Video Game / Crimson Glaive Sigma

"In the distant year of N92, a science vessel travels through the vast emptiness of space. Its mission: to investigate the phenomenon of a strange signal that appears once every 20 years. Only a single scientist travels with the ship to aid with the observation. Despite a wide skillset, he is utterly unprepared for what he will discover. Or, rather, what will discover him..."

—Opening Scroll

Crimson Glaive Sigma is a Metroidvania-like game with Bullet Hell elements, made by Pixel Artery and published on 29th July 2021 on Steam and on 30th August 2021 on itch.io.

In the prologue, a lone scientist is on a spaceship sent to investigate a mysterious signal coming from the deep space. Just as he receives his birthday greetings, the spaceship suddenly crashes into a strange biomass. As he goes to investigate, he gets attacked by a mysterious horned being armed with a glaive. Having no weapons of his own, the scientist gets promptly thrashed...

...The game then starts proper in a rundown facility, where a spacesuit-clad humanoid called (by default) Aimes is released from a pod and greeted by a drone showing a hologram of a professor who introduces himself as Aimes' creator. As Aimes makes their way through a live-fire training course, the professor explains that the facility they are in is a Space Station called Crimson Glaive, which was made as a prison to hold a dangerous creature known... as... CRIMSON. The professor tasks Aimes with helping them both escape this station, a goal which will not be easy as Aimes will have to confront many previous experiments that have gone rogue, as well the warden of the prison, who has plans of waging the war on the universe outside with those creations. Along the way, Aimes will gather many weapons and upgrades that will help them in that task, and maybe even learn what the professor isn't willing to tell them.

This game provides examples of:

• Ability Depletion Penalty: Using up all the energy in your Jet Pack will disable its hovering ability until it recharges back to full.
• Air-Dashing: The Booster upgrade allows Aimes to lunge horizontally while mid-air, providing temporary immunity to ichor clouds (but not bullets). Additional upgrades allow performing two dashes before having to land and dashing in any direction.
• After Boss Recovery: Defeated bosses leave behind life upgrades that refill your health completely.
• Alliterative Name: Many bosses have alliterative names and/or descriptors. The first four the player will encounter are Troubling Test, Ultra Unit, Wilted Wonder and Pesky Pool.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: The game has one boss for every letter in the Latin alphabet (except E for some reason). This is made obvious on the file select screen where your progress is tracked with a string that fills up with letters as you defeat bosses.
• Antagonist Title: The title of this game comes from the name of the Space Station the game takes place in, which is in turn named after the Big Bad it imprisons.
• Anti-Villain: The warden wants to turn the prison that is Crimson Glaive into a fortress from which he can wage war with the universe outside, but far more than that, he just wants to escape it. For that purpose he's willing to co-operate with a random human who crashed into what he calls the most secret prison in the universe, even learn something about Earth and humans while at it, and is distraught about that human passing away. Despite this, he's still hostile towards the human's creation Aimes despite knowing they're his only chance at destroying Crimson, but after some "persuasion", he's willing to co-operate with them and eventually vows to make amends.
• Artificial Gravity: The eponymous Space Station has a way of making things fall to the ground. The gravity seems to be applied individually to each entity, judging by enemies that not just run along the ceiling but also fall up while you still fall to the floor, the fields that change your falling direction being described as the station's actual gravity fields, and... oh yeah, an upgrade that lets you change your gravity to point to any of the four cardinal directions. Even inside Crimson, after it breaks free from its prison to fly through space, you get to experience gravity.
• Asteroids Monster: The Segmented Serpent enemies will split into smaller ones when you destroy any segment of theirs that isn't their head or tail.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Several bosses can be damaged only by hitting them in particular spots. For example, the Headache can be hurt only by shooting its wiggling tail, the Great Galley can only be shot at its exposed ichor core (that relocates after every few hits), and damaging the Insidious Inspector requires shooting it in the giant red light that it keeps away from you as it turns its cannon side towards you.
• Attack Reflector: Touching enemy bullets just as you're leaping off the ground or right after a Double Jump will turn these bullets blue and reflect them back. You even get complete ammo recharge and additional double jump for that, giving you another chance to deflect bullets.
• Birthday Beginning: In the prologue, the scientist receives birthday greetings from his colleagues, together with cheesy music, right before his spaceship crashes into an unknown object. Aimes too receives birthday greetings when they get released from the pod when the game proper begins and when they receive the Sigma Gun in the finale.
• Bombardier Mook: There are red, plane-like enemies that fly over your head to drop bombs of ichor on your head.
• Bullet Hell: Most of combat involves dodging massive barrage of bullets shot by enemies in every direction imaginable and in many patterns, many of them leaving clouds of harmful ichor that linger for a while.
• Cap Raiser: You can find upgrades that increase the energy capacity for your guns.
• Charged Attack: When you don't have enough energy to fire a weapon, you can still fire it by holding down the fire button for a few seconds and then releasing it. This is useful only outside of combat when you need a weapon to press the switch or destroy an obstacle. In combat you can always recharge ammo with the Alpha Gun or by deflecting bullets.
• Checkpoint: Camera drones found throughout the station serve as temporary save points that last until the player reaches a proper one or gives up.
• Double Jump: The Dodge upgrade to your jetpack allows performing one tiny leap mid-air. Getting hit by a bullet while performing that leap will deflect that bullet, refill your ammo and perform another one without having to land first.
• Easier Than Easy: Below the "Casual" difficulty level there is "Chill", in which the player deals extra damage to enemies, whose projectiles won't leave ichor lingering.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: In the endgame, you get the Sigma Gun, a Purposefully Overpowered weapon that has the high fire rate of the Beta Gun, the ammo efficiency of the Alpha Gun and can recharge your time stop ability with each direct hit. And you will need that in order to destroy Crimson for good.
• Enter Solution Here: To reach the endgame, you must give a specific name when the professor's hologram asks you for one.
• Evolving Title Screen: As a reward for reaching the ending, the title screen will change to show Crimson's corpse drifting above Earth.
• Exposition Fairy: Aimes is accompanied by a drone that stops at various points to provide a relevant recording from the professor.
• Full Health Bonus: Each upgrade for your weapons only work when you have maximum health.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Crimson (and anything corrupted by its ichor) is driven purely to destroy. In his notes, the professor opines that a creature must be very boring if their only sign of intelligence is willingness to spare something only if it means getting to destroy more later.
• Given Name Reveal: The professor has a name, and learning it is a big deal as you need it to access the endgame.
• Gravity Screw: The sixth sector is full of gravity fields that overwrite your gravity to make you fall sideways or upwards. You can also find gravity fields pointing "downwards", which mess with your jet pack's ability to hover in place by weakening it to a slow fall.
• Ground Pound: You can encounter hammer-wielding enemies who attack by leaping and slamming their hammers into the ground, leaving a cloud of ichor in the process.
• Harder Than Hard: Above the "Hard" difficulty level are "Very Hard", in which enemies deal extra damage and their ichor lingers longer; and "Cosmic Crimson", which is like very hard but the player is a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
• Healing Checkpoint: Activating a Save Point will refill your Life Meter to the max, but only once before you activate another.
• Heart Container: Throughout the station you can find (fragments of) upgrades that increase you Life Meter capacity.
• Heart of the Matter: The heart of Crimson is the Final Boss of the game, the one last thing you must destroy to stop Crimson's threat and reach the ending.
• Hearts Are Health: A heart icon next to your Life Meter fills up as you shoot enemies with the Alpha Gun or when your health is low, restoring one Hit Point when it gets full or serving as one itself on maximum health.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can give Aimes another name right upon getting released from the pod at the beginning.
• Heroic Mime: Aside from choosing a name for themself at the beginning, Aimes is not even implied to say anything during the course of the whole game. There are, however, a few moments where their body language shows their character.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The prologue ends with the scientist encountering an alien that promptly attacks him and thrashes him effortlessly. Then the game begins proper.
• Hub Level: "The Spine" is the station's central maintenance shaft that provides access to key locations. However, they are locked behind doors which can be opened only with keycards floating oh-so tantalizingly behind them. How do you reach these keys? By getting to them the hard way.
• Jump Jet Pack: At first, your Jet Pack is capable only of making extended leaps, but you can find upgrades that give it extra functions like sprinting, Air-Dashing or indeed hovering.
• Justified Tutorial: The professor designed the area Aimes wakes up in to guide them through the basics of movement and combat... with live fire. He apologizes for the latter but tries to justify it, saying that if Aimes wouldn't survive those, they wouldn't have a chance anywhere else.
• Laser Hallway: Several rooms have laser erm lazer emitters sliding along surfaces, emitting beams that can be avoided only by hiding behind some cover.
• Lava Pit: Pits and even walls and ceilings of molten metal are a common hazard aboard the station. As is typical, only direct contact hurts.
• Level-Map Display: If you find the map data for the current sector, the pause menu will display its map marked with locations of save points, doors leading to the Spine and your location... your approximate location.
• Life Drain: Dealing damage to enemies with your Alpha Gun fills up the heart icon which restores one Hit Point when filled up.
• Lizard Folk: The professor mentions in one message that humanity has made contact with reptilian aliens prior to the events of the game. It's only an aside he makes when telling a pun on the word "cool" and explaining why the use of that word to express approval fell out of favour (you see, these reptilianns prefer a warmer climate than humans).
• Malevolent Architecture: Crimson Glaive is not merely worker-unfriendly. It's full of hazards like spikes, molten metal, lasers, clouds of deadly ichor and cannons regularly firing bullets that disperse that substance.
• Mecha-Mooks: The station is full of machines corrupted by ichor that will attack the player on sight.
• Mirror Boss: At the end of what seems to be a Journey to the Center of the Mind, Aimes comes to blows with "You", a younger version of the professor who created Aimes, equipped with an Epsilon Gun in each hand and a jetpack, whose skillset is generally similar to what Aimes should have at that point.
• Ninja Run: Aimes sprints with one arm stretched backward and the other crooked forward.
• No OSHA Compliance: Even in parts of the station that aren't designed to kill you, you have to rely on your jetpack and your suit's resistance to Falling Damage to reach places above or below you instead of ramps, stairs or ladders; and lifts are constantly moving platforms (some of which may be stopped by a nearby Pressure Plate) without any railings.
• Notice This: A soft chiming sound means you are close to a collectible.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: Some enemies are encircled by purple shields that completely absorb any shot not from the (purple-coloured) Epsilon Gun.
• Post-Processing Video Effects: The game offers optional shaders to render graphics in funny ways. A scanline shader is the default and there are also a CRT display shader, a Game Boy shader and even an ASCII shader.
• Platform Battle: The boss Blademaster is fought on three platforms suspended between a pit and ceiling of molten metal that close in as the boss gets hurt. These hazards disappear completely once the boss is defeated.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: When Aimes' Hit Points run out, the whole screen turns red as Aimes —shown a black silhouette— gets devoured by a large maw. One message from the professor explains that what actually happens is that Aimes is quickly teleported far enough from the station to activate the Time Loop Trap to rewind time to the latest Save Point or Checkpoint.
• Player-Guided Missile: An upgrade to the Delta Gun not only makes its missiles fly faster, it makes them home in on the player's reticle.
• Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: Several bosses in their death throes become covered in a stream of explosions.
• Pressure Plate: Several doors and other mechanisms on the station are activated by stepping on giant green buttons.
• Red Is Violent: Crimson is a beast that lives to destroy and is called such for a reason; it's entirely red. The dangerous-yet-versatile ichor it produces is also a dark shade of red.
• Recoil Boost: An upgrade to the Gamma Gun makes it pack more pellets per shot but also flings Aimes violently in the opposite direction.
• Regenerating Health: At low health, your hit points regenerate on their own. The number of hit points you can regain this way depends on the difficulty level and can be increased with two upgrades.
• Respawning Enemies: Killing normal enemies will keep them dead as long as you don't leave the current sector or reload from a checkpoint.
• Ring Menu: Holding the weapon switch button will display all your acquired weapons in a ring formation for you to select while action is stopped.
• Save Point: You can save progress by finding pods scattered around the station, such as the one Aimes drops out of at the beginning.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The eponymous station serves as a prison for Crimson, a malevolent entity which is driven purely by the need to destroy everything. In the finale, it manages to break out —showing the station seems to have been literally built around it— and immediately heads towards Earth with the intent of destroying it.
• Segmented Serpent: You can encounter serpentine machine made up of multiple orbs that can be damaged individually. When an orb that isn't a head or a tail end gets destroyed, the serpent splits into two smaller ones.
• So Proud of You: The professor is quite generous with leaving messages congratulating Aimes for tackling the challenges of Crimson Glaive.
• Space Station: The eponymous setting is a spaceborne installation that serves as a prison for a malevolent entity called Crimson.
• Speak of the Devil: The professor avoids calling the warden of Crimson Glaive by his name in the holographic messages to Aimes because the warden's name would draw his attention way before Aimes gets ready to confront him. At the very bottom of the station you can find one message that glitches out, displaying you instead an old recording where the professor calls the warden by his name, which gets cut short at warden's request because he claims someone is watching. If you haven't defeated him by that point, then sure enough, the warden will teleport in to destroy the drone —denying you any more messages from your creator— and give you a warning not to meddle in his plans.
• Spikes of Doom: Pointy, painful spikes are a common hazard throughout the station, something which the professor is apologetic about.
• Spread Shot: The Gamma Gun shoots a spread of short-range projectiles with each press of the fire button.
• Sprint Shoes: An upgrade in the water reservoir sector allows using your Jet Pack to run quickly along the ground and even walls and ceilings.
• Stationary Boss: Some bosses like the Troubling Test or Insidious Inquisitor stay in one place and rely entirely on bullets to attack you.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: A common enemy type is a red-black humanoid that regularly throws bombs that can cover huge chunks of terrain in dangerous clouds of ichor. Luckily you can shoot those bombs mid-flight to turn them harmless to you and harmful to your enemies instead.
• Time Loop Trap: If the warden or Aimes get too far away from Crimson, a mechanism meant to keep Crimson trapped will kick in, rewinding time. Aimes' suit exploits this to undo their untimely deaths, and if they try to escape on a shuttle, time will rewind all the way to their awakening, but with all equipment and upgrades somehow already collected. In any case, they get to keep their memories of the undone time.
• Time Stands Still: The hourglass upgrade gives you an ability stop time for a few seconds of respite. You can activate it only when its energy meter is fully recharged by collecting occasional hourglass pickups or by standing near special pillars.
• Title Drop: Near the beginning, the professor shows you the name of the Space Station you are in... through a dramatic display of the game's title.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Ichor is a substance produced in infinite quantities by Crimson that can be refined into any other materials, even those science never discovered before... with a catch that whatever it won't destroy outright, it will easily corrupt into carrying Crimson's will to cause as much destruction as possible. It can turn even waste into a living force of destruction.
• Underwater Boss Battle: The Great Galley is a large submarine boss fought in the water reservoir. It's armed with four turrets that alternate between pestering you with ichor bullets and pestering you with missiles.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The fight against Crimson takes the form of a Vertical Scrolling Shooter as Aimes pilots an escape shuttle.
• Villain Teleportation: The warden is capable of teleporting seemingly anywhere on the station. The reason he can't use it to just get away from Crimson is that getting far enough will only rewind time.
• Wall Jump: The Traction Boots allow Aimes to cling to walls and jump from them to reach higher places.
• Wall Run: The Sprint Shoes upgrade allows for running up the walls and even ceilings.
• Warm-Up Boss: The training sector ends with a fight against Troubling Test, a Stationary Boss firing bullets in patterns that are very easy to dodge. With the Delta Gun in hand, you can destroy its armour to reveal Spiteful Spawn, a much more dangerous boss beneath.
• Where It All Began: At the very bottom of the station, you can find the wreckage of the professor's spaceship from the prologue, abandoned but still with recognizable interior. Once you defeat all the bosses marked on the hangar sector's map, that biomass the ship has crashed into will move away to reveal an entrance to a very surreal level that ends with a key to reaching the endgame.
• Womb Level: The very last area of the game has Aimes and Aramars travelling through the fleshy intestines of Crimson to destroy its heart and kill it for good.
• Wrap Around: The gimmick of the sector with teal brick background is that some sections have edges that connect to the opposite side of the screen. You can walk to the left edge of the screen and find yourself on the right side, or drop into the pit and fall indefinitely from the top. An upgrade found in the same area allows shots from the Epsilon Gun to wrap around the screen as well.

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