The Crimson Diamond

The Crimson Diamond is a murder mystery puzzle adventure that's a love letter to text parser games past, but in a modern and engaging way. It's great fun - despite niggles with some of the puzzle solutions.

The Crimson Diamond is a retro-style game done right, pulling everything that worked from the text parser games of the late 80s while making it much more accessible for audiences today.

This is for the gaming veterans. This is for the folk who had processors that ended in 86 and marveled at how much faster 28.8mbps could be once you upgraded your modem. For the keyboard cowboys who swapped tips on BBSs, for diehards who couldn’t imagine not having a floppy drive, for the survivors of Space Quest, Police Quest, King’s Quest and other Quests. If you have any love for those impossibly, wonderfully frustrating adventures that came before Broken Sword, The Crimson Diamond is a magnificent work of art.

The Crimson Diamond is a respectful tribute to a much older gaming era.

Overall, I liked my time with The Crimson Diamond. I think it feels like a complete game with no bugs that I ran across. The story is interesting, and the puzzles are fun. However, some of the music and visual choices were not to my taste. If you like old-school text adventures, The Crimson Diamond may be just the thing for you. However, if you don’t like all the eccentricities of text adventures, I would avoid this one.

The Crimson Diamond is a cosy retro-style murder mystery with an excellent story, enjoyable puzzles, and a charming protagonist. This is a must-play for anyone who loves text-based adventure games or wants an accessible, modern entry point into the genre.

The Crimson Diamond is not a game for everyone; indeed, the adventure genre, already quite niche in its own way, is made even more hostile by the presence of text-based controls. However, anyone should try this experience, because such well-packaged products rarely come out and transcend the nostalgia operation by offering a story worthy of Agata Christie in the artistic guise that made the defunct, but still alive in the hearts of fans, Sierra On-Line so famous. The excellently crafted parser and a notepad full of hints make it much more accessible than you might imagine.

The Crimson Diamond is a fantastic mystery that's incredibly enjoyable to solve. The characters are delightful, the visuals are stunning, the music is catchy and era appropriate, and there's quite a lot to discover. This is a must play for any adventure game fan.

The Crimson Diamond is a colourful retro-style detective game that gives you plenty of freedom to explore your own case while also making you think outside the box to solve challenging puzzles.

The Crimson Diamond is a pixel-styled point-and-click adventure where your would-be-detective is only as smart as you are. Its tale of greed and murder will have you hooked — and even if you fail to dig up every truth, it's still a joy to play.