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The Crimson Diamond Julia Minamata

How an Illustrator Made the Mystery Game The Crimson Diamond by Mistake

This article is over 4 years old and may contain outdated information

Julia Minamata didnā€™t start out wanting to make a game. After graduating in 2007 with a degree in illustration from Sheridan College in Ontario, Minamata spent 10 years working as a freelance illustrator, finding it hard to gain traction in her career thanks to entering the workforce during the Great Recession.

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ā€œThe timing was not good for me,ā€ she said. ā€œI really ground it out. I was trying really hard but I was really frustrated. The career was not advancing.ā€

While she did illustrations for magazines including Macleanā€™s and The New Yorker, a lack of work gave her plenty of free time. She started using it to learn pixel art, recreating the look of the text parser games she enjoyed as a kid like The Colonelā€™s Bequest.

ā€œI made a room, and then I made another room, and then I realized I need to make a little sprite character because I wanted to have the furniture in scale,ā€ Minamata said. ā€œSo I made a character and I wanted to have her walk around, and suddenly itā€™s becoming a game.ā€

That game is The Crimson Diamond.

The Crimson Diamond Julia Minamata

The Crimson Diamond needed a story, so Minamata turned to her interest in Canadian history, mineralogy, and geology to create Crimson, Ontario, a fictional garnet mining town gone bust. When a giant diamond is found near the town, it triggers a new rush of interested parties that converge on a grand hotel built during the original mining boom.

ā€œItā€™s kind of like a classic Agatha Christie mystery vibe where you have different people with different motivations,ā€ Minamata said. ā€œYou get to listen in on peopleā€™s conversations and solve a few mysteries along the way.ā€

An hour-long demo of The Crimson Diamond is currently available on Steam, and Minamata said she hopes to release the full game in October. The text parser adventure game will take about 7-10 hours depending on how much you explore its substories. Testers during her closed beta called the puzzles ā€œtough but fair.ā€

The Crimson Diamond Julia Minamata

ā€œPlaying these games back in the day, they were designed to be something that you needed a hint book for,ā€ she said. ā€œI didnā€™t want that at all. I wanted my game to be something where you could enjoy the story and not have to be tied up with an impossible puzzle.ā€

Minamata said sheā€™s enjoyed the challenge of game design and showing off her work at events like EGLX and the Ubisoft Indie Series.

ā€œItā€™s frustrating when I canā€™t get something to work, but when I finally get it to work after hours the payoff is kind of amazing and addictive,ā€ she said. ā€œI have to learn something new just about every day. I have to learn how to make a game trailer. I have to learn how to edit video. Just meeting people and talking to people about it has been rewarding too. Maybe the text parserā€™s too niche; I donā€™t know. But this whole thing has been worth it.ā€


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Image of Samantha Nelson
Samantha Nelson
Contributor at The A.V. Club, Polygon and the Chicago Tribune. Member of the Critical Hit podcast.
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