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Crimson Alliance for Xbox Live Arcade will spring into action once again with the "Vengeance Pack" on October 12 for 240 Microsoft Points ($3). The DLC includes a more challenging mini-campaign of four levels and a challenge map with new mode "Fistful of Coins."

FoC has players tasked with surviving wave after wave of beast, collecting gold as they go along. The group can leave and bank their loot at any time, which will help them ascend the leaderboards, but if they die, they'll lose everything. It's Crimson Alliance meets the masochism of Demon's Souls.

Certain Affinity president Max Hoberman said, "When we finished the game back in May we had a few months to wait before the Summer of Arcade was over. So we devoted ourselves to building the kind of maps that we wanted to play: fiendishly difficult ones that are perfect for co-op."

"We built Crimson Alliance to be expandable," Tim Fields, director of business development at Certain Affinity told us this afternoon. "For those who felt they went through the original campaign and thought it wasn't challenging enough, the Vengeance Pack is for them."

It may be thrilling to see the "full game" of Crimson Alliance available on XBLM for free -- you may think it's a pricing error on Microsoft's part -- but that's just how the game works. It's not actually the full game.

We knew that Crimson Alliance would be available either as an 800 point single-character pack or a 1,200 point download with all three; what we're just now learning on release day is how Microsoft is handling that.

The "full game" is available for free, presumably so everyone online is playing the same base game. But that free download only includes "trial characters," and warns the player upon character creation that "You are creating a Trial Character. Game content will be limited for this character." There are prompts ... everywhere to buy the characters for 800 points each.

This model of giving the game away for free, but severely limiting it, almost makes Crimson Alliance the first freemium game on XBLA, which already offers free trials for all games.

[Thanks to everyone who emailed us about this.]

In gastronomical terms, Crimson Alliance is Nutella on toast to fans of the abandoned top-down action genre. It's inspiring in its toast-like simplicity. It shares Nutella's life-affirming sweetness and palatable smoothness. It's a decent mix -- but then, somebody puts a heaping helping of peanut butter on the toast. Okay, it still sounds good, if not a little messy, except -- is that marshmallow fluff? Yikes, alright, I guess we're making s'mores toast now. Wait, are you adding raspberry jam? That doesn't even make sense!

This is Crimson Alliance: A peanut butter and s'mores sandwich with raspberry jam.

Crimson Alliance has introduced the menacing mercenary and the wackjob wizard. Now it's time for the final announced playable character, Moonshade the assassin, to take a stab at earning your $10 (you can also grab all three classes for $15).

Crimson Alliance is going to cost $15 for the full game when it launches September 7 on XBLA, which isn't very weird. The game features three classes -- mercenary, wizard and assassin -- and people who only want to play one class will be able to buy a separate version of the game, with just the one class, for $10, which is weird in an "all games should be sold like this" way. We were suspicious of Crimson Alliance's pricing model back in July, and we're glad to be pleasantly surprised now.

Producer Tom Potter (he must hate J.K. Rowling) explains the pricing structure as a way for players to have "more options when buying Crimson Alliance." We see it as a way to save $5 just for knowing what we like, and that's not a bad deal.

The Crimson Alliance needs a magic user and it looks like all the goody-goody mages are busy teaching little wannabe wizards or wandering with hobbits. Direwolf, the mage, is just a little bit crazy, but when somebody can shoot fireballs from their hands, it's better to call them "eccentric."

Crimson Alliance, which may have some price "flexibility" when it assembles for adventure on XBLA this September 7, has gathered several new action-oriented screenshots of dangerous dungeon crawling.

Throw a kill party in this gameplay from San Diego Comic-Con 2011!

Certain Affinity is currently discussing Crimson Alliance pricing options with Microsoft to offer more flexibility when the game arrives on September 7. An ad for the Summer of Arcade on the Xbox dashboard states that those who purchase all five games in the promotion will receive "Crimson Alliance and all three characters as a gift." The line is oddly specific, separating the game from the characters, so we followed up with Certain Affinity.

"When Crimson Alliance launches, the full game -- all the content and characters -- will be priced at 1200 points," the rep told Joystiq. "We've discussed other pricing options with Microsoft that gives players more flexibility. We expect that to be finalized and a formal announcement closer to launch."

Crimson Alliance was a standout XBLA title at E3, where the developers alluded that the game might not follow the standard pricing model. With the "full game" costing 1200 MSP ($15), which is the standard price for most original XBLA titles now, it'll be interesting to see what alternatives are provided to those not seeking full membership in Crimson Alliance.

Potentially free XBLA dungeon crawler Crimson Alliance's first character trailer reveals what happens when one runs a poker scam in their world. Hint: It involves trekking into dank, dark monster-infested places fraught with danger.

Meet Gnox, a legendary and beefy warrior, exclusively on GameTrailers!

These new screens will likely do nothing to endear Crimson Alliance to you, so let's mitigate that by saying that the game can be obtained for "free," and that we actually had a good time with it at E3.

Crimson Alliance is shaping up to be a polished, modern successor to the legacy of Gauntlet. The dungeon crawler by Certain Infinity may initially give off the impression of being a Diablo or a Torchlight, but the game is far more focused on keeping the action going than fiddling with RPG elements and menus.

The title supports up to four players in every combination of couch and online co-op. However, there are only three classes, so a four player game will have two folks playing as either the mercenary, wizard or assassin. Actually, all four players can rock the same class if they'd like, but it's definitely better to have diversity of expertise on the field.

There is no skill tree or leveling in Crimson Alliance. Players acquire gear that increases their armor, which increases their health. "Leveling up" is all based on gear gathered from the "crafted" (i.e. pre-generated) dungeons and loot drops. It's also possible to purchase items in the store, but I didn't get to see that functionality in the demo.

Dig into the details of this dungeon crawler coming to Xbox Live Arcade in this Walkthrough from E3 2011 with Certain Affinity President Max Hoberman!

Here's a look at some gameplay of Crimson Alliance, that Certain Affinity-developed four-player dungeon crawler that was officially announced last week. It looks like pretty standard hack-and-slash fare, with three different players (color-coded, seems like) bashing, casting, and slicing their way through dungeons of baddies, collecting the sweet, sweet loot that drops from their corpses.

We would say something here about how constantly fighting wave after wave of enemies in dimly-lit dungeons eventually gets boring, but you know what? If the quality and polish are there when they need to be, it doesn't. It really doesn't.

Gameplay highlights this debut trailer from E3 2011!