We see The Crimson Maid, if we're allowed to be a tad pretentious, as an evolved point-and-click adventure game. You have dialogue trees, exploring, inspecting, finding items, and, of course, puzzles. But our goal is to make a game that is easily played by everyone.
Playing with the environment
To kick off, probably the simplest puzzles in our game are those that rely on basic interaction with the environment, coupled with finding and using items in the right places. Such an interaction can be, for example, finding a coffee pot, filling it with water by interacting with a sink, then placing the pot of water to boil on the stove. These actions help with embodying Marius and to immerse yourself in his surroundings.
Tactile contraptions
We always loved the idea of looking at a box, unable to open it, only to find there is a hidden compartment or a knob on its bottom that unlocks it. And we made a few such boxes in our game too. These are a joy to interact with, spin around and try to figure out how to pull and push their various bits to be able to unlock them.
A bit of a challenge
There are a handful of more difficult puzzles in the game, that require logic and careful observation of more complex systems. We tried our best to make them as intuitive as possible, so that it's easy to understand how they work, but it takes a bit of thinking to figure out the solution. Now rest assured that we aren't talking about puzzles so complex you need a piece of paper at your side and hours of head scratching to solve them. Our goal is, as ever, to immerse you in the world and to get you to feel what Marius would. A bit of a disclaimer though: there is an above average difficulty puzzle, though for that one, Marius, through your choice, can decide to give up and get some help from someone else.
Optional ceramic puzzles
As shown before, you can also find these puzzles made of interchangeable ceramic tiles in the game. These are completely optional, and act more like a distraction. Or do they? Could they have another purpose? In any case, one thing we want to make clear: these are not puzzles with sliding tiles. I think there are only three people in the world who like those and neither of us in the team is one of them. No sliding was involved in the making of this game, only swapping.
That's what the puzzle solving side consists of in The Crimson Maid. I suppose one could say that figuring out and collecting everything is sort of a puzzle in its own way, but let's not count that. We want to reassure you that this is meant to be an accessible game, easily approachable by visual novel or walking sim fans - it has significantly more game mechanics than those genres, yet is not a traditional point-and-click game. It is, first and foremost, a narrative driven game and everything is there to support the story.
So don't be afraid to click around to learn how everything works and reacts. It's not like you have a needle in your arm and you're pulling blood from your vein. It's just pixels on a screen. :)
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