The Crimson Diamond

The platonic ideal of a cozy adventure game. Incredibly charming visually and very well-paced in a way few other modern (or classic) point and click adventures manage. I do think that there could have been more opportunities for unique dialogue based on parser input and I think the conclusion is a little rushed, but I loved this game and will support all future Canadian geological adventures.

Lovely adventure! ✨

It manages to stay original to the EGA text parser style while breaking free of the not-so good qualities of the era.

The writing is excellent and the mystery and the characters are very well presented. Kept us eager to unravel and engage with each chapter of the story!

(playtime not accurate as we played on a different family member's account)

Completely nailed the vibe of a 1989 mystery games, from the writing to the music. Nice to play a game that takes place in Ontario

Absolutely delightful gem (pun intended) of a game. You don't need to love old "classic" text parsers to enjoy it because it has been utterly modernized. I loved every second of it.

I'm not normally a fan of CGA/EGA graphics as they're before my time... but this game is awesome! The writing is excellent and while some of the stuff is telegraphed a little too transparently it feels like the game equivalent of a page-turner. Definitely sat down to play it and finished it by the time the sun came up. Oops!

What an incredible throwback! I felt like I was a little kid getting another Laura Bow type game and the mystery did not disappoint! I really enjoyed the incredible detail put in the items, art, and story of this game and learned quite a few things I didn't know about Canada in that time period! 10/10 will be recommending this game to all my friends! I already can't wait for a sequel!

I've had this game wishlisted forever, and I'm so happy it finally became available this year! It is beyond charming--a perfect retro throwback to text parser adventure games. With that kind of gameplay comes some inevitable hiccups (trying to get the phrasing just right, making typos and getting aggravated), but overall, it felt like the game was pretty intuitive about doing what I wanted it to do.

The story is a mystery wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a mystery, and all of the layers were compelling. I don't usually say this, but one of the best things about this game was that it was possible to miss clues depending on how you approached certain tasks. Normally, I want to discover every last detail in a game, and in most mystery adventure games, you're pretty much on rails, and you can't proceed without finding all the clues. Here, you can proceed by attending key events without discovering something important, which will change the outcome of your game.

Because of these miss-able clues, you feel like a real amateur detective, trying to piece together information from your limited observations. I didn't find it hard to get enough information to solve the mystery, but I imagine it WOULD be hard to figure out every last detail without a walkthrough. Still, with limited help, I was able to get a solid positive ending, and I don't have any major remaining questions.

The graphics are great--even in the pixel art, it's usually pretty easy to see important details or when something has changed in a scene. There aren't TOO many areas that aren't important, and there's relatively minimal backtracking. I also feel there's very little moon logic, to the point where I found myself intuiting what to do with objects before their ultimate use became apparent. It's by no means an easy game, but it felt like a logical one, and I simply loved it.

A small list of nitpicks: I did see one reviewer complaining that there isn't enough sound, and I agree with that. It would have been nice to have a bit of ambient noise, but honestly, I'd rather there be too LITTLE sound rather than an irritating repetitive soundtrack. I did sometimes get frustrated when I thought I had looked at something only to find that I had to "Examine" it. At one point I typed "pick up strip of paper" about 20 different ways before I realized I had to examine something first, find out what that strip of paper was, and then type that. I also found the tasks in the notebook a little hard to parse. I think this is a game where you'd benefit from taking your own notes so you can remember whom to talk to about what; I didn't ask people enough questions!

If you love a classic adventure mystery, this IS your next game.

An absolute treat of a game, that throws you back to games made long ago, but full of thoughtful design that you wouldn't necessarily find back then. Gorgeous pixel art and great writing.

This is an excellent game; interesting plot, characters and puzzles...the pace is excellent and keeps you interested in the story - highly recommended!

Thumb-up to, but please notice that the game could be sometimes frustrating if you are not used to this type of adventure games.

Crimson Diamond is a retro-adventure in the style of Sierra On-Line: instead of using your mouse pointer to do interactions, everything is managed through a text parser (i.e. "get the pen", "ask Jack about lodge"). You can use your mouse to walk around or navigate the inventory, but is possible to accomplish everything through the keyboard.

The story is a classic Christie-like plot: a bunch of characters confined in a mansion, with some mysterious things going on. Each NPC is very well portrayed: everyone is interesting and shady in his own way... I couldn't wait to progress to discover the truth!

The gameplay consists mainly of eavesdropping, collecting evidence, and analyzing the environment and items. There are a lot of things to uncover and you will likely miss something on your first run, so the game has replayable value too. There are some clever puzzles, too.

The main problem comes with the text parser: if you are used to IF/text adventures, you already know that one of the most annoying things is the "guess the verb" situation, when it is obvious what you are supposed to do, you *know* what you have to do, but you can't accomplish it because you are not using the supposed verb. This happens quite often in the game and particular verbs are required to solve crucial puzzles (fortunately, the game comes with a hint book that will help you in these situations).

Another aspect that could be worth improving is Nancy's notebook, which I found messy and confusing to consult.

Anyway, the game is recommended if you like old-school mystery adventures, especially Sierra's Laura Bow games!

I think I've never played a Text parser before, so I was kind of hesitant to get into this game – despite it's great reviews on trustworthy sites. But I decided to give it a try and loved every second of it. The texting actually gives you a strangely liberating feel as if you're able to do almost anything. It's really impressive how many different (wrong) interactions Julia considered and wrote an answer for. You always feel like the game knows what you mean which is definitely not a given for a game like that. So the puzzling always seemed fair and logical.

Additionally the story was really nice. As much as I enjoy Point and click adventures I am really thrown off by their humor quite often. Obviously a video game doesn't have to be super-serious or anything, but it's just nice to meet a game that takes itself serious enough once in a while. Doesn't mean Crimson Diamond is super bleak and without any fun, but really it seems more focused on telling it's story than entertaining you with countless dad jokes.

A few additional things I want to point out that I really enjoyed:
- the hint system (which is basically a website) is awesome. There are numerous clues for each potential issue so it doesn't give away the answer immediately but tries to lead you in the right direction step by step.
- the graphics are really beautifully done
- there are several different endings one can explore and the ending really gives you the opportunity to show how much of the story you actually understood/uncovered
- one character in the game (Karl L. ) basically has my dad's name. <3

Overall really recommend this one. Give it a shot!

this was fun and hard. f dark souls, this was hard
and I can't wait to play it again in about six months when I've forgotten enough of it that it's hard still!

This is a really fun mystery that makes you feel like you actually have to get your hand dirty to solve.
Highly recommend!

This is a fantastic adventure game with a parser. Well thought out and highly enjoyable, the game provides a good challenge without ridiculous puzzles. The story is engaging and the visuals evoke the EGA era. Highly recommended for adventure fans who don't mind a bit of typing.

Just finished my first gameplay. It's a fun retro detective game and awesome that they consulted someone with indigenous knowledge in the staff, however, the stereotype towards the Asian female character, Kimi, is disappointing from Chapter 1. Kimi approached me on the train and said hi to me first, yet she was described as a shy and petite woman over and over again. It doesn't make sense - seems like you're describing Kimi based on your stereotypes, not the behaviours you actually assigned to the characters.

Not quite through yet, because I'm trying to get everything perfect the first time, but I'll probably get there soon :D My impressions so far:

The Crimson Diamond does a phenomenal job of capturing the spirit of a classic whodunit murder mystery in game form, maybe moreso than any other game I know (and I've played lots). It gets plot, characters, atmosphere and gameplay perfectly right at the same time.

It was really fun using a text parser again after many years and having to come up with my own ideas of what to ask people about and what to examine more closely. I am also glad that the game always remains fair to the player and is far more forgiving than classic Sierra games in the 80s. Deaths are present, but are either hinted at or directly after an auto-save.

Many thanks to the talented indie developer Julia Minamata who has obviously put her heart in this work. I would buy a sequel without even blinking an eye and recommend this game to anyone who likes classic mystery stories and/or classic adventure games. Just give it a chance.

The atmosphere and overall vibe of this throwback game is a total treat. It really feels like an authentic 80s Sierra title but with far fewer of the frustrations that would date it poorly. Sometimes the music/sound feels a bit too sparse, but what’s there is totally lovely. I can’t wait to see how the mystery resolves!

Very fun and enjoyable classic parser text adventure game! There is a lot to investigate and discover on your own. Highly recommended if you are a fan of the old parser based adventure games!

I loved this game for all the same reasons more eloquent people have stated; I am simply adding another well deserved positive review. Though I will say one thing -- there was one instance where I wept, not from sorrow, but from the true beauty of a particular statement made by one of the characters, so I give extra high praise for that.

I always loved the idea of some of the old mystery games Crimson Diamond draws inspiration from, but their often arbitrary consequences and softlocks marred the experience in practice. Julia Minamata has crafted a charming puzzler with an even more charming amateur detective at its heart.
The Crimson Diamond takes inspiration from its predecessors without being beholden to them, eschewing the ethnic stereotypes that could plague old Sierra games in favour of more well-realised characters, and providing more modern quality of life features like an in-game notebook and autosave feature which avoid aimless plodding and losing all progress to a sudden death.
My first playthrough did not result in the best ending, so I will be returning to Crimson soon. If I eavesdrop at the right doors, find the right clues, perhaps it will be different. Even if not, I will enjoy wandering through its EGA woods and searching for precious stones. It was a pleasure to be budding geologist Nancy Maple, and I hope this is just the start of her adventures.

There are many classic adventure titles I’ve not played. Some I probably never will. Some do intrigue me still. For example – I heard very interesting things about The Colonel’s Bequest, an investigation focused title where you could completely fail solving anything and still finish the game. Hopefully I will eventually play it, but the reason I’m bringing it up is because The Crimson Diamond seems to have been influenced not just by any Sierra adventure titles, but this one in particular. And it’s not just the EGA-styled visuals that call back to the long past era of adventure titles. Far more interesting is the fact that this is a text parser based adventure. You don’t see these often anymore.

As you might’ve guessed by now, The Crimson Diamond is a modern adventure game, designed around concepts and mechanics that hasn’t been in use for quite some time. Just like most classic Sierra titles, this game is controlled with arrows and typing short phrases into a command line. You do get a visual inventory screen and mouse can be used to examine inventory objects or move the character on screen, but for the most part you better get used to quickly typing combinations of “verb + something” if you want something done. And seemingly to avoid ambiguity and motivate informed actions, the game does not accept “use” as a verb, requiring you to think about how exactly the object must be handled. As was always the case, this approach feels a lot more investigative and gives the player more chances to feel smart. But also has a downside of making many actions slower and more repetitive.

But it all works when the story is interesting and the mystery is gripping… Which is not something that happens in The Crimson Diamond. Don’t get me wrong – there are curious mysteries and the more you play, the more drama happens. It’s just that… I suppose, what I expected was a 2024 game using 1989 technology and what this game is feels more like a game you’d get in the middle of the 90s. What I mean by that is – stories and character motivations has gotten quite a lot more complex and engaging over the years. Characters in “serious” adventure games feel more like real people rather than weird adventurers who put junk into their pockets and ransack random people’s rooms for no reason. Heck, you can die in this game very early on for seemingly no reason and it doesn’t feel like cool foreshadowing, it feels silly and out of place.

Though the biggest “old game” feeling comes from just how underutilized the text parser truly is. The potential of a text parser is in the idea that you can talk to characters about basically everything and expect to get a reaction. You could experiment with item usage and get results. But this game immediately kills that promise by showing just how limited and context specific most of these interactions are. Writing “ask X about Y” very often gets no meaningful result even when it clearly should. Why is the bird watching lady who is watching birds right this very moment “doesn’t know anything” on the topic of birds? Things like this, along with the repetition of tasks you often must perform to be a good investigator (whom you are not, by the way, the character just decides to act like one), really made me wish the game would drop the pretense and work like a LucasArts game with a mouse control and a contextual “use” command. Because in reality that’s how most of the things in the game are, just made less conveniently. Maybe I just expect more from a modern investigative game, with examples like Lamplight City, but investigating in this game felt like I was constantly going against what game wants me to do and it rarely felt right or exciting.

Which is not to say that The Crimson Diamond is bad. It very much isn’t. There are cool moments, yes including those that do work better (or exclusively) with text parser. And I did like playing it overall. It simply feels like a disappointment when taking the setup into consideration. Text parser, limited location, few characters – setup for a truly fantastic tightly made investigation game where characters feel alive and selection of verbs comes naturally. Instead, it’s just a good Sierra-like adventure game that feels like something from the 1990s, with a few modern quality of life features. And that’s alright too.

Oldschool yet modern, well-written, with surprisingly smooth gameplay

This is a love letter to old Sierra adventure games, especially The Colonel's Bequest, so if you like those, you should play this.

The game is a masterpiece, for several reasons:

Empathy

Sercrets and Consequence

The Best Of The Old And The New

TL;DR

Excellent homage to the old Sierra text parser games! Fantastic expertly detailed EGA-palette artwork, contrasted with simpler sprite animations. The writing is excellent. Each character speaks in their own "voice". Julia Minamata has actually researched mineralogy to make it convincing. The game evokes an Agatha Christie style mystery, while avoiding veering into ridiculousness (a la the Laura Bow series).

Although it uses the Adventure Game Studio engine, it's customised enough to avoid feeling like "just another AGS game".

The music is quite good, using a deliberately synthetic MIDI-soundfont style.

There are a few quibbles I have: the animations are sometimes a bit slow, and the game is silent at times. The text parser is fairly generous, I only got stymied by it a few times. There are lots of things you can miss while playing, often without hints that they're happening or available topics of conversation, so I ended up following the hintbook.

Get this if you like detective games with a retro aesthetic, or you have nostalgia for the classics!

As an adventure enthusiast, I can say that everything about this game is excellent. The wonderful 16-color EGA style graphics are a work of art. The story and characters are very well written and interesting to engage with, The gameplay is a lot of fun, and in contrast to the classic Sierra adventures that the game takes it's inspiration from, it is entirely fair. That means, there are no dead ends, no silly deaths at every corner, like in the classic Quest games. I was able to finish the game without a solution, something which I was never able to do with the old Sierra games.

The puzzles are logical and fair, and while you can miss some things, you can still finish the entire game. And maybe discover additional stuff in a 2nd playthrough – the game has different endings, and there may be some questions left open at the end if you missed certain clues. There are a few possible deaths, but they always come with a explicit warning (and an autosave).

The UI is of course pretty old school, with a "text parser". That's how the text input was called back in the day, a word a friend of mine did not understand when I used it recently to describe the game. So basically you move the player character with the cursor keys, and enter orders like "open door", "take cup" etc. when standing next to the object. For the typing lazy, the game also accepts shortcuts, an innovation that was missing from the classic games. Example "o d" for "open door".

You can really notice at every aspect of the game how much love for details, how much research for the setting and characters, the game's solo developer Julia Minamata has invested into it over the many years it was in development. It still blows my mind that it is not only done by a solo developer (with only additional help for the sound track), but that it's also Julia Minamata's first game. An amazing debut and instant classic for adventure fans.

Despite the limited colors, sounds, and animation, this is a fully developed mystery made for fans of detective adventure- painted lovingly with a brush of VGA graphics and scored with nostalgia-inducing chiptunes.

You'll need to be clever if you want to get to the bottom of the mystery, but whichever way you tread the paths of Crimson you will be rewarded with satisfying text parser gameplay.

This game is SO GOOD!

As a kid/teen, I played a lot of the Sierra games (Kings Quest/Space Quest) and this gets the feel of those perfectly, from the graphics to the game mocking you for ways you can die (hilariously, too!). The game also is full of puzzles and makes you think quite a bit! There also seems to be multiple endings, based on how you play the game. That's a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!!!

I highly recommend this game to those that like mystery/investigative games, text parsers, and/or retro games. The Crimson Diamond delivers a solid experience.

Was fun, story and characters were decent, I felt like the puzzles were fair and I did not need to look up help... mostly. I am pretty sure I did some things out of order due to searching and trying things. People really did not seem to care if you rummaged through their things right in front of them. I missed opportunities to ease-drop since I didn't realize I could at first. I did skip the tutorial so that is definitely on me.

I had one particular moment when I tried a thing.. rub thing on thing (trying to not give spoilers).. and the game was like "oh no, I just couldn't risk doing that".. and then later I was checking a guide for help and it was like "btw you can do that exact thing if you want".. I tried.. and it gave different dialog this time and worked! I felt like I was robbed of the satisfaction of it working when I tried it earlier and the game not allowing it in that chapter. It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time but the game was like "nah".

I wish there was more ambient music or sounds throughout the scenes, the game just seemed too quiet. Fire could be crackling, something?

I feel like some tools are just way way way overused (dust that thing x1000). I would have preferred if at the end of a chapter we tripped and lost the dust, brush, and all!

Overall it was a positive experience, I like that there was multiple stories being told and many things to discover and collect for completeness. Not certain I am the type to go for that perfect score but thanks for the journey

wow, i've played for only a couple of hours but I'm super impressed with the game so far. I love old school adventure games especially EGA text parser games and of course I love the Colonel's Bequest which has a strong influence on this game. First off the introduction is fantastic, the animations and artwork are reminiscent of the good old days while also being even more impressive technically than some of the games that influenced them. There is a large amount of detail in the artwork early on and the parser has a wide range of text that you can input. I also appreciate the help page in game that lists all the verbs and shortcuts for navigating the game easier!
I played Colone's Bequest with my family and we started playing Crimson Diamond together and so far we love it, its great going through the story and mystery as part of a small group, the more heads the better!
So far so good, hopefully I'll remember to come back and edit my review when I'm further along.
BTW the fact that the developer Julia did most of this on their own is a testament to how passion can drive a project and I hope this game is a great success for Julia and I wish Julia to contiune on developing games because they proved they are an asset to the field of game development.
A+

An absolute MUST for any point-and-click Sierra fans. Superb attention to detail, jaw-dropping pixel-work, captivating story, and the programming fantastic. If you have enjoyed colonel's bequest - this is a MUST have title. Massive praise to the creator of this title! Fantastic job all around!

Absolutely delightful game. Great main character, interesting NPCs, a good story, and an interesting mystery to solve. Great parser: this is definitely the best part of the game compared with the old text parser games. I very rarely had to sit and try command after command, trying to figure out what the game would "understand." The game had a very high amount of synonyms it understood, so I was very rarely stuck trying to figure out what to call something. It happened now and then, sure, but even then I was usually able to get my second attempt to work.

Highly recommended.

Feels just like similar adventures of olden time and it is mostly well done and interesting. Story and characters are pretty good. Didn't like that there's barely any music or sounds and also that the game moves on without any warning preventing you from solving a lot of the mysteries just because you solved a specific problem too early. Puzzles are a mixed bag. There are some good ones but also, a lot of time is spent walking around trying to collect footprints/fingerprints which just isn't that interesting. Then there's a ton of drawers, cabinets etc. to open and look inside and the vast majority of them are completely empty, which would already feel wasteful in a point & click adventure, but here you have to type in the commands each time in addition to walking to each spot first.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game and there seems to be high replay value with all the things you didn't find out the first time. Would also like to point out a lot of effort was put into creating a satisfying ending as the story doesn't just go "the end". You'll see.

This game is a fitting love letter to the old Sierra games, most specifically The Colonel's Bequest, but it definitely also has its own identity.

It plays to a point like Colonel's Bequest, but with a more modern approach: there are less random player deaths, the text parser works better, so does the pathfinding (no more "you need to get closer" when you want to interact with something), and the graphics are wonderful while still retaining that old school EGA vibe. The pixel art is truly amazing and I can't imagine how long it took to get it done, especially knowing it was the work of a single developer!

As a horror/thriller fan, I did miss the bloodbath of Colonel's Bequest, with dead bodies showing up left and right, as this is a more peaceful and comforting game... but this is clearly a deliberate choice, and one I can respect. There *is* still death around the corner though, so the murder mystery element is still present.

I had a lot of fun playing this, and am hoping for a future sequel.

A charming adventure game that looks and feels exactly like the classic Laura Bow: the Colonel's Bequest by Sierra. The gameplay is fun and it features a simplified version of an old text parser adventure. The puzzles are difficult but fair. The story is rich and the characters are interesting, specially the main one. Highly recommended for fans of old style adventure games.

The beginning of the game is a bit slow: a long cutscene followed by a multitude of empty drawers to open and information getting often repeated through dialogue. But it gets better with every chapter, with more threads to follow, more freedom, and the strong sensation the game won’t end abruptly if you let a few details slide.

What impressed me the most is the amount of customization the game opens up to the player - you may use more awkward, “retro” commands instead of the more convenient UI. You don’t have to use the in-game notes to track your quests. You may accept the game over screens and start from the beginning, but you may also save at any time.

And the game's conclusion is especially good at allowing the player to decide how much they want to learn about their mistakes. You may try to answer some questions blindly, you may ask the game for some pointers, or you can avoid any tips at all, to replay the game some time in the future. Which, to me, sounds like a pretty alluring option.

I suspected it would be better than Colonel's Bequest, and it was; It lays down a more coherent mystery for you to solve. I suspected it would have a lot of beautiful art, and it does. But what I didn't expect was a sensitivity towards the characters that you rarely find in a mystery. I felt BAD for what happened to certain characters. I glimpsed the life that was robbed from them. It's written with a strong emotional intelligence.

I wish it had more puzzles, though.

I'm an adventure gamer from way back. I've been playing my whole life, and I've played many of the modern entries into the genre.

It's been a long time since I've played a game that took me back to the good ol' days as effectively as this one did. The text parser is a nostalgic favorite of mine. This one is a lot more forgiving than the adventure games of yore, inviting you to try typing anything and everything you can think of. The puzzles were challenging, but not so challenging I ever wanted to rage-quit and stop playing. I'd get stuck for a day or two, but I'd be thinking about the solution and then it would hit me and I'd open up the game and try things out. It's one of those games.

I've throughly enjoyed playing the Crimson Diamond. Having a Text Parser based game in today's gaming world is extremely enjoyable for a old guy. Nancy Maple is a believable main character.

Fantastic. I was worried that the game would be unfair and require the use of walkthroughs to complete (PTSD from my Sierra days), but it was wonderfully satisfying to play through "blind" and I did not have to have any hints to finish the game. My second concern was that the game might be overly simplistic and rely mostly on nostalgia and the (admittedly lovely) art style, but it did not disappoint on this front, either! There are layers to the story and even potential for more than one playthrough (with a clever and optional hint system at the end, for those who want to dig deeper but might be pressed for time). Of course there are a few bugs (I mainly noticed some displaced/ out of time dialogue), but they'll probably be cleaned up going forward, and do not affect the gameplay. Julia Minamata has done a fantastic job and I'll be eagerly looking forward to anything else she comes up with in the future!

I occasionally was able to catch Julia Minamata's streams on Twitch when she was developing this game in real time. She was always pleasant, knowledgeable, and an exceptional pixel artist. It is nice seeing everything come together into such a great retro inspired game.

I am a little rusty with text parser adventure games, but their are plenty of text shortcuts and quality of life improvements baked into this game for returning hard-core fans and first-time players to appreciate. I can't wait to see what is next from this talented developer.

The page itself and many other reviews talk plenty about this being a throwback and love letter, and it is, but I think focusing overmuch on that is doing a disservice to how delightful this game is. This is a passion project made over several years using old stylings, certainly, but modern conveniences and evolution in storytelling.

As much as I love the old Laura Bow mysteries, there's a real empathy for the characters in The Crimson Diamond that wasn't really as present in them, as well as an insistence on solutions and clues being more sensible. The adventure game puzzle magic is present, but I never found myself rolling my eyes at a solution. The text parser feels a lot more like it listens to you, too, not making things overly simple but if you have an idea, there's enough flexibility in the language it can process that you'll find a way.

The graphics and music are downright gorgeous too. This is a game that feels delightful to look at, and the soundtrack in any given area or event flows perfectly for an experience where you're likely to take your time contemplating the scene. For a game with tense investigations, it's simultaneously soothing to be inside.

There's plenty to love about old Sierra adventure games. But don't feel like you have to have childhood memories of those to have a great time with The Crimson Diamond. This is a game that stands on its own two feet.

A great throwback to the Sierra Online days. If you were a fan of Colonel's Bequest you will love it. Julia put a lot of love and effort into making this and it shows. The art could fit right into the SCI era Sierra games, and the music was created with a real MT-32.

It uses a parser to interact with the game, but there are lots of shortcuts and quality of life enhancements. The puzzles aren't too bad and there are multiple things you can miss and find on different playthroughs.

It can be a bit wordy at times but not overwhelming. The ending bits definitely take a page from the Laura Bow games, so you might want to take notes.

The Crimson Diamond is a phenomenal game!

I never played any of the games that inspired this one, so there was very little nostalgia involved when playing it in my case, and I think this is probably as good of a first experience playing a text parser one could have.

The game clues you in on what to do without giving anything away, and feels very fair while also being a good challenge. It never felt condescending or harsh.
It's hard to get proper stuck with no idea what to do, and if you reach the end having missed something interesting you can get a little hint and go back with a new goal. It's generous with synonyms and I probably had to retype prompts more often due to misspellings than due to not using the right phrasing. And even then most of the words I needed to know were mentioned either in the notebook or elsewhere in the scene.

You really get to feel clever a lot in this game. A few puzzles I figured out before I needed to which was fun, and the more challenging ones were incredibly satisfying to finally untangle.

The plot and mysteries are very intriguing, and the reveals are satisfying, the writing in general is very good. The art is fantastic and the music is too. Even without nostalgia goggles, the fact that both are very accurate to games of a certain time, genre and hardware makes the whole experience feel very consistent and unified.

You should play it!

If you've played and enjoyed those old Sierra adventure games where you have to type in everything you do then this might be for you. The Crimson Diamond is a well made and fun game, with a text parser and has none of those click and point interface options that came later. The game autosaves though, but I can live with that.

The Crimson Diamond is a nostalgic love letter to the early Sierra adventure games, especially The Colonel's Bequest, but with a modern twist. What stands out most is how the game expands on the classic formula, staying true to its roots while introducing improvements that make it more engaging and accessible.

The game gently nudges you in certain directions, but ultimately, it's up to you to piece together the mystery. This design strikes a perfect balance between being story-driven and player-driven. Unlike many modern adventure games, where you feel like you're simply along for the ride, The Crimson Diamond gives you a real sense of agency. The choices you make have tangible consequences, which makes the experience more immersive.

Another clever touch is how the scoring is built into the story. It doesn't feel like a superficial points tally but rather an integrated part of the experience. For fans of classic EGA graphics, this game delivers in spades—the pixel art and colors hit hard on that nostalgia. While almost all of the puzzles are logical, I did encounter one that left me stuck for a bit. Getting the pick could have been handled more gracefully, but overall, the puzzle design is solid.

While it might not be a popular opinion, I loved the text parser. It gave me a lot more freedom in exploring the world and solving problems, and the decision to avoid using "use" as a catchall action command was brilliant. This forces you to think more deeply about your actions, which adds another layer of immersion.

That said, there were some rough edges. While the pixel art is fantastic, the animations are a bit choppy. Text parsing could also use some refinement—some logical inputs weren’t recognized, leading to some trial and error. Additionally, I encountered several minor bugs that, while not game-breaking, were noticeable. Hopefully, these will be addressed in future updates.

Despite these small issues, it's clear how much care went into making this game. The developers took the best parts of older adventure games and layered in modern standards, avoiding many of the pitfalls that made early Sierra titles frustrating by today’s standards. I sincerely hope the developer continues to create games in this style. The Crimson Diamond stands out as one of my favorite detective games, and I would love to see more titles inspired by this classic genre.

An extremely solid, throwback adventure game! Even with its old-school Sierra trappings, it goes out of its way to make you comfortable with its combination text parser/menu-based controls. Even more impressive is the level of granularity to your investigation: even if you miss an important scene or two, there are other ways to find the information you need and solve the case. And despite a few death scenarios for the sake of it, they never feel unfair or set you back too far (thank you, auto-saves). A game well worth your time, regardless of your experience with older adventure games.

The game is charming and fun. While it heavily borrows the aesthetic of The Colonel's Bequest, it forges its own path and is very much its own thing. I absolutely love the local Canadian flavor (or should I say flavour) and reading the voices out loud is incredibly fun :D

Very much worth your time!