Hours into Moves of the Diamond Hand, I still don’t fully understand its world. It’s intentionally discombobulating, as in most of Cosmo D’s adventures, all of which are linked by surrealist design choices and a simmering narrative of strange, creative people rallying against their circumstances.
Across the first two chapters of this game – part of an early access release that will shape the final adventure – I’ve bullied pigeons, fought bidepal shrimps, stolen sheet music from an animatronic crocodile, washed my clothes, campaigned for local politicians, and bootlegged a concert.
It’s all in service of joining the mysterious Circus X, an arts organisation that might also be a front for something sinister – or perhaps is just far too exclusive for my taste.
Moves of the Diamond Hand preview – quick links
Moves of the Diamond Hand is an artist’s journey
With each new quest, more pieces fall into place. But the truth is that Moves of the Diamond Hand is intentionally obtuse, and its real meaning is like a carrot dangling on a stick ahead of you.
You move forward with arms fumbling for that carrot, but as you encounter new and stranger sights, you’ll find yourself increasingly looking beyond to a world much more compelling and magical than our own.
It’s best to think of Moves of the Diamond Hand as an extension of surrealism. It’s what the art movement has become in the modern era, aided by new technology that allows creation of entire worlds. Cosmo D, off-kilter Dalí, creates uncanny and off-putting realms to travel through, offering eye-opening sights and entirely odd people to meet.
The rough textures and colour palettes, combined with the changing size, shape and form of familiar objects, creates a wonderfully dissonant effect. You begin in a train station, and are haunted by internal lighting in the shape of cat’s eyes. When you venture beyond, to begin your quest to join Circus X, you find a deep red and blue sky, overseen by the gaping maw of a crocodile. There are cities and castles in the distance. Down the platform is a gang of overlarge pigeons. Beneath, a subway filled with weirdos.
There’s just enough familiarity to this world. Moves of the Diamond Hand then uses this as a basis to reveal its own weird version of reality, one where political rallying is complicated by a rise in mechanical Clones, and the titular Diamond Hand meddles in the affairs of all.
For a game to be transportive, it must present an entirely fresh, compelling form of reality that players want to get lost in. Modern AAA games attempt this with hyper-realism, inviting you to enter lush and beautiful worlds and imagine yourself in the protagonist’s shoes. Moves of the Diamond Hand, however, achieves this in an entire different manner, leaning into its strangeness to spark curiosity and a desire to forge onwards.
It would be fair to call the game ugly in parts. As you explore, you’ll meet characters with flat .jpeg faces stretched across low-poly models, who move in quick, janky bursts. Textures are fuzzy and out-of-focus. Sounds are robotic and simple.
But there’s beauty here, too, in the rich colour palette, and in a vision of reality that dissolves any notion of up and down being sure things.
Traditional quests and dice-based gameplay elevate the rest
This aesthetic fever dream of a world is draped over more traditional gameplay systems that help to provide a skeleton for every step. Aesthetics alone don’t transform Moves of the Diamond Hand into something compelling; moreish gameplay helps to cover that gap.
At its core, this is quite a traditional RPG adventure, complete with quests to undertake and specs to improve. With most lines of dialogue and most quests, you’ll earn experience points that allow you to build strength in one of several stats, from music to deception, will, strength, and beyond. Each plays a part in completing quests, although there are strong elements of chance, too, alongside the need to balance the core needs of heart and mind (if any dip below a threshold, you’ll die).
As you travel, you’ll meet and greet a menagerie of freaks, leaning into your skill specialties to pass dice-roll checks which determine success or failure. While you will need to consider save-scumming, as there is a sense of randomness paired with skill, it’s a flashy little system that adds plenty of excitement to each encounter.
Choice will direct your growth
While the full scope of my choices hasn’t played yet, after two chapters, I can see that player choice will have direct consequences for the unravelling tale, and that rolling dice isn’t just for show. It will determine your path forward, and whether or not you really will be accepted by Circus X and live as you intend.
To conclude the game’s first chapter, you must rescue a robotic artefact known as the Jade Bass, a talking fish that has seemingly been re-programmed for nefarious intentions.
If you play your cards correctly, you can retrieve the Bass without it causing a fuss. But if you don’t have the right skills, or you make poor dice rolls, you can destroy the Bass completely, rendering it inoperable and requiring service.
Likewise, you can misstep and lock yourself out of some side quests, with the consequences being a loss of potential experience points, or missing out on some items which may help you buff your next dice rolls.
It’s best to stay cautious as you travel, and consider save scumming (it’s fine, I promise) to get the best outcome, or to otherwise bide your time, and plan to return to some encounters when your skills are higher-specced. The layers here add to your progress, and to the sense of meaning that you build.
A promising start for a grand adventure
In these first steps, comprising the first few hours of Moves of the Diamond Hand, there is much promise. There’s the intangible it factor with this new adventure, in the way its adventure unravels, and just how twisting its path becomes.
There are still ample questions to be answered, particularly about how the game’s many disparate plot threads will be resolved, and whether the balance of strange and ugly, and beautiful and compelling, can be matched in later chapters.
But if anyone can pull off the landing on such an intriguing, mind-boggling journey, it’s Cosmo D.
As it stands, it’s worth experiencing this game in early access to see exactly how weird and wonderful its world is. By nature, it’s far from complete – Cosmo D has stated this is the biggest game he’s worked on yet, and it will take more time. But the ways in which this game crawls into your mind, and the questions it leaves behind, make it feel like it’ll be worth the emotional investment.
Moves of the Diamond Hand launches for PC in early access on 13 April.
A PC code for Moves of the Diamond Hand was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
