Until Krashlander ($1.99) guru Jeff Weber stepped in and saved us with his words of wisdom, we had a problem: we REALLY sucked at his game. Instead of pulling off face-melting jumps, we were tumbling head-over-heels down hills. And when we weren’t embarrassing ourselves with our total lack of grace, we were smashing our collective gourds into slopes. This might not come to a few, but you need a surprising amount of touch and understanding of Krashlander‘s systems in order to perform well. Jeff gave us both these things, and now we’d like to share his gift with you, too.
If you’re sucking at Krashlander, we’ve prepared some tips from the creator of the game to help you get your, uh, sea legs. Wait, snow legs. No, that sounds gross. Powder legs? Oh, man, that’s even worse. Anyway, here’s some tips:
The Positional Pad
To do anything “right" in this game, you’ve got to take note of the character positional pad and act out the movement-by-movement progression of what you want to do. Want to do a sick jump? You better crouch first. Want to gather some wicked speed? Move your thumb on the pad to better handle bumps on the way to a phat hill.
Jumping 101: The Take-Off
J Web tells us that a good jump starts from a crouch and, critically, requires you to lift your thumb off the positional pad. Doing this gets you to a standing position as soon as possible. It’s this explosion of movement that’ll get you to your goal.
Jumping 104: The Landing
Weber calls landing “the hard part," and requires you to control your dude’s position as he’s in the air. He suggests that a smooth left or right slide on the positional pad to control your rotation.
Wind is An Illusion
A lot of folks who pick this up assume they need to crouch or lean to gain speed. That isn’t the case: wind drag isn’t being modeled, so you don’t need to do either of these things to hit a ramp as hard as you can. What actually matters as far as speed goes is balance. Weird, right?
How To Keep Speed
“The best way to maximize your speed, other than not falling down, is to anticipate and react to the small bumps and jumps along the ski slope and avoid any abrupt contact with the ground," Weber says. “Abrupt contact with the ground, even if it’s with your skis, will slow you down.
Big Scores
You get points for bashing robots, everyone knows that. But how do you get a big score? Weber says you’ve gotta make “par" on a track. The general rule of thumb is that fewer attacks net you bigger scores, so be precise.
Back-Flips
When you’ve got the basics down, you can start playing around with tricks. Weber walks us through the back-flip: “To perform the back flip you start with your thumb near the center of the control. Then, you sweep down and to the right then back up, around, and to the left all in one motion," he says. The motion is like a backwards C, he adds.
Front-Flips
“The front-flip gesture is similar to the back-flip gesture but in reverse. Start with your thumb near the center, sweep down and to the left then up, around, and to the right all in one fluid motion," Weber tells us.
Tricks For Progression
In the game’s later levels, you’ll need to be able to pull off these tricks in order to reach your goal. So, even if you don’t need to go nuts on a jump, give it a shot. You’ll need the experience.
Recovering
Now, if you’re like us, you’re constantly falling down or tumbling. It’s fascinating to watch, but not exactly good for high scores or progression. Weber says the best way to get back on your skis is by “sliding your thumb to the left to the lean-way-back posture." Provided you’re not up the creek, that’ll help you get up quicker than just frantically pounding the positional pad.
As you’ll notice in this article, Weber also has a tutorial video for beginners that you can check out, if our word picture we’ve painted isn’t doing the trick. It’s worth your time. Krashlander is a really cool game with an experience that is much improved with a bit of learning. Take it from us.
