The Crimson Diamond Gazette #71
Welcome to the latest issue! News and fun facts inside!
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Find game bugs? feedback@thecrimsondiamond.com
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MEDIA
Upstairs Downstairs Game Talk Video
TurianShepard's "4 Adventure Games You Need To Play in August 2024" video
Talking To Women About Videogames episode
Ars Technica article about The Crimson Diamond
Kotaku article featuring The Crimson Diamond
"Indies In Depth" episode 2: Julia Minamata & Andrew Dickinson
Time Extension article: Meet The Devs Keeping EGA Alive In The Modern Day
"The Crimson Diamond: A Cozy mystery adventure beckons": Adventure Gamers
"Digging for Gems and Clues: The Crimson Diamond Launches on August 15": A Gaming Network
"A Gem Found In The Belly Of A Fish": Vulgar Knight article
IGN Live debut of The Crimson Diamond release date trailer
Pixel Pizza Podcast: Julia Minamata (The Crimson Diamond)
Indiepocalypse Radio - Episode 0143: Keenardo and Julia Minamata
Final Round -- "The Crimson Diamond: sedici colori, interfaccia testuale, è subito 1989" (Italian language)
8BITdigi -- GDC 2024 The Games We Played
Save Your Game Podcast with PushingUpRoses and Matt Aukamp
YakWaxLips video: Most Anticipated Adventure Games of 2024!
Adventure Game Hotspot's PIXEL ART Adventure Games you MUST PLAY in 2024
Adventure Game Geek's Upcoming Adventure Games 2024...And Beyond!
vicek83's "Plans for Adventure Game Developers for 2024" (guest spot)
Rock Paper Shotgun Screenshot Saturday Monday
Adventure Game Hotspot interview
FireFlower Games interview article
Hello Playdate Podcast interview
FMM Live: Discussion with Julia Minamata Dev of The Crimson Diamond
2D Game Art Tips for Solo or Small Teams -- Pre-recorded panel
Scene World Podcast #160 - The Crimson Diamond with Julia Minamata
vicek83's "Plans for Adventure Game Developers for 2023" (guest spot)
Exposing Decades-old Secrets of The Colonel's Bequest (guest spot)
Adventure Game Hotspot Streaming Event Guest Spot #1
Adventure Game Hotspot Streaming Event Guest Spot #2
Current "The Crimson Diamond Demo" Speedrun World Records
The Crimson Diamond on Speedruns.com
Disaster SquadCast episode
"Talking To Women About Videogames" podcast episode part 2 of 2
"Talking To Women About Videogames" podcast episode part 1 of 2
Joystick interview (in English)
Joystick interview (in Greek)
Plans of Adventure Game Devs in 2022 (timestamped link)
IGDA Twin Cities Talk: "The Practical Magic of Pixel Art"
Steam Next Fest (Oct 2021) Developer's Let's Play of The Crimson Diamond Demo
Interviews from the Multiverse: Julia Minamata
Lockdown Con II "The Indie Games Revolution" Panel (first panel of the day)
WIRED.com's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy
Pixelles BIPOC Creator Program grant recipient
usesthis interview (interview about my hardware and software set-up)
8-bit Ninja interview about The Crimson Diamond (in German)
CAAD52 magazine article about The Crimson Diamond (in Spanish)
Cabel Sasser's Photoshop Revelation clip
HomeTeam GameDev Podcast -- Guest Julia Minamata
CityNews - Canada Showcased Through Video Games
CBC Thunder Bay - Superior Morning Radio Interview
PAX East 2020 "What's Next for Adventure Games" Panel
Adventure Games Podcast episode
Classic Adventurer, Issue 07 -- Featured
Adventure Gamers AdventureX Round-up, part II
Adventure Gamers Announcement Article
Adventure Corner Article (German)
The CGG Podcast: # 44 Third appearance, updates since April 2019!
The CGG Podcast: #20 The Crimson Diamond updates & The Colonel's Bequest
The CGG Podcast: #1 Episode featuring me discussing The Crimson Diamond
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I part of a thriving classic gaming community called the Classic Gamers Guild on Facebook. We host plenty of events during the week, as well as contests and a bunch of other great stuff. We even have a podcast and I was the first guest!
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Editor: Julia Minamata - julia@thecrimsondiamond.com
August 2024
Hello, dear readers -- The Crimson Diamond has launched! I'm so happy and excited to finally be sharing it with you. Thank you for your patience, support, and kindness.
Buy The Crimson Diamond on Steam, 10% launch discount. For PC and Mac.
If you enjoy the game, please leave a review on Steam! It helps so much to increase its visibility on the Steam store.
Buy The Crimson Diamond on itch.io. For PC and Mac.
I'm sorry I don't have a launch discount on itch.io. When I was setting up the game for sale on itch.io, it wasn't an option. Apparently you have to apply a discount immediately after releasing it, which I didn't, not knowing -- and by the time this was pointed out to me, several people had already purchased it. I felt like to be fair to those people, I should keep it at that price (which is $14.99 USD).
Developer update: There are plenty of bugs to fix (thanks to everyone who's been reporting them, and thanks also to my testers for finding them) -- That's what I'll be working on next week.
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I met Roberta Williams at the Adventure Game Hotspot Fan Fair last month. Dream come true. Not only did she sign my The Colonel's Bequest big box (along with Sierra On-Line co-founder Ken Williams, SCI0 engine co-developer Robert Heitman, composer Ken Allen, and artist Doug Herring), but she also played a bit of The Crimson Diamond demo and wrote a lovely blurb for my Steam store page. You can read that here.
I also got to meet up with The Crimson Diamond musician, Dan Policar! Dan's currently working on Lori & Corey Cole's (of Sierra's Quest for Glory fame) latest game, a follow-up to Tilly's Tale. He previously made music for Romero Games' Empire of Sin, and the trailer music for Roberta Williams' Colossal Cave Adventure remake.
Pictured behind Dan: Developer of Lucy Dreaming and currently working on Heir of the Dog, Tom Hardwidge.
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Alice Bell of Rock Paper Shotgun reviewed The Crimson Diamond, which was incredible. This RPS review was the first one the game received and I couldn't be happier about it. Thanks so much, Alice.
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Speaking of Adventure Game Hotspot, they reviewed The Crimson Diamond. I'm very grateful there are games media outlets who are dedicated to supporting and boosting indie adventure game developers. Check out the review here.
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Kotaku included The Crimson Diamond in their Weekend Guide: 5 New and Old Games We Can't Wait to Play.
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Kevin Purdy covered The Crimson Diamond for Ars Technica. Thanks so much!
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Patreon patrons' names have been added to The Crimson Diamond credits. These credits can be accessed via the main menu (the button is on the bottom right), or typing "credits" into the text parser at almost any point in the game. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Patreon patrons. There will be a holiday card this year for the $5 USD tier folks.
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GameSpew reviewed The Crimson Diamond, too (I'm still limiting my exclamation marks on these gazettes, to combat being tagged as spam). Thanks so much.
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I was once again interviewed by Olivia Levesque of CBC Thunder Bay. I first spoke to Olivia about The Crimson Diamond four years ago, so it was a really nice full-circle moment to reunite with her to talk about launching it. You can listen to the clip here.
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Adventure Gamers reviewed The Crimson Diamond. They were one of the first places to take an interest in my game, many many years ago. Thanks for your patience.
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German gaming site "Das klappt so nicht." reviewed The Crimson Diamond. Thanks to the magic of Google Translate, there's also an English version available. Read it here.
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NAG Magazine included The Crimson in their round-up of "18 New Games We Can't Wait to Play This August". Check it out here.
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I was a guest on the Dev Heads podcast, hosted by Second Wind. I'm a huge fan of independent games media and was already a fan of the show, so I was thrilled to be on. The show comprises of three regular hosts and a guest host from different "tiers" of game dev: Tina is a AAA dev, Mikee is AA, and JM8 is a small team dev. Our topic was "Did Our Childhood Games Infect Us?", in which we discussed how the games we encountered as kids have shaped our paths and inspired us. Watch here.
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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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OneShortEye and I had a chat a little while back, while he was making his "Exposing Decades-Old Secrets in The Colonel's Bequest" video. Our conversation ended up being much longer, and he was kind enough to edit that chat together as its own video,which he then released on The Crimson Diamond's launch day.
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Jonathan and Tanya have hosted ONE HUNDRED episodes of "Talking To Women about Videogames". I was on the show previously, so it was nice to catch up with Jonathan just days before launch. Give a listen to the full podcast episode here. Congrats on reaching this amazing milestone.
Jonathan and I did our chat with video, and here's the video.
Our first episode, back in 2022, came in two parts. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
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The Cozy Gaming Club included The Crimson Diamond in their August round-up. It's always so lovely to be in Youtube videos.
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Speaking of Youtubers, TurianShepard made a video about "4 New Adventure Games You Need to Play in August 2024" and The Crimson Diamond's in there. Watch the video here.
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Upstairs Game Talk included The Crimson Diamond in their video "Wishlist Missed This Thrift This". Thank you so much.
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Dan was on stream recently, and brought some amazing Roland MT-32 sound effects that made it into the final release of the game. Here's the VOD.
Livestream VOD round-up. All the streams since last gazette are here:
July 16th art stream, July 23rd art stream, July 30th AGH Fan Fair trip stream , July 31st Bonus PixElated Steam festival stream, August 6th art & music stream
Crimson C'Tuesday happens every Tuesday at 8pm Eastern on Twitch. Come and hang out.
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I finished playing the delightful Lord Avalot d'Argent. Once The Crimson Diamond launch settles down, I'm looking forward to having Marnanel Thurman (one of the developers) back on stream to talk about the game's development and show us parts of the game we missed. Here's the link to the Lord Avalot d'Argent playlist.
You can follow Marnanel on Mastodon and Blue Sky. Here's Marnanel's website.
In the meantime, I started a Let's Play of Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess (ERE Informatique / Infogrames 1989). It's a gorgeous game!
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)
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)
Lord Avalot d'Argent (Thorsoft of Letchworth, 1995)
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Me and the other Level 0 NPCs have started playing The Crimson Diamond, at long last. Look at this amazing artwork that NPC Matt created for our playthrough. Here's the start of the Let's Play.
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CRAFT CORNER
Look at this gorgeous Nancy Maple cross-stitch that Kateland gave me at the Adventure Game Hotspot event. I am so touched and grateful. Thanks, Kateland. Nancy now has pride of place on my desk.
Here are two more crafts I received at the Fan Fair. CanvasQuest Tom gifted me these two gorgeous "The Colonel's Bequest" pins. He makes amazing game-related pins of all kinds. Visit his Etsy store here.
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MINERAL TRIVIA SECTION
No mineral trivia this month, very sorry. Game launch went well but I have bugs to fix. Take care!
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INTERESTED IN SUPPORTING THE CRIMSON DIAMOND?
Check the sidebar for links to my Patreon and PayPal. Or visit The Crimson Diamond's Steam page follow the game, and add it to your wishlist. There's a FREE playable demo too, for Windows PC and Mac. <3
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Thanks for reading. Happy August. This is the month of The Crimson Diamond!
-- JM