Overview
This guide is a homage to the good old 2003 Crimsonland – It will show tips, tricks and secrets related to the new 2014 version of the game!
Introduction
Never seen the weapon in the thumbnail in the game? Wondering what it is? IS IT THE NUKE LAUNCHER?
This guide will introduce you to the wonderful game that Crimsonland is. I’ve been playing it ever since the original version launched in 2003 and I’ve been a big fan ever since!
Due to that, I’ve gotten to know and see many of the game’s meaty strategies and secrets at work (RIP Alien Zookeper) and I want you to know them too!
I’ll be updating this guide regularly with whatever information I can remember or scavenge from the old forums regarding the secrets of the game. Tips and tricks will be updated with my personal findings. Have fun!
If you don’t want the secrets to be spoiled (As you can find them using clues ingame, to an extent), don’t read the secrets portion of it! Thank you!
Tips and Tricks
This section will be expanded with time! If you want to contribute with ideas for this portion of the guide, feel free to leave it in the comments below!
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Look, I know what you’re thinking. ALL HAIL THE ALMIGHTY BLOWTORCH “But I like the Ion Cannon!”
Usually, I personally like to say that the game has three phases: The early game, which consists of the first two or three perks (around 30 thousand points), the mid game, where most games end at around 250k points (due to the boss enemies showing up) and the late game (where the Chaining Bonuses section down below becomes imperative).
Some weapons are good in early game, like the SMG, Plasma Rifle, Ion Minigun, or the Shotgun. Those weapons, though, really suffer in the mid-late game, due to their spectrum of uses being very limited. The SMG deals too little damage per bullet; The Plasma Rifle is too slow; The Ion Minigun deals little Ion damage; The Shotgun has a very narrow spread, etc.
In order to compete in the big leagues, only a few selection of weapons are suitable for the very late game: The Jackhammer, Plasma Shotgun, Gauss Shotgun, and to a lesser extent, the Plasma Minigun. The reason why Shotguns are the “required” late game weapons relies on the Fire Bullets upgrade – They absolutely DESTROY the field, clearing it up for Bonus chains (read the section below for more on that). These weapons also deal decent Fire Bullet-less damage for those last effort ditches to score a Shield or a Freeze. Needless to say, though, perks that support faster reload times and pickups like the Weapon Power Up are always welcome.
2021 update: With some perks having been buffed a good while ago, certain weapons like the 3-Way Ion Rifle are now EXCELLENT for Quests at any level, or Survival. The Rocket Minigun has been buffed, while the Jackhammer and Plasma Shotgun have been modified to deal less damage but have faster reloads, so further testing is neded.
Always remember that Random Weapon now allows you a free pick, so it’s not based on luck anymore!
This one is the one thing that saves your butt as the game gets harder!
If you can get good perks like My Favorite Weapon, paired with Telekinetic, you can get a LOT far ahead with a lot less effort.
Three bonuses are to be tracked in the playing field at all times (Eagle Eyes helps!): Fire Bullets, Shield, and Freeze.
Rule #1: DO NOT PICK THEM UP AT ONCE! This is a deal breaker most of the time – since only one of each can spawn in the playing field at once (unlike other drops like Speed), you NEED to be conservative with those! If you have a Shield, avoid picking up Freeze until it’s about to run out! The same goes for the other way around.
Rule #2: ALWAYS have Fire Bullets on! This is a secondary objective, but almost as important as the first – Fire Bullets make the bonus dropping process a lot easier to manage – not only it clears the field, but also guarantess that there’ll pretty much always be one of each of the mentioned drops on the field.
Manage those efficiently and, pairing it up with a good gun (Splitter Gun, Plasma Shotgun, Jackhammer, or maybe even the lesser weapons like the Rocket Swarmers) and you’ll definitely go further than the rest!
Secrets
Aaah, you want the good stuff, don’t you? I don’t blame you – some of these are quite interesting!
Ever since 2003, the game has been filled with riddles. Riddles that, up to this day, have been unsolved! (Anyone into Orthogonal Projections? Because I could need a hand here.)
Thankfully, though, some of them have been found, and surprisingly, are still in the 2014 version of the game!
Warning: Spoilers ahead! You’ve been warned!
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Not a representative of my actual skills in Gembine.
2021 update: See the ‘AVOID CHECKERBOARDING’ section for more info on why this screenshot shows bad Gembine gameplay. You sucked, 2014 me.
These ones are all new!
In the 2003 version of Crimsonland, entering the Credits lead to two interesting things – a clue to reveal the mystery of the Blade Gun, and the trigger of Alien Zookeeper – we’ll get more in depth about those later. In the 2014 version of the game, though, there’s a new secret into play! While investigating, I noticed that typing the word GEMBINE in it opened 10tons’ take oh the game Threes! My personal high score is around 27 thousand points! 🙂
The Gembine is also the way to unlock the final perk, Lifeline 50-50! All you need to do is beat the high score (which is not that easy! Tips and tricks for Gembine will be added in the future :D)
2021 update: TO HELL WITH THAT! LET’S GO!
Gembine is based on the game ‘Threes!’, nowadays better known as 2048. With that, it comes with their sets of tips to achieving a higher score, but keep in mind that the gems dropped on the board after every move are randomly picked, so there can be cases where losing a game comes down to bad luck!
MOVE PIECES ‘DIAGONALLY’: Investigate your starting board and, depending on how your first moves go, pick a corner of the playfield. From now on, every move you make must go towards that corner: If you pick top right, you will only move the board to the left, or up – and the logic is the same for every corner of the board.
This guarantees that all the ‘big’ gems, that become a massive nuisance later on if located in the middle of the board, go exactly to the corners or near them, keeping the game easier to manage for a longer time with a clear middle section.
AVOID ‘CHECKERBOARDING’: Since the game is based on making triplets of a certain gem, having your board look like your gems are making a checkerboard pattern is also a very bad practice. Because of the nature of the moves (only in one direction at a time), this pattern is particularly nasty to undo, and requires too much move commitment (and too many extra gems added to the board, because of that).
PICK YOUR BATTLES (MATCHES) CAREFULLY: Remember that the whole idea of only making moves ‘diagonally’ is there to avoid big pieces being in the middle. That means that you have more wiggle room to not go for certain moves if that means another move is better.
As a rule of thumb, a good priority when playing the game is to match the small numbers first. That gets rid of the ‘trash’ and advances your game more towards the corners, which is a good thing. The more you match the lower numbers, the less lower numbers end up at the corners of the board.
With that, keep in mind that unless your board is extra screwed and you know you’re going to lose (where you should go exclusively for the big matches), it’s not always the best move to go big. Sometimes, keeping things grouped to match at a later date can be beneficial too, if it means getting rid of a nasty potential problem that’ll bite you down the line, like checkerboarding or a particularly badly positioned small number.
These are the basics. Good luck!
Sacrifice for Firepower.
Ancient riddles talk about using the blood of your enemies to summon this mighty weapon:
Inside Dead Let Mighty Blood
Do Firepower See Mark Of
The Sacrifice Old Center
Yourself Ground First For
Triangle Cube Last Not Flee
Can you figure it out for yourself? Can you not? That’s fine!
The text above is a lot more literal than it seems – It translates directly into the game, in fact.
In order to play with the Blade Gun (which this trick doesn’t unlock, as the trick is needed every time you play Survival if you want to use it before you unlock it!), follow these steps:
1- Kill an enemy with your first bullet. If your first bullet is not a kill, restart;
2- Stand on top of your killed enemy’s body – center yourself well and once you stop on top of it, don’t move until you reach step 4;
3- Let enemies damage you until you reach about 1/5th of your health;
4- WITHOUT MOVING, kill all enemies hurting you.
If you’ve done this correctly, the Blade Gun will substitute whatever weapon you’re holding, and you’ll be free to move again! Your health isn’t healed, though – Medkits and the perk Regeneration become your best friends! 😉
The Blade Gun is also the unlock for beating the game in the Hardcore difficulty! This method, though, serves as a way to preview it in Survival 😀
Last, don’t flee!
I don’t really need to say what happened afterwards, do I?
Being passive doesn’t make you any less manly – Sometimes, it gives you firepower!
If you can manage to not get bit and not fire a single shot for an entire minute in the very beginning of a Survival round, your active weapon will be substituted for the Shrinkfier 5K! This highly impractical weapon does what your nature said: Shrinks enemies until they’re too tiny to be a menace. Or until you get Fire Bullets. Then they die anyways.
You monster.
The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?
As shown by Torusknot (One of the developers!) in the Community Hub, there’s a secret menu for the oldschool players who miss having perks enabled in Quest mode.
By typing GRIM at the pause menu, you can access a bunch of interesting options: Perks in Quests, Friendly Fire and tilted perspective.
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More secrets will be posted here as I find them! If you want to help me with a secret you found, feel free to add me on steam! I’ll credit you accordingly in the guide!