The Crimson Maid

I have mixed feelings about the game, on one hand I had a lot of fun with it and it was worth my time, the Puzzles are simple, yet entertaining. The Mysteries are intriguing and rewarding to unravel. The characters feel very real and down to Earth, and I appreciate the conflicts they have, a lot of them are annoying and frustrating, but in a good way, the writers didn't hold back. But there is one glaring exception, one that portrays a harmful view of what a healthy relationship should be like, and whilst I would like to chalk it off to being simply the way how the characters in the world view it, rather than being reflective of the developers' own views, I have reason to believe otherwise, which would require me getting into spoilers below SPOILERS [spoiler]The game condemns you for not forgiving and sucking up to Irina for the many awful actions she takes in the game. Including, but not limited to stealing, manipulating, poisoning Marius' Father to make him become gradually sick and delirious, and inadvertently causing the death of his mother as well. I didn't completely condemn Irina as a monster, I understood that she was a victim in her own ways, and her vengeance consumed her too much, so most of my responses and sentiments throughout the game as a response to Irina were in support of that, I had dialogue options where I can condemn and vilify her, but my options were instead conveying "You've done enough harm, and we need to heal" and Irina chastises you heavily for that, which I initially chalked up to Irina responding in an immature and volatile way as part of her flawed character, but it's hopefully not how the developers feel, and yet the game gave me an Achievement for the Ending called "Cold Blooded" and called me out for "Keeping my distance" combine that with the way how the Music and Dialogue play out in that final ending scene, and it's understandable to interpret it as the game itself painting me as the bad guy here, which left a very bad taste in my mouth ever since. [/spoiler] With that being the parting message of the game, I can't in good faith recommend it, in-spite of everything else it did well.

w story

✅Décors somptueux ✅Direction artistique travaillée ✅Une histoire d’amour qui se suit sans déplaisir ✅Scénario surprenant ✅Des énigmes bien équilibrées, ni trop dures ni trop simples ✅Une multitude de choses à trouver pour le 100 % ✅4 fins différentes ✅La bande-son (réinterprétation des meilleurs compos de musique classique) ✅Intégralement traduit en français (rare pour un si petit studio indé) ❌Presque pas d’animations durant les dialogues ❌Aucun doublage (sauf pour la narratrice de l’histoire) ❌Utilisation de l’IA parfois trop visible (certains portraits ou tableaux) Développé par un studio roumain composé de seulement deux personnes, The Crimson Maid est le nouveau jeu de Darkania Works en collaboration avec GrimTalin. Avec des moyens très limités mais un talent énorme, après déjà trois titres narrativement très agréables, ce nouveau projet nous plonge dans une histoire d’amour interdite entre un prêtre orthodoxe en devenir et une bonne engagée par sa propre famille.Marius Rosenthal, contraint d’interrompre son séminaire à cause de la maladie de son père, rentre au domaine familial. Il y retrouve une mère au comportement étrange, un frère ingrat qui a pourtant hérité de l’entreprise familiale… et surtout Irina, dont il tombe sous le charme dès le premier regard. De là naît une intrigue autour de la succession, des secrets de famille, d’un meurtre et d’éléments surnaturels, le tout dans une ambiance gothique très réussie. George Remus Poiana (Darkania Works) confirme une fois de plus qu’il est l’un des développeurs indés les plus talentueux du moment. Ses plans sont parfois tout simplement somptueux. Les décors du manoir et du domaine luxuriant sont magnifiques, et la direction artistique globale porte vraiment le jeu. On sent l’amour du détail et du cadre historique à chaque pièce explorée. Le gameplay varie intelligemment entre exploration en vue subjective, dialogues abondants et énigmes légères. Il y a beaucoup de collectibles et de secrets à découvrir, et certains ont un réel impact sur le destin de Marius et sur les quatre fins possibles. On regrette cependant un manque de choix dans les dialogues : on aurait aimé pouvoir orienter un peu plus les conversations et les relations. Côté audio, les amateurs de musique classique seront aux anges. La bande-son propose des réinterprétations magnifiques des plus grandes compositions du genre. Elle colle parfaitement à l’atmosphère dramatique et mélancolique du jeu. Bref, une fois encore, Darkania Works et GrimTalin nous offrent un superbe jeu indépendant à petit prix mais généreux comme rarement. La durée de vie est honnête avec quatre fins qui donnent envie d'être découvertes, et on apprécie surtout une sortie simultanée sur PC, PS5 et Xbox Series X|S + une traduction FR, ce qui est très rare pour un projet de cette taille. The Crimson Maid n’est pas parfait (les dialogues statiques et l’absence de doublage gâche un peu l'expérience), mais il brille par son ambiance, sa réalisation artistique et son histoire touchante et surprenante. Une belle réussite pour un duo de deux développeurs roumains qui continue de faire des merveilles avec presque rien.

The story is rather dull, I was hoping for more of a mystery thriller than I got. It is a glorified visual novel at this point where you pick things up and just automatically use them. (Please note that I do love visual novels but I expected more of this game from the description). The interactive story element feels... very linear. It feels like you cannot make a poor choice on your first try unless you try purposefully. Unlike other games that are narrative driven such as Until Dawn or even Tales from the Borderlands feels more like I am impacting the story than this game. The puzzles are rather easy, but the annoying ones were the boxes you have to move and click. Imagine a chest with toggles on the side, top and bottom. The severely annoying and tedious thing is you don't click and hold to rotate like one would think. No you rotate the object with your mouse and have to click as well. So you have to hover your mouse over where you click and it is sensitive, causing me to miss click several times and having to start over. It honestly feels like... perhaps puzzles are not their thing, which is fine, but more research on their part is needed to make them less tedious and more a seamless and enjoyable part of the game. While not expected, I feel sticking to coded puzzles with simple locks or pictures would have been more in their wheelhouse. I also need to pay more attention to games that use AI, so my disappointment that they used AI instead of employing actual artists was my mistake, but no less disappointing. The settings are very paltry as well, no way to get it to fit my screen resolution and there is a lot of screen tearing throughout. Overall I would not recommend this game. If you would like a mysterious game there are plenty out there that would fit the bill. Honestly this feels like a hentai game without the hentai and even those tend to have a more enticing storyline. I completed the game just in hopes that I could maybe find some joy in completing it. I did not. 2/10 for the stained glass and the ending not being exactly what I thought but severely similar, the stained glass was pretty but now that I think about it may have been AI generated which would be rather pathetic if you think about how a game is largely based on visuals assumedly created by an artist. Painting over a drawing does not make it yours suddenly, so painting over an AI gen does not make it real art or yours. If you are curious and you *must* have it then get it on a really good sale, otherwise I would just look up the story for curiousity sake.

Me llevé una grata sorpresa con este juego!! La historia es muy buena y tiene sólidos giros de trama. Si te gustan los misterios y las historias interesantes este juego es para ti.

挺好的

gg

病重的爹，固执的妈，脑残的弟，舍不得的他和她以及这狗血的剧情。

Für das, was es sein will, ist The Crimson Maid ein ganz passables Spiel. Die Story ist zwar nichts Weltbewegendes, hat mich aber das eine oder andere Mal tatsächlich überrascht. Insgesamt ist es eher leichte Kost, die für den Preis absolut in Ordnung geht und einen gemütlichen Filmabend gut ersetzen kann. Wer keine riesigen Erwartungen hat, bekommt hier ein solides Erlebnis. Für zwischendurch also ganz nett.

This is another game where I wished for a middle ground rather than just pos or neg status. On the one hand it is a beautiful place where I wanna spend time, on the other one it is a bit too much and cluttered (like flowers covering the tapestries AND flowers all around in vases, like give some breathing space) and on top of that it is poorly optimized and will have your hard drive struggling even if you have a powerful one. I was scared my PC would die by playing too long in a session and that's never fun and put you out of it, obviously, hearing your PC absolutely ramming it (no pun intended). And then, on the one hand it has some story and gameplay more than most "erotic" games which usually just result in visual novel (no offence to the genre but vn ARE limited in how they present the story, and depend on good writing ONLY. Not saying it's easy but it is one factor of a whole rather than several). I would have loved more erotic encounters and less story beats tbh, or at least the same story beats with added erotic encounters, but I'm unsure of the authors intent, possibly it was meant to be the one or two erotic encounters were meant to be so spectacular to the protagonist that it would mean a lot I guess, but as a player it was like, meh? Pretty boring and just casual. Maybe I've just been lucky and don't find these things so exciting? The scenarios, the envoriments, the framework, puzzles and characters are all pretty good. Except for one puzzle that was more or less impossible to complete and took, I don't know, about 1 hour to brute force with help. :( It is highly uneven I would say, like a mix of a lesser VN but presented in FP with some uneven puzzles and characters. I would LOVE some more games in this type of category though, like a VN but in FP gameplay and with collectibles and puzzles to give replay value and insert fresh blood into the genre. There certainly is some value here. But the poor optimization is a huge problem and off putting factor. The problem is the only alternative to these very "kind" erotic FP games are the "sex is bad or grape" FP ones like Lust for Darkness which has some nice scenarios but a moral that is off. I would LOVE an erotic game where sex is positively portrayed and not just love based or horror/negatively based.