Developer: Julia Minamata Publisher: Julia Minamata Release: August 15th 2024 On: Windows From: Steam Price: TBC Reviewed on: Steam Deck The Crimson Diamond is a proper old-school style puzzle adventure. It's 2D pixel art, with a limited colour palette as in EGA games, and you control it with a text parser, like King's Quest or one of them other Sierra adventures old men like Graham remember. It's important to mention this up front because it's very possible that, despite The Crimson Diamond's tale of betrayal, murder, and mineral rights in 1914 Canada, the text parser element will be a Rubicon you instantly can't be arsed to cross.
A not unreasonable stance - though I think the text parser in The Crimson Diamond is fantastic. Such beef that I have with this adventure game is down to the specificity required to solve some of the puzzles. If you're unfamiliar there's a tutorial, but basically what a text parser means is that you don't press buttons, you type stuff.
Put in LOOK - although you don't have to use caps, I'm just doing it so this review isn't a nightmare to text parse itself - and press enter, and the game gives you a text box describing the room you're in. This might be, say, 'an old study with a large carved fireplace. To the right of the fireplace is a tapestry, and to the left of it is a display cabinet, and there's a desk in the centre of the room.
' And then you go up to the desk and type LOOK AT DESK, and the game will tell you the desk has two drawers, a pen .