Indie Focus: Crimsonland

I used to play Crimsonland when I was younger. At the time it was pretty unique and had enough content to jump into it whenever I had some time to pass. When the game was greenlit last year (a full decade after its original release) with the developer deciding to give the game a full tune up instead of releasing the original. This version of Crimsonland is a remake with added features and improved graphics.

It’s a top down shooter with a wide selection of guns, power-ups, and perks (more on that later) to keep things fresh. Though the standard weapons you might expect such as assault rifles, shotguns, and rocket launchers are present, many of the guns are a little more interesting, such as the ion rifle which shoots a large blue ion round that shocks nearby enemies once it hits, making it great for crowd control.

Power-ups are similar in that some are standard, like speeding you up for a short amount of time, to some that are a little more interesting, such as a plasma spinner that shoots plasma in a spiral once you pick it up. Both weapons and power-ups are dropped by enemies and using them effectively is important if you want to survive. Possibly my favourite power-up is fire bullets, which turns your bullets (or modifies your gun to shoot bullets if it doesn’t already) into fire that pierces enemies. This and a shotgun can clear an entire screen of enemies in a matter of seconds, which is incredibly satisfying.

Crimsonland Screen 01

This is important as Crimsonland is all about crowd control. You begin a game in the center of the map, which is just a large flat area, and monsters spawn around you. There are a variety of enemies ranging from spiders, to zombies, to lizards, and they generally have slightly different movement patterns. Your job? Survival, as you might expect. You usually start with just a pistol and are expected to pick weapons up. Every gun has unlimited ammunition but needs to be reloaded, so timing your reload can be crucial if you want your keep your head on your shoulders.

The quest mode consists entirely of survival missions. Many quests just spawn monsters, some have spawners that will continue to pump out enemies until you destroy them. There is one that I am partial to that spawns you with a gauss rifle, which shoots clean through everything it hits, then spawns enemies in radial lines around you so if you are quick enough you can take out each line before they can even move, finishing the quest quite nicely. It’s satisfying, and many of the quests have specific ideas like this behind them. Many others just throw a ton of monsters at you, but it is nice to have some variety.

What could perhaps be considered the “main” mode of the game is Survival. This is the most substantial mode as it uses some light RPG mechanics to makes things a little more interesting. You will gain experience as you kill things and once you level up, you get to pick a perk. The perks you can pick from are randomly chosen and can be gambles, like receiving a random weapon, trade-offs, such as sacrificing 99% of your remaining health for three new perks, upgrades, increasing how much damage you do or increasing fire rate, and even more unlikely ones, like Perk Expert, which gives you an additional perk to choose from every time you level up.

Crimsonland Screen 02

Perks add an element that simply isn’t present in other modes, making survival the mode of choice. The only issue is that to unlock all the weapons, perks, and even modes you have to play through the quest mode. Survival pretty much lives and dies based on a wide selection of weapons and perks that, since they appear randomly when playing, offer a different experience and demand a different play style each time you take it for a spin. Quest mode is good but being able to go into what is seemingly the main focus of the game without having to unlock most of its content would have been nice.

Being a remake, the graphics have been improved significantly over its previous incarnation. They are nothing to get too excited about but are well designed. Enemies that you have killed darken and blend into the background a little so you always know what is still trying to kill you and what isn’t. Just like the original version, the remake is full of explosions, fire, and blood will coat the ground as you play, and now it looks a bit more modern.

So overall Crimsonland is a good game. 10tons Ltd have stayed true to the game with their remake and it is a significant improvement that is well worth picking up, particularly if you like two player local coop (no online unfortunately) or online leaderboards. If you happen to own the original Crimsonland and can prove you purchased it you can get a copy of the remake for free, so start digging through those emails. Otherwise £10.59 may be a little steep, so you may just want to wait for a sale if you are less enraptured with it than I.