‘The Crimson Diamond’ Brings Back Cozy Retro Adventure Gaming Fun

In this new world of open source do it yourself everything, indie games have flourished and there are more titles than ever before made with small teams and aged game engines to produce games that look and play not unlike the games of yore. What this means for the games fan is that there are more and more retro-style games to play than ever before

In other words it takes something really special to stand out, and I think that the new adventure game The Crimson Diamond from first time game designer Julia Minamata has really set itself apart from the pack. It features a super-throwback typing first interface that hasn’t been seen much commercially since the early 1990s along with accompanying EGA graphics that don’t look a day past 1989, and its Agatha Christie-like “find the missing diamond” mystery plot will probably have you smiling ear to ear.

Just take a look at the trailer that was released three entire years before the game launch alongside regular Twitch livestream updates, I mean talk about building anticipation! Just listen to the music, look at the spooky mansion in the woods, the large cast of characters and see if you can feel the old Sierra Online influences directly. In fact, Julia readily admits to being directly inspired by games like Kings Quest 3 and The Colonel’s Bequest, both of which were adventure games with a female protagonist created by the greatest adventure game designer of that era, Roberta Williams. Would you believe she even got a recent endorsement from the legend herself, meeting her at a game conference earlier in the summer and getting this line to add on to her Steam Page, “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. – Roberta Williams.”

And Julia not only nailed the look, but the feel of those old games striking just the right balance between foreboding and off-putting and getting the cheeky sense of humor just right – try any kind of off-color typing commands in the game and you’ll see what I mean. To explain for some possibly confused readers, there was a brief period of adventure games where items were interacted with by typing instead of using the mouse for “grab” or “use” commands.

However, you can be inspired by something, but you have to do the work, and in that sense the term “labor of love” barely covers it, as it took Julia nearly 10 years to solo-design this full featured game entirely by herself with a little help in the playtesting and sound design portions.

It’s for all these reasons that fans of adventure games have been eagerly awaiting The Crimson Diamond, especially since the full first level demo has been available for over 5 years!

In the Crimson Diamond you play as Nancy Maple, a young female detective and mineralogist sent out to Ontario to discover if the legend of the Crimson Diamond found inside a fish is true. Along the way you’ll interact with a unique cast of characters, each of whom just may be after the diamond for themselves. Gameplay is very close to how it was in an 80’s adventure game as you can move Nancy by pressing the keyboard’s arrow keys in the direction you want to move in as well as by clicking around the screen and landing the shoes icon where you want to walk to. However, there are some subtle and helpful differences from a Sierra type game of that period, or as Julia said “she wanted it to play like the old games, but maybe a little smoother.” In this case the game is a little more intuitive in certain areas like for instance if you’re standing in front of a cupboard in a room with two cupboards and you typed “open cupboard” an 80s game of that time period would say something like “which cupboard do you want to open? The red cupboard or the one covered in termites?”, but Crimson Diamond just knows you want to open the cupboard that you are standing in front of. Also, those older games were often incredibly difficult and many gamers of the time were forced to pay for over the phone recorded game help while Julia has provided a helpful in-game hint guide chapter by chapter, because after all, games are supposed to be fun.

Find the clues, find the diamond, and …survive!