The Crimson Diamond review: an enthralling retro-inspired EGA game with modern mystery style

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 and ink set, a green lamp and a blotter. EXAMINE BLOTTER and you'll find out it's green leather worn smooth from long years of use. As I said, this may immediately seem to tedious to you, but The Crimson Diamond has a really good list of shortcuts, like 'a ab' for ASK ABOUT when you're talking to someone, or using SEARCH to go through a whole chest of drawers in one go rather than OPEN DRAWER on each drawer and LOOK IN DRAWER separately. Although you can do that if you'd like. The parser has accounted for loads of inputs as well (it accepts BIN for TRASH CAN, for example), and playing around with it is impressive.

Much as I am impressed, I will admit that there are times that the parser needs a peculiarly specific output, and the verb USE isn't in play here, even when it might feel natural to, aha, use it. You can POUR KETTLE INTO SAUCEPAN but you can't USE THE HAMMER ON THE CLIFF. There are also times when the answer is disarmingly simple. I was stuck for a bit because I kept trying to break off a small chunk of ice in the ice box, when I should have just TAKEN ICE. But still! I think the parser is great, and particularly enjoyed the distinction between LOOK and EXAMINE. There's even a shortcut to leave a room by the nearest exit, and each character has a double letter code assigned to them for the parser.

There are eight characters in total, not including the player character Nancy Maple, a Canadian amateur geologist who wants to study it for real. Nancy's goal of getting some field work under her belt takes her to Crimson, Ontario, where a giant diamond was found in the belly of a fish. Nancy finds herself stranded at Crimson Lodge, where the landowner Ethan (EE) and his new girlfriend Margot (MM) live with the cook and general helper Jack (JJ), with Native handyman Nathan (NN) whose family have ancestral claims to the land the lodge is on. But Nathan's sister Nessa (SS) has turned up with her lawyer Corvus (CC) to contest Ethan's claim to the lodge (and also imply that Margot is a floozy). Meanwhile, Kimi (KK) is there to check out a colony of rare cormorants, and Albert (AA) is an official geologist sent by the government to check if there are any diamonds in the Crimson river.

Several characters have an interest in diamonds being found, while others would prefer not. And when a character who is seemingly un-diamond-related is killed, Nancy becomes a reluctant detective. Although honestly, not that reluctant. She seems to take to it quickly, and begins eavesdropping on night one, when the only conceivable peril is that she and Kimi can't get home via train and are invited to stay the night in the luxurious lodge. Nancy is a Canadian superhero whose power is LISTEN AT DOOR WITH GLASS.

In the early chapters of the game you find yourself doing a spot of more respectable geology, and must find the tools Nancy needs for a makeshift field kit - how to get the ice pick out of the frozen ice box? How to get Kimi away from the cliff face so you can take a sample of the rock? - and puzzles of that nature. Later on they become more complex, like a puzzle where you have to get a fingerprint sample from everyone, using methods as varied as combining hot wax with cookie dough, or just, you know, asking.

There are a few little turnabout bits after the murder where you can eavesdrop on people, but only if you approach from the right direction, or miss conversations entirely because you elected to follow someone else. Later still you'll run into puzzles where you might not have the answer because, for example, you didn't find a key and what it unlocked in earlier chapters. The puzzles are largely fun and well conceived, and The Crimson Diamond has some intricate trails to follow - sometimes literally - and thoughtful callbacks, as events in the lodge layer up.

The lodge itself is really well put together, with two floors of rooms that are all designed to be memorable, whether that be through wallpaper as patterned and gaudy as a William Morris x Liberace crossover, or through a mystery that nags at you (the will must surely be in the study!). In contrast, the outside grounds feel a bit more of a maze, with many an outhouse to stumble upon, but this makes it feel more unsafe. The EGA style art works beautifully both indoors and outdoors, though. And actually Nancy can fall into the river and insta-death drown in the great tradition of hydrophobic game characters everywhere, so beware the outdoors indeed.

So, I'm a fan, in general. But there are a couple of places where the puzzles trip you up with a simple solution that, nevertheless, feels a bit unfair. One instance that may haunt me until my death bed involved needing some clear adhesive. I a ab adhesive'd every character, wracked my brains, went down entirely the wrong path, and eventually just grid searched every piece of furniture in every room, at which point I found a roll of plasters in a bedside drawer. Nobody had said they had plasters! The plasters weren't evident in the pixelated rendering of the room! Howmst was I to know where to look for plasters? I swear, the plasters took up at least an hour of my 6-ish playing the game.

I wouldn't normally be so specific about a puzzle, but that moment was less a Crimson Diamond and more a White Whale that I would hate to see anyone else chasing. Otherwise I think The Crimson Diamond is a beautiful piece of work, combining a love letter to the past with a modern implementation, all wrapped up in a mystery that may not have huge, shocking twists, but remains a page turner throughout. And there are bonus geology facts, too! Consider PLAYING THE GAME.