Modern text parser game The Crimson Diamond rewards precision

Nancy Maple had spent mere minutes within the Crimson Lodge earlier than I acquired her killed in The Crimson Diamond. The novice mineralogist — on an errand with the Royal Canadian Museum, the place she works as a clerk — spent hours on a prepare heading deep into the Canadian wilderness, in quest of diamonds. I figured she’d like a bathe. So I click on Nancy by means of the Crimson Lodge, peering into rooms and infrequently saying hello to different friends. I discover a toilet with a bath and bathe, maneuver Nancy subsequent to it, and kind Take a bathe. It doesn’t work, as a result of Nancy is absolutely clothed. I kind Undress, and Nancy gained’t do it as a result of the door’s open. Is smart! I level Nancy to the door. Shut the door. Now Undress. Again on the bathe, I peck out Activate water valve on my keyboard. Change to bathe. Now Nancy can get in.

However then, The Crimson Diamond cuts to a special angle, Nancy’s silhouette behind a bathe curtain. The music shifts. Anybody who’s seen a horror film is aware of what’s about to occur subsequent — the door deal with jiggles. The door opens. Nancy is stabbed to dying. I forgot to lock the door.

The Crimson Diamond, from developer and illustrator Julia Minamata, is a sport about precision. Not precision by way of motion, however precision with phrases. Minamata’s first solo-developed sport makes use of a textual content parser to manage the motion. (Besides Nancy herself; she strikes with a mouse click on or arrow buttons.) It’s a function that was generally utilized in video games from the the ’80s and early ’90s; Sierra On-Line is thought for its textual content parser video games like King’s Quest and The Colonel’s Bequest: A Laura Bow Thriller. As a substitute of pointing and clicking in these video games, you’re typing out instructions. If you would like Nancy to eat a rock, you kind Eat rock. (She won’t do it, although.)

“You don’t see plenty of textual content parser video games these days,” Minamata instructed gamerjive. “I’m not going to say I’m stunned by it, however on the identical time, we’re a society the place we’re texting and typing on a regular basis. It’s this fixed factor. We’re interacting with one another and the written phrase on a regular basis. I simply love this fashion of interacting with a sport. It looks like there’s limitless prospects.”

That is the place being exact with language is available in. Even the smallest tweak of a phrase will change what occurs. You may go searching a room, however what when you study one thing? And, once more, as I discovered, what when you shut the door, however don’t lock it? Nancy’s nearly fast homicide — which, in flip, had me begin over at my final save — was the proper lesson I wanted to grasp The Crimson Diamond and what it was asking of me.

The sport begins with Nancy Maple hopping on a prepare right into a distant lodge in Ontario, the place she’s to research a mysterious diamond that was sliced out of a fish’s stomach. Diamonds aren’t frequent within the space, or so they are saying, and so a pair others are flocking to the realm, too: Relations of the Lodge homeowners trying to declare an inheritance, a curious Japanese Canadian birdwatcher (a tribute to Minamata’s household’s historical past in Canada, she stated), and a authorities geologist. Everybody expects it to be a fast journey, however a bridge explosion all of the sudden strands all of them on the lodge with its grumpy proprietor, home workers, and the proprietor’s spouse. Chaos ensues — each across the household drama, a failed mining city’s historical past, a dying (not Nancy’s!), and, after all, the diamond.

The Crimson Diamond is split into seven totally different chapters, most of which happen within the Crimson Lodge and its surrounding grounds. Over the course of a number of hours, you’ll get very aware of the characters and their tales, each as people and with regard to how their backstories play into the bigger thriller. Nancy turns into the de facto detective who items all of it collectively. One of many early mysteries is a theft: Somebody’s stolen an costly brooch and a few steins. It’s Nancy’s first foray into detective work; to do it, you’ve acquired to seek out makeshift instruments to mud and study fingerprints earlier than discovering the perpetrator. You’ve acquired to get fingerprints for everybody in the home, a few of that are so simple as simply asking, however others require extra pondering and foresight, like feeding a person a cookie so salty that he’ll want a drink — an motion that requires him to the touch a glass from which you’ll be able to later raise a fingerprint.

The sport rapidly turns into extra advanced and layered, however Minamata stated she didn’t need The Crimson Diamond to be punishing, like early textual content parsers might be. (If you happen to get caught, Minamata put a full trace information on-line; there’s no technique to merely get caught so badly you’ll need to cease taking part in.) The parser itself is a bit more forgiving with phrases, as an illustration. You may’t unintentionally progress the sport in a manner that has you lacking vital clues. It doesn’t have the simple, sudden deaths of The Colonel’s Bequest, both. “That’s one thing it’s important to work for,” Minamata stated. “My sort of puzzle is the thought of one thing so simple that you’d suppose to do in actual life that, for some purpose, simply slips our thoughts when taking part in a sport. However when you do it, you get rewarded by, Hey, you survived the bathe this time.”

These tweaks don’t make The Crimson Diamond straightforward, by any means, however they do reduce frustration, permitting you to essentially dig in and benefit from the world — not concern it.

The Crimson Diamond was launched Aug. 15 on Mac and Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on Home windows PC utilizing a pre-release obtain code supplied by Julia Minamata. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover further details about gamerjive’s ethics coverage right here.