The Crimson Diamond is an EGA text parser adventure game where you play as a trainee geologist turn detective called Nancy Maple.
Nancy Maple is simply sent up north to a ghost town called Crimson in Ontario. There has been a massive diamond discovered in the area, which has driven a lot of tourists around to those parts, but Nacy is just looking to collect geological information, not cash in on the massive gem. The start of this trip isn’t very promising, as the train ride there isn’t even very good, but she does make a friend before being dumped in a town that currently isn’t looking too kindly at tourists.
With most of the hotels booked up or closed, she ends up lucky, with a room in the Crimson Lodge by following a businessman, but at the Crimson Lodge, they want everyone out by morning. Through your own detective work, you can eavesdrop and talk to various characters staying at the lodge, hoping to evaluate the diamond clime and figure out what is going on with this strange family.
Playing through the demo of The Crimson Diamond while at AdventureX, I got to explore the first part of traveling on the train to the lodge in this mysterious, suddenly full of people town. The characters that you meet are all very different — with quite a few strange stories that you just want to hear more about. The graphics, though ‘not funny done’ were quite nice and charming in a pretty, bright and almost nostalgic look.
Typing commands makes sense, as the commands aren’t too complex, so I really enjoyed figuring out what I needed to type and who I wanted to talk too. It’s an interesting and complex story, which is the main focus and completely captivates the player.
You can find a demo on The Crimson Diamond on Steam, although the release date for the game isn’t released yet.
