In my thoughts, this picture is slowly drawing into place, with the textual content arriving final.
Julia Minamata
A textual content parser? Typing in “Open drawer,” then “Look in drawer,” then “Take brochures,” within the 12 months 2024, on a pc that may generate a 4K 3D mannequin of the Acropolis if I ask it to? Is that actually what The Crimson Diamond asks of us?
Sure, it’s, and solo developer/author/producer Julia Minamata is correct to ask it. If in case you have text-prompt adventures from the likes of Sierra in your psychological library (like, say, The Colonel’s Bequest), or in the event you’re prepared to fulfill the parser midway, it’ll work. The Crimson Diamond’s parser is pretty agile, accepting a spread of nouns and verbs in most circumstances. You may nonetheless use arrow keys and a mouse to maneuver and click on a couple of helpful shortcuts. And the parser has shortcuts, like typing “n” to have a look at your quest-tracking pocket book or “o d” or “o c” for the quite common actions of opening a door or cupboard.
There are a variety of cupboards and drawers on this recreation as a result of it’s set in northern Ontario, Canada, in 1914. You might be Nancy Maple, a junior geologist anticipating some area work, despatched by your museum to the mining city of Crimson to research a diamond that fell out of a river fish’s guts. Every thing goes improper along with your journey, and also you’re by yourself to research this city, its odd inhabitants and guests, and, ultimately, a criminal offense which will or could not must do with potential diamonds.
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The tutorial room does an excellent job introducing you to the management scheme: arrow keys or mouse cursor for motion and deciding on, however typing for precise motion.
Julia Minamata -
You spend a good deal of time within the lodge, speaking and looking out and choosing up little issues you will use later.
Julia Minamata -
Cutscenes give the artist new angles from which to show their outstanding EGA prowess.
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The characters on this recreation are richer than you may bear in mind from extra memory-limited days, normally having multiple word to them.
Julia Minamata
A number of disclosures should be made. For one, Minamata crafted the EGA-style social avatar for Ars Senior AI Reporter Benj Edwards, who tipped me to this recreation’s existence. One other is that this can be a recreation that prices $15 on Steam or Itch.io (and 10 p.c off on Steam on this first week after launch), was made by a solo Canadian developer, with music by notably cool keyboard particular person Dan Policar, and it evokes a few of my earliest, pre-Maniac-Mansion journey recreation recollections. I additionally haven’t performed the sport to completion. I cannot be taking a essential gem loupe to it; I simply assume extra folks must find out about it.
Launch trailer for The Crimson Diamond
Nostalgia and underdog-cheering sentiments apart, The Crimson Diamond appears to be like and sounds nice. The artistic constraints of an EGA-like colour palette and pixel block measurement delivered some scenes which can be simply fantastic to have a look at. The soundtrack loops about in nice and infrequently ear-catching style. Alice Bell at Rock Paper Shotgun performed a lot additional into this (about six hours and close to or at completion), and her main criticism is sort of a throwback: a couple of puzzles with obscure options, solely too straightforward to overlook with textual content parsing and EGA graphics.
I’m desperate to see the place Nancy Maple’s journey takes her, even when I’ve to typically wrack my mind for the suitable textual content to do the plain factor. The sport to date has felt like spending time inside a type of non-violent mysteries you see on PBS (or CBC), simply inside a well-known and evocative recreation type.
Itemizing picture by Julia Minamata
