I have an unnatural loathing for games that say they are “retro inspired.” Nine times out of ten, this moniker is merely to excuse away a design choice or flaw that the developers thought would be quirky and appreciated instead of a major annoyance. Having pixel graphics, a chiptune soundtrack or using only two buttons doesn’t make a game retro. Making something purposely difficult because of wonky hitboxes isn’t paying homage to the classics, it’s mocking them. I’ve slogged through countless platformers, action games and, most importantly, point and click adventures that merely invoke the names of their predecessors in order to hook players into a shamelessly modern adventure. So, when I came across The Crimson Diamond, I was skeptical, in spite of the very appealing looking design interface. However, I quickly discovered that this isn’t just a pretty facade; solo dev Julia Minamata has crafted the real McCoy.

Nancy Maple, our savvy protagonist, longs to leave her stuffy workspace and experience the thrill of geology out in the world, to attend real field work and process discoveries. So when word comes down that fish are being caught with diamonds in their gullet, she practically flies out to Crimson, Ontario to investigate for herself. In spite of a less-than-warm welcome, Nancy soon finds herself embroiled in a massive web of conspiracy and clandestine actions that take a turn for the deadly sooner than you’d think. Nancy, not about to lose her head or become a victim herself, takes action to interview people, collect evidence and piece together a tale that’s almost too wild to believe. Nancy has her work cut out for her, and every step closer to the truth is another step towards very real, imminent danger.

Yes, Earl’s inability to deal with rich foods is clear and present danger.

The Crimson Diamond is an almost obscenely good creation that shares qualities and aspects of the best of the Sierra Adventure years. Each step of the way, Nancy is able to move through the screens with mouse or keyboard, though you’d better get used to using arrow keys in lieu of a floating cursor for multiple reasons. For one, you simply have better control over where you’re going and how you get there. For two, everything outside of walking needs to be typed to Nancy in an honest-to-goodness old school input box. Ms. Minamata has made the decision to nix some of the cheaper language in favor of the more versatile; be prepared to examine, inspect, combine, pour, throw, insert and more. None of this banal “use” nonsense, you have to really know what you want to do with items and objects. 

From the drop, players get a good idea of what needs to be done thanks to modern interpretations of help ideas that feel like an extension of the world and the era. Nancy carries a notebook that is perpetually updating as you discover things, but the notebook is written in short phrases, like a real investigator/geologist would. This forces players to at least have a sense of mind about what’s happening and not just buffaloing ahead, expecting the game to fill in the gaps for when they get lost. The Hint Book itself isn’t within the game, but rather an external website that does a solid job of guiding you without telling you everything. While walkthroughs certainly exist, you would no more benefit from those than you would plowing through Legends of Kyrandia with a web browser opened to Neoseeker on your phone.

Dude, it was this or a YouTube walkthrough, chill!

As I moved forward, I couldn’t help but marvel at the craft The Crimson Diamond brings to the screen. The landscapes are varied and done in vivid, retro colors to really emulate what the visage of gaming was like back decades ago. The splashes of red, green and blue are practically neon, and articles within the kitchen, the forest and, later, the caves all have an essence about them. As mundane as something like the guest bathroom might seem, the little details that were sculpted onto the mirror, the footed bathtub and even the doorknobs themselves give the notion of wanting to design something but having limitations of hardware and palette. When you find something to pick up, you need to see it in your inventory (or you may be lucky and get a portrait of the item upon retrieval) to really see what on earth it is.

This only further extends to the characters themselves that you encounter at the Crimson Lodge. You have a full rogue’s gallery – a shifty attorney, squabbling siblings with dark secrets, a rival geologist with a stuffy attitude and several hapless folk who seem to genuinely be here for good reasons. Everyone has a solid representation in their everyday sprites, but their portraits in conversation and the rare “cut scene” display of them really pops on the screen in a magnificent display of time capsule craftsmanship. Nancy, whom we see the most being the main character and all, does tend to have a bit of a slack jawed look when eavesdropping (which is a majority of her actions for the first couple of chapters), but I chalk that up to her being a shocked newcomer instead of an empty simpleton.

Also, full disclosure, Nancy did have four glasses of whiskey.

Indeed, The Crimson Diamond might not work as well as it does if Nancy wasn’t so genuinely earnest in how she proceeds. From the drop, it’s clear that Nancy wants to do her job and do it well to earn respect and be taken seriously, and it doesn’t matter how her job pivots from “curious sampler” to “straight up homicide investigator.” She is determined and pleasant, taking a lot of good cues on how to approach people, ask the right questions and document what she learns. She talks aloud in a sense of working things out, not just espousing exposition for the player to follow. You can decide how cautious, cowardly, brave or brazen she might be in her actions, and, as a result, you can even come up with a very different ending based on your choices. Including the option to have a very dramatic and early ending.

I was delighted to find out you could die in this game. I mean, I often focus on the era of Monkey Island, where fail states were just a matter of puzzling things out, but The Crimson Diamond has more than a few places where Nancy meets her end in a fascinating, entertaining variety of ways. Keeping in tone with the rest of the game, there is nothing grotesque or lascivious about these demises, but they’re always entertaining to discover, particularly when you get a Steam achievement with each fresh fatality. To be hyper focused on trying to solve a puzzle while also looking for new and inventive ways to end your life is a brilliant balance. I also sincerely appreciate the game autosaving before a handful of these deaths to both clue you in on where you’re going and to prevent frustration at your curiosity killing the cat.

Interestingly, Nessa is not talking about me.

These visuals also pair with an inarguably phenomenal soundtrack that hits all the right notes at the right time. Instead of blind siding you with a modern chipset and orchestral band to clash and contrast the visuals, Julia Minamata has Dan Policar creating an ideal soundscape for the world at large of The Crimson Diamond. Most of the game is sparse and empty, with small injections of exclamation or interjection to keep you awake. I really enjoyed the sound of the cormorants in the mountainside when Kimi is trying to document them. But there’s also brief musical stings, like when Nancy is hiding somewhere or a particularly wonky moment is happening. And then a more dramatic scoring as the game nears the finale really shows you the chops that go into the narrative and the ideology of this passion project.

However, it should be noted that The Crimson Diamond is more than just a positive take on the adventures of yesteryear, but it also managed to capture a lot of the negative aspects. Some items are incredibly difficult to find because they don’t register unless you’re looking in a specific spot or paying very close attention. Some puzzles don’t connect unless you do them in exactly the right way. And the final interview that Nancy conducts  is a rough situation. You have to know what you have and how to use it and how to phrase it properly in order to succeed, and you even get scored at the end to indicate how much of a failure you may be. I’m not ashamed to admit I had to look up a handful of things (I thought I DID examine everything around the jetty!) in order to finish this adventure.

This is just a clever bit of writing, the kind that shows up now and again in these games, and I love it.

Yet this, too, is a throwback to my youth and my time with these sorts of games, and perhaps that’s why I liked it all the more. I never would have progressed anywhere in Beyond Zork without a Dot Matrix printout to guide me. I know my own limitations, and I long ago gave up trying to be someone who must finish a game without any help. In that sense, The Crimson Diamond slots the final piece of the puzzle: it’s something that was crafted to show what the developer loved best, and everyone else had better get with the program or get out of the way. I was too enraptured to want to leave, so I gritted my teeth, went to the website and had Ms. Minamata’s Hint Book help me get back to the Royal Canadian Museum in one piece.

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. Make some time, fire up your oldest computer you still own and enjoy: there’s a mystery afoot.

The Crimson Diamond is available now on Steam.

Reviewed on an Asus Netbook I found in the trash.

A copy of The Crimson Diamond was provided by the publisher.