Early Access Review – Moves of the Diamond Hand

If you hadn’t heard, I’m a pretty big Cosmo D fan. Ever since I first laid mitts on 2022’s Betrayal at Club Low and basted in its greasy juices, I’ve been enamoured. So, I’ve been excited to get my hands on more Moves of the Diamond Hand. Last year, a demo consisting of the first “chapter” of the game was released, which disappointed me when it ended. I didn’t want it to do that.

Now, it’s hit Early Access and comes packing the second chapter. Cosmo D notes that even with just chapter 1 and 2, it’s longer than any of his previous games. Which is true! And I know, because I played through all of them.

THE OLD MODEL

Cosmo D started his career largely in the walking sim genre. He likes crafting worlds, so Off-Peak, The Norwood Suite, and Tales from Off-Peak City Vol 1 have minimal game mechanics. Which is fine – great even – because the worlds he crafts are absorbing and comfortable. But this changed with Betrayal at Club Low, which is a tight little RPG adventure set in a small locale. Club Low notably added dice rolls where you roll stat checks against situational complexity. It still has Cosmo D’s signature world-building and narrative, but is built more like a game than a sightseeing experience.

Moves of the Diamond Hand kind of merges the two concepts. There’s Club Low’s dice rolling, but it’s a lot more laid back about it. In most interactions you can fail and fail again, and only suffer literal embarrassment.

Okay, I’m minimizing the effects of embarrassment. See, the Club Low model of dice rolls involves a lot of modifier dice. So when you’ve screwed up, you get something like an “embarrassed” or “smells like turnip juice” modifier, and that will add a die to certain stat rolls. That die usually has a lot of negative values on it, but will sometimes have a +1 or blank side for lucky rollers. But the big things you have to watch out for are sides that subtract from your health or nerve. If those run out, you’re dead.

THE SCENT OF PERIL

However, there are also positive modified dice that counteracts the negative ones. These include positive modifiers that you gain for successful actions, such as “inspired” or “smells like beef (but in a good way).” They can add points to your roll or can heal your wounded body and mind. But you can also add positive modifiers by wearing clothes, baking pizzas, or cracking cans of energy drinks. Things you can often just buy with money.

For your main die, you have a number of skills, and you upgrade each one by increasing the value of its sides individually. So, for example, you can have a die with five sides having a value of 1, while exclusively upgrading a side up to 7, and then just praying it always lands on 7. To your credit, you get two rerolls before you have to accept the outcome, but the odds are still against you.

Anyway, you gain experience simply by rolling. Whatever the value of your roll was, win or lose, it gets added to your experience pool, which can then be spent upgrading your dice.

And, if you’re like me, you’re already thinking of ways to maximize your experience gain. That’s not exactly necessary, though. As I mentioned, even if you lose, you get experience, and you’re rarely ever locked out of options because of an embarrassing failure. But more importantly, there are activities you can do repeatedly that give you the ability to essentially grind for experience and money. You can beef your dice for days, giving yourself a major advantage, if you want. It’s an intentional inclusion rather than an exploit, so have at it.

SKILL CHECK

The fact that you can grind is one of the biggest differences between Betrayal at Club Low and Moves of the Diamond Hand. Club Low only gives you a limited number of interactions you can do. There are ways to maximize the amount of XP you get back, but there is no way (that I know of) that you can just grind to get better stats. The best you can really do is ensure that you do every possible interaction.

With Moves of the Diamond Hand you absolutely can grind all you want, and this more relaxed approach puts more emphasis on the world and narrative, which is where it more resembles games like The Norwood Suite.

But there’s a but here. I’m a grinder. I grind hard. I’m a bit ashamed of the fact, but I know I shouldn’t be. However, there was one section of the game where it didn’t matter that I ground hard, because there was a dice action that cancelled out the advantage of a beefy skill die. And in order to progress through this area, I had to start thinking about what modifiers I needed to counter it.

I get the feeling that – and this is pure conjecture – Cosmo D is learning on the fly how he can use modifiers to add an additional layer of strategy and challenge to the game. It seems like something clicked in his mind while building the game, because the development roadmap is full of these things, such as turn-based duels and combo chains. The earlier demo kind of suggested that it was sticking to what Club Low established, but chapter two shows an evolution of that, and it’s kind of exciting. So, grind away, I guess. You’ll need to learn how to sew eventually.

I’LL HAVE THE MEATBALL

But that’s a lot of talk about dice. The other half of Moves of the Diamond Hand is the narrative, and I think Cosmo D is in top form here, as well.

While I was replaying through chapter one, I realized how hungry I was for more of his unique brand of storytelling. And once I got out into the open neighbourhood, the only places he disappointed were the places that were unfinished.

I think Cosmo D’s world-building is so effective because he knows how to effectively use the absurd to enhance the mundane. The story has you trying to accomplish your dream of joining Circus X, an organization that is literally a circus but also maybe a spy ring. The backdrop to this is a mayoral race between three candidates, with Circus X, the titular Diamond Hand, and Human Resources Horizon all manipulating things behind the scenes.

For Human Resources Horizon, who have been established as a company that produces clones, it’s a matter of survival, as most of the candidates want to either regulate or eliminate the company. However, HRH is backing Sonny Koln, a clone of a beloved previous mayor, and while Koln says that he’s independent of the company, it’s demonstrated that HRH maintains some manner of control over their clones.

And Cosmo D is really great and suggesting things and letting you figure out the implications for yourself. Like, there’s a side-plot about helping with a petition to allow clones to vote. You talk to clones that hate HRH and won’t vote Koln for the reasons I just described above, and they may be sincere, but, again, it’s demonstrated that HRH has some manner of control over them, so who’s to say they won’t use it to change the outcome of the election?

And, yet, this all comes through Cosmo D’s lens. So there’s pizza, but now he’s also making sandwiches seem like the most amazing food in the world, and here I am considering buying the finest breads to make incredible sandwiches.

NO! DON’T LEAVE ME!

As I mentioned, the worst part of the Early Access of Moves of the Diamond Hand is that it ends. Fuck. Chapter 2 sets up so much good stuff, and now I have to wait.

I played through this build about a month ago – the moment I got my hands on it. Since then, Cosmo D has been pushing out patch after patch to get it ready for launch. It’s been so tempting to dive back in to see what he’s changed, tightened, and tweaked, but I realize that it’s going to be quite the wait for the whole thing to come together. The roadmap says Spring 2027 for the full release, but things rarely go as planned in the world of Early Access. 

However, he’s releasing chapters along the way, adding new areas of the world. Places I want to see. So, I’m likely going to be doing playthroughs regularly. And while there are plenty of different routes through the game, I can’t just gorge myself immediately. I have to be patient. Which is difficult in the case of Moves of the Diamond Hand.

If you don’t understand my excitement, then try the demo, play some previous Cosmo D titles (I’ve covered the full anthology here on Maximum Utmost) and at least try the demo of Moves of the Diamond Hand. The whole experience is something special.

This Early Access review was conducted on a digital pre-release version of the game. It was provided by the developer’s PR.