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

WWW.THECRIMSONDIAMOND.COM

November 2024

rainbow over Lake Ontario

Hello, dear readers -- It's November! Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees and there's a chill in the air. But there are still some wonderful things to see.

Buy The Crimson Diamond on Steam (For PC and Mac).

It's also on itchio and GOG and FireFlower Games.

If you enjoy the game, please leave a review on Steam! It helps so much to increase its visibility on the Steam store.

Big bug update

Developer update: I just released a Big Bug update on all storefronts. The biggest changes:

1) NEW DEFAULT FONT: Crimsonite Sans, for improved legibility. To toggle back to the original font, click the "Font" button in the main menu or type "font" into the text parser.

2) All game settings in the main menu should now get saved properly.

3) Mac achievements should now work on Apple Silicon Macs, as well as Intel Macs.

4) The "9" key will now unpause the game, along with the "\" key. This was done to accommodate non-English keyboards.

5)Redesigned and updated the "help" window"

6) New death added, in response to some players trying an unwise thing and being disappointed that there were no consequences :D

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AnnK and Tawejea and me

Here's something fun that happened in November: I met up with awesome Twitch streamers AnnK_ and Tawejea! They're fantastic retro streamers and we had a great time together. If you're a fan of old school games, definitely check out their channels. They both have amazing communities where they celebrate and share all sorts of art and games. Love these ladies.

AnnK_ is also the creative force behind Dank Zine, which featured The Crimson Diamond recently. Order your copy here!

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I blurred out the text because I didn't want to post the review online, as they didn't!

The Crimson Diamond was reviewed by Edge magazine in their November 2024 issue (#402)! They gave it an 8/10, which I'm incredibly happy with. Order yours here if you want to read the review , it's the one with Indiana Jones on the cover.

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This was a pretty big surprise: As of the time of writing this (November 14), The Crimson Diamond is #20 in Metacritic's list of "Best Games This Year". I'm sure that will change after all the big holiday releases come out -- But it's fun to be included.

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Andrew Oyston reviewed The Crimson Diamond for Fusion Gaming Magazine (issue #60). I love seeing gorgeously designed print magazines dedicated to one of my favourite hobbies. Order your copy here.

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Another example of me blurring out the text because I didn't want to post the review online, because they didn't.

Speaking of gorgeously designed print magazines, Debug magazine also reviewed The Crimson Diamond in their #7 issue. Order it here (it also comes with a high-res PDF version).

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Someone on social media shared this with me, just before I went to e-press: Italian retro gaming magazine zzap! reviewed The Crimson Diamond. I've just ordered my copy and you can, too. Limited stock!

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Player 2 review

Here's a review you can read online -- Player2.net.au's review written by Meghann O'Neill. I reallly really like this one. :)

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The Geekly Grind's Sam Kahn wrote this lovely review for the game, too! Read it here.

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Nikolaos Daniilidis wrote this review of The Crimson Diamond for RageQuitGR. Thanks so much!

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CBR posted this round-up of the 10 Best Indie Games of the Past Year. It's always such an honour to be included in things like this, because literally thousands of games get released every year.

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Although this Polygon article is no longer relevant due to the passage of time, I wanted to include it because I'm always very grateful when games media outlets keep The Crimson Diamond visible to their readers. Thank you very much, Polygon.

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Gill of TanookiChickenAttack interviewed me about The Crimson Diamond. It's a great discussion! It's a separate, different thing from TanookiChickenAttack's review of The Crimson Diamond, which can be found here.

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Cressup and Vicky have been playing The Crimson Diamond on Twitch and posting the videos on Youtube. They're doing a fantastic, funny, musical job. Check out the playlist.

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OneShortEye is a most excellent adventure gaming Youtuber who put together this very amusing The Crimson Diamond video recently (on his second channel). I hadn't realized certain aspects of Nancy's personality until he pointed them out! xD

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The Crimson Diamond was mentioned very briefly on The Besties podcast (episode 420). The mention comes in around the 44 minute mark. But the whole episode is very interesting because it's titled "Revisiting Our Most Anticipated Games of 2024" and they also give gift-giving game advice for the holidays.

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EGA demake

Now that I've launched The Crimson Diamond, I've been streaming the process of making an EGA demake of the key art. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.

The Crimson Diamond keyart

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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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I did a bonus stream for the AdventureX Steam event. I played through chapter 3 of The Crimson Diamond and talked about making the game. Here's the video.
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In addition to the EGA demake I've been adding pants to Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure sprites for the most excellent mod Pantsmo's Pantaloon Adventure, which is free on itch.io.

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

October 15th art stream , October 29th Marnanel / Hallowe'en stream, November 3rd art stream, November 8th AdventureX bonus stream, November 12 art stream.

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

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Marnanel Thurman, one of the developers of Lord Avalot d'Argent, joined me for another lovely evening of chatting about many interesting things, including the game. She also treated us to a very nice Hallowe'en poem. Here's a timestamped link.

You can follow Marnanel on Mastodon and Blue Sky. Here's Marnanel's website.

2024 halloween costume

Speaking of Hallowe'en...Here was my costume this year. Boo!

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)

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Natrolite

A bit of natrolite (the spiky bits) after cleaning

MINERAL TRIVIA SECTION

DID YOU KNOW: If you've read previous issues you do... But I feel compelled to share a selection of the specimens I acquired and cleaned from my trip to Wasson Bluff in September. Did you know that Wasson Bluff boasts an incredible variety of zeolites? This variety of form and properties is a result of weathering, hydrothermal alterations, and metamorphic conditions.

analcime

Analcime.

analcime closeup

Close-up of the same analcime.

chabazite

Chabazite.

stilbite

Stilbite.

stilbite closeup

Stilbite closeup.

more analcime

More analcime.

some of the zeolite collection

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Albert cross-stitched process

CRAFT CORNER

I'm back at the cross-stitching. My current project is Albert, the Belgian mineralogist from The Crimson Diamond. Here's his portrait all gridded up if you want to stitch along:

Albert portrait

And here are the DMC embroidery floss colours I use for the EGA palette:

EGA DMC embroidery floss colours

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Union Station animation

INTERESTED IN SUPPORTING THE CRIMSON DIAMOND?

Check the sidebar for links to my Patreon and PayPal. Or visit The Crimson Diamond's Steam page to purchase or follow it. It's also available on itchio and FireFlower Games.

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Thanks for reading. Happy November!

-- JM