Crimsonland is a remake of a shooter that hearkens back to the golden arcade age of top down shooters where enemies swarm the screen, and you have multitudes of insane power-ups and guns that let you mow down waves and waves of enemies. There is something satisfying about mowing down countless enemies with high octane weapons, and Crimsonland does a good job of balancing the sheer amount of enemies with the difficulty. Equipped with your powerful guns, you never feel like you’re getting overwhelmed all the time, but at the same time, enemies just keep coming at you, making it a constant fight for survival.
The game’s main modes of play are Quests mode and Survival mode. Quests mode is for learning the basics of the game and for unlocking more perks and weapons in order to use them in survival mode. Survival mode is all about taking down as many enemies as you can with what you have and achieving as high a score as possible. There are even different modifiers that you can use that spice up the game and put a new spin on the action. While the game is a little sparse on modes, the added guns, perks, and modifiers help give it a lot of replayability and variety, making the game not seem as monotonous as you might otherwise think.
The game’s controls are twin stick, as most top down shooters are, and they are very tight and responsive. It’s important to be able to move precisely while shooting in very specific directions, so having the controls work well is important. To 10ton Ltd’s credit, Crimsonland‘s controls do not fail in this regard. Never did I feel like the controls had failed me, and in this kind of game it’s important to be able to hit where you’re aiming and to move through enemy hordes in order to grab power-ups and survive.
The guns themselves are really satisfying, with everything from assault rifles to laser mini-guns. The guns themselves also determine how fast you’re able to move, and so mini-guns with their insane firepower slow down your movement considerably, while lower firepower weapons like pistols or assault rifles give you more movement speed but also don’t kill enemies nearly as fast. Power-ups are useful as well and are almost mandatory to use in order to survive because they help to clear a lot of enemies quickly. Things like nukes, fire bullets, freeze novas, and speed-ups are all available to be used when you kill enemies randomly, and it’s in your best interest to use them as often as possible.
Perks are useful for spicing up the gameplay, and they let you play the game the way you want. Fan of fire? The Pyromaniac perk gives you 30% more fire damage. Want more power-ups? Lucky gives you the ability to make power-ups drop more often. These perks let you customize your gameplay in order to maximize your kill potential and survivability while also giving you a little control in how you want to play the game.
The enemies are varied and have different health levels, movement speeds, and attack patterns. Everything from zombies to spiders to lizards to aliens — the game has a ton of variety as to what enemies they throw at you. It’s a good thing too because with a lot of other arcade shooters enemy variety is usually thrown to the side in favor of other features, but here it’s a nice touch and makes the game that much more interesting.
Co-op is another prominent feature of Crimsonland and supports up to 4 players fighting at the same time, but with more players comes more enemies and the chaos that follows. Unfortunately, the game only supports local co-op, so what could have been a great feature to play with other people online has unfortunately lost some of its potential. Not that the co-op is bad; it’s just disappointing that such a great feature wasn’t given online functionality because it would give the game infinitely more play time, and help extend the game’s life for people.
Crimsonland is a shooter that does what it sets out to do and does it well. It’s a good top down shooter that hits all the major points of what you expect in a good top down shooter and even adds co-op on top of it. It’s a little disappointing that the co-op was just cut short of being online since that would be a major seller for the game. The game has enough modes so that it’s not a one and done game, and the survival modes are varied enough so that you can try and get a high score with a variety of methods. To summarize, Crimsonland is a top down shooter power trip, a love letter slaughter, and a fun massacre for anyone that’s interested.
A code for Crimsonland was provided by 10tons Ltd for the purpose of this review