Hello, dear readers -- Happy September/October! Septober? This is a combo gazette, which is packed full of photos of adventures. Pictured above is one of the adventures, a Cabot Trail road trip featuring some familiar faces. We enjoyed gorgeous fall colours and a lot of rain and wind.

a selfie on the Cabot Trail, stunning fall colours in the background

It was pretty chilly. And foggy. But still a fabulous time in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Read on for (many) more photos!

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The Crimson Diamond recently hit 666 reviews on Steam, just in time for the spookiest time of the year, and continues to be rated Overwhelmingly Positive!Thanks so much to everyone who's played and left a review. Reviews mean the world to all indie game devs <3.

The game is also available on GOG, itchio, and Fireflower Games!

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The Crimson Diamond Holiday card season is upon us! Every year, my $5 tier patrons receive a holiday card in the mail (last year's design is pictured above). The design is new every year, they're the first to see it, and I will send it anywhere in the world. If you join my Patreon at the $5 tier any time before I mail the cards out, you qualify!

Thanks so much to all of my amazing patrons for your incredible support. I'm able to keep making the games the way that I do because of you.

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Deadly Bluff work in progress game art of a house exterior

Developer update: I haven't had much progress with The Deadly Bluff due to my adventures, but I've come back with a lot of inspirations and new ideas. You'll see what I mean if you read on...

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Playdate Season 3 image

Playdate Season 3 is currently rolling out. I've played the first two games (Soggy Froggy and Gloom Gate) and they are both excellent! I can't wait to see what the rest of the season brings.

Chance's Lucky Escape 2, coming out soon!

Speaking of which, Chance's Lucky Escape 2 is coming out in Playdate Season 3!! It's the sequel of Season 2's Chance's Lucky Escape, which I made (story, art, fonts) in collaboration with Goloso Games (story, code, dialogue) and Philip Aldous (music & SFX).

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Jon Ingold, co-founder of inkle, the studio that made TR-49, Heaven's Vault, and 80 Days (among others), collated a book of more than a hundred essays on game writing. I happily contributed a piece of writing that extols the virtues of the text parser! You can check out the book here.

There's an accompanying podcast hosted by Jon Ingold and Sagar Beroshi. You can find my episode here. We talk about more than the essay, we delve into writing in general!

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NAG magazine recently included The Crimson Diamond in a round-up of Friday Wishlist Deals! Now more than ever, I super appreciate anyone giving my game a mention. Thanks, Arielle!

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Speaking of mentions, Jess Morrissette and Ben Vigeant discussed TCD on their Quest Quest podcast! Thanks so much, guys!

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The Crimson Diamond at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo

The Portland Retro Gaming Expo hosted a Sierra Legends display, which included some games that were inspired by those timeless classics. The Crimson Diamond was included, which was so amazing! There was a real Roland MT-32, which is the type of synth Dan Policar used to compose and record the music for the game, the famous Bucket bucket hat, and an excerpt of a published review, among other things! Thanks so much to Heather Fryling, who put this all together.

Dan Policar at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo

Speaking of Dan, he was in attendance, and even performed! There he is on the far right.

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Selfie at Tokyo Tower

Adventure #1: I went to Tokyo! I saw some sights and attended the Tokyo Game Show. I had a wonderful time.

Fresh watermelon slush drink

I didn't draw or paint as much as I would've liked, but here's a fresh watermelon slush with tapioca pearls that hit the spot so profoundly that I had to immortalize it. The top is the watermelon rind, cut to fit the glass like a lid, with a hole punched for the straw. 10/10.

I got to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum. I highly recommend it, it's beautiful. "Castle in the Sky" is my favourite Ghibli film, so of course I had to get this shot!

I love this movie so much that I've made my own levistone amulets out of polymer clay. It was really cool to be able to buy some official versions. Below: The polymer clay ones I made on the left. On the right, from top to bottom: Clear blue resin, enamel pin, lapis lazuli & brass. I wonder how much of my fascination with rocks started here?

levistones I made and bought

Tokyo trip bento

Needless to say, Tokyo had wide variety of delicious bento boxes. I enjoyed this one very much! Quality and price were out of this world.

Tokyo trip anmitsu

I had a profound experience eating this fresh fig and houjicha anmitsu. Anmitsu is a traditional dessert of agar jellies, sweet red bean paste, and fruits. This one was served with houjicha syrup. If you are in Tokyo around Shinjuku, check this place out: Futaba Fruits Parlor.

Nancyfish started

I also checked out teamLabs Borderless, an immersive interactive exhibit in Azabudai Hills. One of my favourite parts was the opportunity to design your own sea creature, from a selection of templates. I was inspired!

Nancyfish finished

Ta-daah!

Nancyfish projection

After the design is complete, you hand it to an employee who scans it in and your creation joins all the others, projected on the walls. They swim and react to being poked. It's adorable.

Nancyfish stickers

Also, you can buy merch of your creature! I got some stickers and some other stuff!

Portopia remastered

I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face on the Tokyo Game Show floor. My ol' buddy Yasu, my partner in Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken -- The first retro Japanese mystery game I played and streamed. They were showing a remastered version of the game, and I got to play a bit.

Portopia original box

Not only that, I managed to snag an ORIGINAL copy of the game from a Book Off (a chain of stores that sells secondhand books and games) for about 4200¥. What a treasure.

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Brief interlude between adventures: I discovered that The Crimson Diamond has an entry in The Interactive Fiction DataBase!

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Level 0 NPCs in Nova Scotia

On to the second adventure! I visited my friends Matt (left) and Alex (right) of the Level 0 NPCs in Nova Scotia! We roadtripped the Cabot Trail together in a minivan with Matt's family. The views were out of this world!

Cabot Trail rainbow road

Cabot Trail mountain colours

View of the Cabot Trail with the ocean

Back in Halifax, I visited this terrific art gallery that features local artists. I got to talking to the lady behind the counter, Nora. Turns out, Nora painted the watercolour scenes I was admiring! Her husband made the frames for her work, too. I bought this amazing painting of Cape Breton from there. Here it is on the gallery's site (it's now sold out, of course!).

There was a side quest in Nova Scotia, involving Brian Hebert of Fundy Treasures. Brian is an amazing tour guide, he's the one who took me and Alex to Wasson Bluff two years ago. That time we were zeolite-hunting; this time we were back in Parrsboro (in a different area) looking for agates!

Brian is also an accomplished scientist who discovered a new dinosaur in Cape Breton, which will be named after him! Tyrannoroter Heberti! If you have any interest in rocks and find yourself in Nova Scotia, check out his tours.

Parrsboro chabazite

We also found zeolites in the basalt cliffs. Here's some pretty nice-looking chabazite.

Parrsboro jasper

And here's some beautiful yellow, black and red jasper. So many colours in these rocks!

Parrsboro rocks and me

Here's me and Brian amongst the rocks. Photo taken by Alex.

Parrsboro sea

We had a lot of great sun that day. Beautiful views. Hammer and chisel at the bottom right for scale.

rocks I got from Parrsboro

Here are some of the agates I collected, thanks to Brian! I brought 13.4 lbs of rocks back to Toronto :P. The colours and forms in these agates would best be seen if they were cut and polished. I may be acquiring a new hobby in the future...

To give an example of what some of my rocks could look like, I picked up this very pretty Fancy Jasper from Rod of Tyson's Fine Minerals. Rod had lots of local stones that were cut and polished to best effect. This jasper is from McKay Head, Nova Scotia. If you find yourself in Parrsboro and want to see great local rocks, visit Rod!

I came back from my Nova Scotia adventure with some very good ideas for The Deadly Bluff. I've already added them to my design doc. I can't wait to implement them!

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fourthwall store

If you'd like some awesome The Crimson Diamond stickers, hats, t-shirts and more, I have some fun stuff on my Fourthwall store. I particularly like the embroidered items, and they all ship and arrive quite quickly, no matter where you are in the world.

And if you're interested in setting up a Fourthwall store of your own, here's my referral link (I'd get $15 credit :D).
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Thumbnail from my Oct 20 VOD

Livestream VOD round-up. All the streams since last gazette are here:

August 11th art stream, August 15th art stream, August 18 art stream, October 6th art stream, October 20th art stream.

Crimson C'Tuesday happens every Tuesday at 8pm Eastern on Twitch. Come and hang out!

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Thumbnail from my Let's Play of Tantei Jinguji Saburou 1

I started a new Let's Play! Tantei Jingūji Saburō: Shinjuku Chūō Kōen Satsujin Jiken! This is the first game in a series. Apparently Jingūji Saburō is called Jake Hunter elsewhere!

I also finished Hokkaidō Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu on stream. There was a LOT of exposition at the end. I really enjoyed it, but I think out of the three Yuji Horii mystery games (Portopia, Hokkaidō Rensa Satsujin, and Karuizawa Yūkai Annai), Karuizawa Yūkai Annai is my favourite.

Here's the playlist.

My completed Let's Plays:

Personal Nightmare (Horrorsoft 1989)

Last Half of Darkness (Softlab Software Laboratories 1989)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (LucasArts 1989)

Rise of the Dragon Let's Play (Dynamix, 1990)

The Sorceror's Appraisal (Yahtzee Croshaw, 2002)

Cruise for a Corpse (Delphine Software International, 1991)

Mortville Manor (Lankhor, 1987)

Legend of the Sword (Silicon Software, 1988)

Loom (Lucasfilm Games, 1990)

Altered Destiny (Accolade, 1990)

The Dark Convergence (Jeffrey Kintz, 1993)

The Dark Convergence 2 (Jeffrey Kintz, 1994)

High Seas Homicide (Sherwood Forest Software, 1993)

Denarius Avaricius Sextus (Thorsoft of Letchworth,1992)

Earthrise (Interstel, 1990)

Lord Avalot d'Argent (Thorsoft of Letchworth, 1995)

Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess (ERE Informatique, 1989)

Omnicron Conspiracy (First Star Software, 1989 / Streaksy, 2025)

Neuromancer -- UNFINISHED LP (Interplay, 1989)

Double Dragon EGA (Technos Japan, 1988)

Double Dragon CGA (Technos Japan, 1988)

Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (Enix, 1985)

The Twilight Zone (Gigabit Systems Inc., 1988)

Heart of China (Dynamix, 1991)

Karuizawa Yūkai Annai (Enix, 1986)

Hokkaidō Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu (Login Software, 1984)

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Nancy Maple reskin of DOS Double Dragon, courtesy of sonneveld's wizardry

I love the Twitch retro gaming community. Look at what I get to do, thanks to DOS wizard sonneveld! He figured out a way to decompile the DOS Double Dragon port, extract the sprites, and built me a little in-browser tool to replace the sprites with Nancy Maple, recompile, and play the game on the spot!

I've been slowly adding more Nancy Maples to the game. Eventually I'll reskin the other characters and put this up on my itchio page for all to enjoy.

Thank you so much, sonneveld. You can find him on Twitch and Bluesky.

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Do you love it when people are wearing pants? You might enjoy Pantsmo's Pantaloon Adventure, a free, modded version of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. eviltentacle is the mastermind of the project, with some assistance from me and Emmfoolery.

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Lapis Lazuli in Japan - Specimens

MINERAL TRIVIA SECTION

DID YOU KNOW: Lapis lazuli was discovered in Japan this year (more specifically, Itoigawa City)! I discovered this while visiting the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. These blue rocks were from a couple of jadeite enthusiasts' collections (Itoigawa is known for jadeite, it's the national stone), and had been mislabelled dumortierite. Upon closer examination by Professor Emeritus Satoshi Matsubara of the National Museum of Nature and Science, the rocks were confirmed as lapis lazuli! Rocks being mistaken for other rocks, sometimes for many years, is pretty common in mineralogy. Red spinels have often been mistaken for rubies, for instance. Very exciting news for Japan!

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The Crimson Diamond speech portrait cross-stitch quilt

CRAFT CORNER

Here's the final quilt of all of The Crimson Diamond speech portraits! My mom did such a good job putting these together. It was a lovely thing to come home to.

Here are the DMC Embroidery floss colours I used for this project:

EGA DMC embroidery floss colours

I did a craft in Japan that I'm excited to share -- But that can wait until next month!

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Holiday card 2025 process GIF

INTERESTED IN SUPPORTING THE CRIMSON DIAMOND?

I have Patreon and PayPal. Or visit The Crimson Diamond's Steam page to purchase or follow the game. (Steam reviews are super helpful and appreciated!) It's also available on GOG, itchio and FireFlower Games.

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Thanks for reading. Happy Septober!!

-- JM