The Crimson Diamond review — A Nancy Maple mystery

By David Flynn

Posted on August 23, 2024

Diamonds have been found in Crimson! Recently, a local fisherman reeled in a big one. While not newsworthy on its own, the fish had actually swallowed a large gem, which was found in its gut. The former garnet mining town has become quite the idyllic place over the years, and a diamond rush could bring some hustle and bustle back to this remote Canadian settlement. Don’t grab your pickaxe and run for them thar hills just yet, as a mineralogical survey has yet to be conducted by the government. But where there’s valuable land to be claimed, there’s money, and where there’s money, you may just find corruption…

The adventure game has changed a lot over the years. From no visuals with just a text on screen to full graphic interfaces, mouse cursor control, and gorgeous graphics. While they’ve become much easier to get into and enjoy, I can’t help but wonder what games would have been like if the text parser era stuck around for a while longer. The Crimson Diamond by Julia Minamata is a manifestation of those daydreams. Inspired by one of my favorite games of all time, The Colonel’s Bequest, The Crimson Diamond is more than just a throwback. It’s a genius reimagining of what adventure games can be. The text parser and EGA style graphics may seem primitive at first glance, but they offer a freedom and beauty that’s incredibly refreshing.

The Crimson Diamond Gameplay - PC [GamingTrend]

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You play as Nancy Maple, an enthusiastic amateur geologist working for a museum. When Professor Plummer and Nancy hear the news about the diamond in Crimson, Nancy boards the next train to the countryside with hopes for the discovery of a lifetime. While staying at a lodge in Crimson, she’ll find what she’s looking for and much, much more. After the opening cutscenes, you’re essentially free to roam the lodge as you like. It might take a bit to get used to how the text parser works, like needing to type “open door” to open a door and “pick up key” to pick up that key you just looked at, but it really does make it feel like anything is possible.

There are certain objectives you need to accomplish to progress the story, but that’s just the bare minimum. To actually solve the game’s various mysteries, you need to thoroughly investigate areas multiple times, examine items closely, ask people the right questions, and eavesdrop on every conversation you can. You can still put things together without every piece of the puzzle, but the more you miss the more difficult it will be, and the ending has several permutations based on your performance.

If that makes you nervous, the game includes a link in the menu to an official hint guide with hints for everything you can do. It’s incredibly handy and restrained on outright giving you the solution until the final hint for each section. I’m not ashamed to say I used this for most of my playthrough, as just seeing a few black sections in the guide were often enough to clue me in on the fact I was missing something.

That being said, The Crimson Diamond isn’t entirely free of some strange logic for its puzzles. The worst offender is when you need a key from someone’s pocket, as getting them to take their clothes off was not even on my radar as a solution. It’s far from the worst adventure game solution though, and makes me glad I wasn’t too proud to use the hint book. Other puzzles are much more reasonable. Just pick up anything that isn’t nailed down and you should have everything you need.

Talking to characters is the same, ask them about literally everything you can at any moment. You might not get useful information every time, but the characters are just fun. You have some cartoonishly evil people around the lodge, while others seem nice but you’re not sure if you can trust them. They’re all enjoyable to interact with, though the star of the show is Nancy. She’s a fantastic protagonist, being enthusiastic, smart, and often far too passionate about her job. I adore her, and I hope we see more Nancy Maple mysteries in the future. While I won’t spoil the story, I really appreciate its giving you time to get to know everyone in the lodge before the crimes really start happening. Care was clearly taken to properly pace things out.

You can really feel every ounce of love that has gone into the Crimson Diamond, from the engaging mystery to the pixel perfect EGA visuals. As an indie game made mostly by one person, I was expecting only a few areas to explore and maybe some more detailed cutscenes and closeups at the start and end, but I was constantly blown away by the visuals. You get to explore the grounds around the lodge and a nearby mine, and they all look great. Character portraits are often animated with lip flaps and blinking, and there are even some death animations you can find if you look hard enough. The pixel art has quite a lot of dithering to convey shadows and texture, which makes me very curious as to how the game would look on a CRT; it even has a CRT display mode in the settings.

This low fidelity does have a drawback or two. Sometimes objects crucial to your investigation will only be a pixel or two in their entirety, which makes them difficult to see. Usually the “look” command will point them out in text, but not always. In particular, there’s a moment in the game where you need to use a salt shaker, which is only two pixels tall and the same color as the island counter it’s sitting on. I can definitely see someone getting stuck there if they don’t use the hintbook, but thankfully that’s the only major drawback of the visual style.

David Flynn

Editor | [email protected]

David is the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. He can find positives in anything, like this is a person who loved Star Fox Zero to death. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, Indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and writing about them! Here. On this website. When not writing or playing games, you can find David making music, games, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.

95

Excellent