and sparingly used music that has been created using a Roland MT-32, professional music gear that was an adventure gamers wet dream in the late 80s because it sounded miles better than PC speaker or even Adlib cards. So, artistically, it is very much in line with the classic Sierra games that I remember my dad playing in the early 90s.
The setting of the game is quite similar to The Colonel's Bequest that I have followed through Let's Play videos, and I was intrigued how The Crimson Diamond would hold up in that comparison. But first things first. The plot revolves a around Nancy, a museum clerk that has herself sent to a remote lodge in Canada to find geological evidence for diamonds in the early 20th century. Unfortunately Nancy's luggage gets stolen and the lodge no longer hosts guests, but due to the remoteness of the place she gets to stay one night among an illustrious cast that all seem to hold their own mysteries.
In contrast to The Colonel's Bequest, The Crimson Diamond is very much a guided game. A helpful tutorial introduces new players to parser games. A notebook keeps track of what to do and how to advance the game. The story starts slow and picks up later, but there is always suspense. There are many conversations to be overheard, containers to search, and items to discover, but the riddles are sparse and remain fair. The game can be easily solved in a single play-through which lets me experience the story without repetitive toil. I might still go for a second one, though, because at the end the game provides some hints about what you might have misses. I also appreciate that, while you can die, there is usually ample warning that you are about to do something dangerous and an autosave is often at hand. I deeply enjoyed the game and its resolution, despite minor logic gaps.
In the tradition of Sierra games of the past, this is a very well written detective adventure. It is also more forgiving than the older games. Strong recommendation!
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