Blackwell's Diamonds

Fuck, yeah! That was fun to play and beat!


Good:

1. A large quantity of well-made puzzles, with cleverly presented clues and satisfying solutions

2. The writing is solid, with minimal errors and typos

3. It felt like I was in a real-life escape room adventure; probably the best escape-room-style puzzle game on this site


Bad:

1. I found one bug: if you use the book after you enter the treasure room, then you get taken back to the secret passage 2nd room


Ugly: (spoilers ahead)

1. I think that the jewel case solution was too challenging- it took me about an hour to guess the solution. The biggest problems were that the solution didn't always follow its own logic of using the numbers on the clue cards as the code, as the number "one" was present on Clue Card #1 but ignored in the solution and the repetition of the "two" on Clue Card #2 was also ignored in the solution, and there was also no indication whether "thrice" was itself a number or just hinting that we should repeat the previous digit 3 more times

2. I exited the treasure room without solving most of its puzzles in my first go-round by just using the bronze goblet. Maybe you should make it more explicit that using that goblet there will make you leave the treasure room and end the game even if you haven't acquired the diamonds yet


A few more nitpicks which the addressing of would improve the story: the plot and setting could be more filled out; putting the "Unlock the chest" type of options above the "Try something else" options on the pages would feel more natural; advantage of opportunities to include red herrings in the game to humorous effect went untaken; and a walkthrough could have been included in the game to aid less experienced players

Overall, one of the best puzzle games on this site and worth playing for anyone who likes escape room games.

Well, that was actually quite enjoyable! The story is pretty simple, but the puzzles are well thought out and there's an abundance of items and codes to figure out. My main advice to anyone playing this would be to read the description- the inventory will definitely get cluttered and since the back button won't wonk on my school's computer it would have been much wiser of me to write down what I was doing. Ah well, onto the review!

Concept: This story had a decent setup for its escape-the-room style puzzle. We don't get much in the way of background on our character, but we know there's a huge prize waiting for us if we solve it (besides our free CYS point) so I feel that's enough to hook someone in. The core of this one is game really, not story, but there is enough story behind it to make the game worthwhile. As for the concept itself- "eccentric wealthy relative leaves clues to his fortune"- well, it's certainly been done before. Still I feel the "tried and true" setup is alright so long as the puzzles are new and interesting.

Plot: Again, there's not a whole lot of plot to this aside from "It's an escape room... escape god dammit!". Once you set on your way there's no backing out. I think it would have been nice to see some story development as far as the Uncle and his nephew are concerned, but overall this isn't a huge negative for a puzzle game. However, I do feel that the setting could have used quite a bit more description. It is this massive, eccentric mansion that we are supposed to be trapped in, but it feels like simply a means to present puzzles a lot of the time instead of a unique place. I would have liked to see more descriptions when wandering about the place.

Characters: We've got 2- the protagonist and his uncle. The protagonist doesn't have much character or development to him, but in a game like this that isn't necessarily a point of contention. With the uncle, however, it would have been nice to see some more development. We know he is "eccentric" from the first page of description, and that he likes puzzles, but that's about it. Most of the artifacts and puzzles in the house seem to revolve around mythology, but we never know why the Uncle is so obsessed with such things.

Themes: Uh.. it's a puzzle. "Never give up" I guess?

Structure: This is definitely the most important aspect of a puzzle game, and ViolinAndDeerstalker did very well with it. The items are useful and cryptic enough that I wasn't sure what they were for until i came across the parts where I needed them, but not so random that I was just left guessing at what to use. The books, amulets, and various notes are all vital in some way. Even though the inventory does grow rather large, I never got the feeling that I was just picking up useless stuff. I also enjoyed the multiple escape rooms and how you needed objects from previous rooms to get through. Overall, I think it was very well put together.

There were a few negatives though. Most of the codes were pretty obvious, and there were a few section where it was far easier to just use process of elimination than to track down the answers in the room. While I don't think a person randomly clicking would do very well here, there are a couple of sections which do seem to encourage it. That being said, I think this was a really good structure for a puzzle game.

Grammar/Spelling: There's not a whole lot to say on the grammar of this one. The writing is decent and straightforward, as it is more focused on the solvable aspects. There were no glaring mistakes that I saw, though there were a few places where sentences started with "You" over and over again.

Overall Rating:6/8- You did a really good job with this one! While I would have liked to see some more descriptive language, it was a very enjoyable experience. I can't wait to see what other games you come up with ^_^

So far, in my time on this site, I've mainly stuck to playing the more traditional story games. This time I decided to branch out and try out the games in the puzzle/games category and boy am I glad I did.

There are some incredibly talented writers in this section, and some great games. Blackwell's Diamonds is one of these, it is an incredibly fun and well designed escape the room puzzle.

To its credit, the story game's story is rather simple. That's ok, because we need a story that has just enough to give us motivation and a why for solving all these puzzles: you have an eccentric uncle, this eccentric uncle travels all over the world and collects historical items, one day he decides to test you to see if you're worthy of his inheritance. Short and sweet, with the rest of the game being devoted to the various puzzles.

In between, you get letters from your uncle as you make it past stages. I really enjoyed how the writer left no stone unturned in making sure many of the itmes/objects in the room somehow contribute to solving the mystery, while also leaving some red herrings so there's a bit of mystery, because you don't exactly know which items you'll need, so you need to read everything.

This game is not designed for people who skim, you definetly need to read things carefully. Some of the clues involve math problems, others involve knowledge of Greek deities, still others involve common sense and being able to recall something and relate back to a thing you read a couple of minutes ago.

I was ultimately able to find both the diamonds and escape.

Some negatives:
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Towards the end, in the 3rd stage, it felt like it somehow was a bit underwhelming after the first 2 stages. I feel like with the first 2 stages you were setting up for an increase in difficulty, so I was expecting the 3rd stage to be a lot more, running around and solving things. When I saw 9-10 links, I expected that, but there were a lot of red herrings like the sarcophagus and the mural(which is ok, but I'm just saying).

Also, there's a bug where you can escape by simply putting chalices on the pedestal and the ending doesn't reflect that you escaped without getting the diamonds. You get the same ending, and the ending says you got the diamonds even though you didn't. To be fair though, that could only be possible by brute forcing the chalices, so that's not authorial intent, that's just people getting bored and trying to break the game and escape. As long as the person was genuinely interested involving the puzzles, this isn't really a problem, since you get this random list of words, and you only could decode it once you get the code. Then again, when I looked at that random list of words, I felt like I read up to down and then up to down again until I saw "the bronze chalice is key" so it is possible to play the game honestly and still escape without the diamonds.

I really enjoyed how well planned this game was. There's a section where you find greek charms, and at first you assume you'll use them now or in the second stage. But the author did a wonderful job of planning and scripting, so that all 12 of the greek gods' symbols are used to unlock the stone chest.

I enjoyed the detectives riddle where you find out what they drink, the math problem that's answer is 42, just so much.
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I really loved this game, it was a labour of love and near perfect. for that I'm giving it a 7/8. I hope ViolinDeerStalker continues to make more puzzle games. I, for one, would love to see a sequel to Blackwell's diamonds, maybe one where our hero himself gets old, then gathers everyone around to an island to make them go on a scavenger hunt to find clues. This time you'll have competitors. If possible, you could even maybe make a multiplayer chooseyourstory game, where you and family could all play together and compete. That might be too ambitious, but hey, anything is possible, right?

That was a cleverly written puzzle-game, mercifully with no poison darts or other deadly traps!
I don't think I solved all the puzzles, yet I got through and escaped. Did I get the diamonds? I didn't open the safe. That wasn't made clear in the ending. But I enjoyed it very much.

Unbelievable!

Love the mythology reference

Really great puzzles, not scary at all, overall fun

so fun

I absolutely loved this! Very reminiscent of an actual escape room where you are moving back and forth to collect and examine items, and how some locks needed multiple items. Anyone complaining that you didn't need the charms obviously just guessed their way out; the charms are a brilliant and tricky element that required some googling on my part. I didn't mind at all that there was less writing (it was a plus, actually) because I was here for a puzzle game more than a novel.

Thank you so much to the author for your time and care of this game. Incredibly creative!

I didn’t use half the items, and didn’t open all the chests at the end, or even get all the parts of the riddle. It wasn’t all that great, but it was a fun pass of time.