The Crimson Diamond

A beautiful and surprisingly difficult mystery game done well.

Its just flippn' great... a parser yes it uses a parser as in type in what you THINK you need to do.... and ITS NOT a horrible nightmare to play? HOW IS THIS SO GOOD????? It slowly peels open its story and by the end I felt like a real gumshoe... I thought I was going to hate this and it was just SO GREAT figuring everything out. I need to play again to fix a few gaps but WELL DONE... I cant believe a game that looks its in VGA era that has a FLIPPN PARSER in 2026(yes I got this late) could BE one of the most amazing games I have played this year. And I think it even helped my typing skills... This is 11 Garnets out 10. Good work Miss Maple !!!

Parser games are a special king of adventure game. I both love and hate the game for the exact same reason: They require you to think in the way the developer wants you to think or in the way he thinks you'll be playing. For example, prompts like "put glass on door" to eavesdrop on a conversation and the repetitive commands of "open" and "close" things like dressers, cabinets, drawers, and doors (If you're a civilized human being and not some filthy troglodyte) one of the nicer things the developer has done is allow opening and closing doors be simplified by typing "o d" and "c d" and using alt commands (which are explained in tutorial tips while playing the game) to cut down a little on the monotony of certain commands but not all of them. Do I recommend the game? yes. Just understand that the typing in the parser will be tedious and repetitive at times. Especially if you're trying to get the achievements