Land Sliders Tips, Cheats and Strategies

Land Sliders is an endless high score collectathon from Prettygreat. In this game, you will slide a variety of characters around an ever-changing landscape as they pick up their favorite items and dodge bizarre and adorable dangers. Gamezebo’s Land Sliders …

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Land Sliders is an endless high score collectathon from Prettygreat. In this game, you will slide a variety of characters around an ever-changing landscape as they pick up their favorite items and dodge bizarre and adorable dangers. Gamezebo’s Land Sliders Tips, Cheats and Strategies will help you perfect the art of slidesploration.

LandSliders_Turnymaps
  • Note on this guide: The item type you pick up in Land Sliders changes with each character. The default character, Turny, collects maps; Umbrella collects rain boots; Toilet collects plungers, etc. When referring to item pick-ups, we will use the blanket term “Swag” (capital S) to mean the score-building items collected, regardless of character.

The Basics

LandSliders_controls
    • Try both control types when starting out. At the very beginning of the game, you’re asked to choose your control type: slide the world or slide the character. Slide the world is the default, but we personally find slide the character to be much easier to manage. They are basically inverses of each other: if you swipe up, on slide the character, he will move up. On slide the world, he will move down. Try one for a few levels, then switch in the settings menu and try the other. You’ll probably prefer one significantly.
    • Practice stopping on early, empty stages. Stopping is integral to maneuvering the world and dodging hazards, as well as making pinpoint jumps to small islands when necessary. To stop, all you do is tap the screen while moving. On early, wide open stages, practice stopping in the middle. Try stopping on a specific piece of grass or some other pinpoint landmark. It’s much easier to learn the controls and feel of the game in these safe areas than by waiting until you really need them, like in the middle of a lake or between two bears.
    • You don’t have to get all the Swag to move on to the next level… The main goal in Land Sliders is to collect as much Swag as possible—it’s the only thing that adds to your score. So it’s always ideal to get every piece available on a stage (and you can see how many are left by standing near the red exit button). However, if a piece of Swag is in a really dangerous location, you don’t have to risk it: you can leave via the exit button to the next stage at any time, even if you’ve collected zero pieces of Swag on the current stage.
    • …but you should try. The advantage to collecting all the Swag on a given level is a bonus: you’ll get 5 extra pieces of Swag added to your score, which adds up quickly over many fully-cleared levels. You’ll also get 5 extra Swag just for exiting a level, so each fully-cleared level that you leave via the exit button will add 10 Swag to your score. If you die after collecting all Swag but before reaching the exit (pesky bears!), you’ll end up with 5 bonus points only.
LandSliders_distantcarrot
    • All level-based Swag is always reachable. When you’re first starting out, a piece of Swag on a distant, isolated platform or behind a set of spikes may seem unreachable. But if a piece of Swag was loaded with the level and is part of the total counted for the exit bonus, it can be reached. You may need to make a jump over a pit or find a way around through a broken fence, but there will always be a way to reach this Swag. In the image above, the carrot may appear impossible to reach when viewed from behind the spikes, but we can see an alternate way to get it by sliding over the cliff. The exception to this rule is Swag that appears after you start the level—such as enemies or rabbits that have died. They could die in an odd location, leaving their Swag unreachable, but this is a pretty rare occurrence and that Swag doesn’t count towards the stage completion bonus.
    • Kill everything! When enemies like bears or bulls die, they explode into a pile of Swag. This is just free score-padding, and removing enemies from the map makes it much easier to explore. There are a variety of ways to kill enemies (see “Know Your Enemy” below), but the best is one that actually kills them on-screen so their Swag will spawn: killing them via pit or water will prevent you from earning that sweet, sweet Swag.
    • But remember that enemy Swag doesn’t count towards level bonuses. We mentioned this above, but it deserves its own entry: when you kill an enemy and get Swag from it, this Swag does not count towards the end-of-level bonus you get for finding all Swag. That bonus is only earned by finding all the Swag that spawned with the level. So let’s say you have 1 Swag left for your bonus and end up collecting 4 Swag off a dead bear; you still have to find that 1 remaining piece of Swag to get the bonus. You’ll know you’ve found all the level-Swag when you get a pop-up announcing such, and the pause button in the upper-right corner is replaced by a checkmark icon. (You can still tap this to pause, though.)
LandSliders_questbutton
    • Always accept quests. Quests are mini in-game challenges that award free coins. They usually require tasks like “kill X number of bears” or “collect X amount of Swag.” When you see a gold exclamation point button in a level, stop on it to receive a quest. As soon as you complete your assigned quest, the next stage you enter should have one of these buttons. This means you can basically always have a quest active, and you should—it’s a great way to gather extra coins while learning new ways to play. You can view your current quest any time by pausing.
    • Use different characters for easy coin bonuses… As you gain coins, you can unlock new characters on the main hub by opening a blind box. (A new character costs 100 coins, and you’ll receive a random selection upon opening a box.) As characters are used in-game and collect Swag, they level up—and upon leveling up, they receive coins. Lower levels require less Swag, so it’s easy to get bonus coins from playing with lots of different characters.
LandSliders_maxlevel
    • …but feel free to stick with your favorite character if you prefer. Once a character reaches max level (level 5), they will still earn bonus coins by collecting Swag. For every 500 Swag you collect with a max level character, you’ll earn 25 coins. So you’re not punished for playing favorites.
    • Go rabbit-hunting! Levels will occasionally contain silver or gold rabbits that hop around and will run away from you if you get near. If you catch a rabbit by sliding into it, they will explode just like slain enemies: silver rabbits explode into Swag and gold rabbits give coins. If you see a rabbit, it’s always beneficial to try to catch it for these bonuses. However, rabbits are quick and would rather jump to their death than be caught by you, so be wary of chasing one near a cliff. If a rabbit hits an enemy like a bear, they will also explode, and you can collect the spoils, so use enemies to your advantage by steering rabbits towards them.
LandSliders_waterexclamationpoint
  • Your character is part Wile E. Coyote. If you slide over water or a pit, you’ll have a brief period of time where you will float and can slide past it to safety. An exclamation point will appear over your character’s head to alert you you’re in danger of falling to your doom. If you see that exclamation point, swipe quickly towards safety.
  • You are a Swag magnet. You don’t have to touch Swag to collect it. Just getting within its general vicinity will usually draw it towards you. This is helpful if a piece of Swag is stuck on a narrow piece of land you don’t want to navigate. Slide towards it until it comes to you and avoid the risk of going out to dangerous locations. This is also true for coins.
  • Take your time; don’t rush. When first playing, Land Sliders seems like a fast-paced arcade game. However, it’s often beneficial to go slowly, take time to look around, and plan ahead. There is no timer in the game and you can sit still indefinitely without incurring any sort of penalty. Use this to your advantage, especially if you’re unsure what is near you—sliding quickly and haphazardly may just send you into an enemy.

Strategic Sliding

LandSliders_narrowbridge
    • Make slow, precise movements by holding your thumb down. While this game is mainly about sliding, you can move very slowly and deliberately by holding your thumb (or finger) on the screen and treating it like a virtual joystick. This will inch you along bit-by-bit, and is perfect for getting around stationary hazards like spikes, or for maneuvering down narrow corridors.
    • You can change direction mid-air. This is a useful tactic that is slightly risky, but pays off once you get comfortable with it. It’s also helpful to practice on lower levels when you’re in absolutely no danger. Try sliding yourself off a cliff and then swipe in a different direction while you’re mid-air. That brief period of recovery you have after seeing the exclamation point allows you to move in any direction, so don’t feel like you have to keep going straight. Use this to make mid-air jumps around enemies or to cross awkward bodies of water. You can slide back in the direction you came (in case of accidentally going off a cliff) and, if quick enough, you can even swipe multiple times to go multiple directions.
LandSliders_scrollbars
    • The scroll bars on the screen edge give an indication of map size. Having trouble finding one last piece of Swag? There may be more to the map than you realize: when sliding, the scroll bars on the screen will help indicate where you are in the map. If you’re near the upper-right corner but there’s still a wide gap between the scroll bar and the edge, then there may be a lot more map up there than you realized. If the scroll bar is all the way in the corner, then there’s nothing more to see in that direction. In the image above, Toilet is at the western-most point on the map, but there is more to the level farther south.
    • You can’t collect items vertically above or below you, no matter how close you are. The rule about Swag magnetization only applies to items on your same level. If you are standing on a higher level than an item, even if you’re right on top of it, you can’t collect it. You’ll need to fall down to its height to get it.
LandSliders_portrait
    • Switch between portrait and landscape mode to see different areas of the map. You can play Land Sliders in portrait or landscape mode, and each will give you a different view of the same map. Assuming you don’t have orientation lock on, you can change mode at any time while playing.
      LandSliders_landscape

      The two images above show the exact same level / location viewed from both modes. You can see the portrait view shows a lot more area below the exclamation point and above the fence, into the clouds. However, we can only see a tiny sliver of another gray button to the upper right. In landscape view, this button (level 1) is entirely visible, with even some part of the map beyond it in view. However, very little can be seen below the exclamation point and above the fence. Use the option to switch between these two views to your advantage mid-level: if you think some Swag might be hiding out on a distant platform but you’re worried an enemy might be as well, turn your phone to get a better view of the area.

    • Tackle each level in a deliberate, circular approach. If you slide willy-nilly all over the place, it’s easy to forget what you’ve already collected and where you’ve been. Try to approach levels in order, going clockwise or counter-clockwise and covering whole sections at a time. This way, you can “clear” areas and know that there’s nothing left to find before moving on to the next section. This will prevent you from getting stuck with “one Swag remaining” and no idea where it might be.
    • Hot sauce invincibility only protects you from damage. This means you can slide into enemies and spikes without worry, but standing over water or cliffs will still kill you if you fall. Be careful not to get overly excited when invincible and end up sliding into oblivion.
    • Enemies will flee from you while you’re invincible. Enemies (except turtles) will run the opposite direction when you come at them with hot sauce. Be ready to chase them as soon as you collect the hot sauce bottle—ideally, you will be able to catch and kill them for the Swag bonus. However, if you can’t reach them and just want to clear some space, chase them off cliffs or into water for easy kills.
    • Keys are always available on the level they are needed. Some exit buttons are enclosed in locked cages. In order to reach the exit and the next level, you need to pick up a golden key and unlock the cage. If you’re on a stage with a cage, there will always be a key on that stage. Once picked up, you will drag it behind you until you’ve unlocked the cage.
LandSliders_elephantpeanuts
    • All characters are created equal, but their aesthetics may make the game easier or harder. All the characters in the game have the same speed and hitboxes, despite being different shapes and sizes. However, some characters’ Swag may be easier to see than others’. For instance, we found the Elephant’s light brown peanuts to be tough to see on certain landscapes. And some characters do change the appearance of the world, albeit slightly. Try different characters and pick the one that feels best to you.
    • Maximize low-level Swag and coins. The farther you get in a single run, the harder the levels become. Be sure to get as much Swag as possible on lower levels by collecting every piece on the map and killing every enemy you can. When you get to higher levels, you may have to abandon multiple pieces of Swag just to stay alive, so you want to build up your score as high as possible early on.
    • When you first enter a level, take a second to look around. Plan where you’re heading first. If you start swiping immediately, you might just slide yourself into a hazard you weren’t aware of. But, be aware that on later levels, you may spawn right next to an enemy—so be prepared to both scout and swipe instantly if necessary.
LandSliders_birdseye
  • Upon entering a level, you’ll get a brief bird’s-eye view of the surrounding area while falling. Use this very quick glance to get an idea of where you want to head and where the exit is. The exit is usually pretty easy to see, since it’s a bright red circle: if you land in a difficult location and just want to get to safety, knowing where the exit is will be a huge help.
  • Try to finish runs in one playthrough. This is basically our only complaint about Land Sliders, but it seems to have trouble staying in our phone’s memory. We might step away from the game mid-run for a few minutes, and when we return, it’s sent us back to the start. Because of this, we really recommend finishing runs in one attempt and not exiting the game, or even just putting your phone to sleep, mid-run. It will sometimes save your location for very short periods, but if you’re about to get a high score, it’s not worth the risk.

Know Your Enemy

Enemies have certain patterns of attack. The most common enemies you’ll encounter are brown bears, cactus turtles, bulls, pogosauruses, and black bears, although there are others that will appear in later levels or certain instances, such as cloud spiders and giant ghosts. Their attack patterns are as follows:

LandSliders_brownbear
    • Brown bear: sleeps until you are in his general vicinity, then wakes up and gives chase. Brown bears will chase you directly, following your movement: this means if you move down, they will as well. If you get far enough away so they are off-screen, they will stop chasing and go back to sleep.
LandSliders_cactusturtle
    • Cactus turtle: wanders slowly and randomly in a small area of the map. You’ll rarely see a cactus turtle cross the entire map; they like to stick to their own section. Cactus turtles will never chase you. They’re more like mobile spike traps that you might accidentally slide into. Generally not very dangerous unless you simply don’t see one in your path.
LandSliders_bull
    • Bull: stands in one spot until you come close, then revs up and charges in a mostly straight line. Their charge is very fast, but also pretty easy to dodge unless they are right next to you. Bulls will change direction very slightly while charging to follow you, but their trajectory is mostly straight. Their charge will continue until they ram into something or go off a cliff / into water.
LandSliders_pogosaurus
    • Pogosaurus: begins to give chase as soon as you are within its vicinity. Pogosaurus bounces instead of walking/running, so they can cover a lot of area in a short period of time. They will never give up the chase, even if you escape to a different part of the map. Pogosaurus can jump over cliffs and water, but cannot jump over spikes or up a level—so if you’re higher than them, you’re momentarily safe.
LandSliders_blackbear
    • Black bear: gives chase as soon as you’re near. A larger, faster version of the brown bear which wakes up extremely quickly. The black bear is almost the same speed as your character at max-swipe, so you’ll need to dodge it once it gives chase and ideally escape to a higher level or kill it before it kills you.
LandSliders_cloudspider
    • Cloud spider: floats overhead and drops octagonal swatches of acid on the ground. A purple outline will appear to warn you where the acid is going to appear, and that area will fill in purple shortly after. Acid kills on touch, so you want to move out of the octagonal outline as soon as possible after it appears. There are two varieties of cloud spiders—green and purple. Green drops acid near the area it is floating while purple drops acid anywhere on the map and is generally faster. Cloud spiders cannot be killed, as far as we’ve seen.
LandSliders_giantghost
  • Giant ghost: you’ll only see this guy if you steal from his grave, but he’s huge and fast. Takes up about 1/4 the screen and chases you indefinitely. He will kill anything else he touches, so you can use him to clear out other enemies on a busy stage. Otherwise, best to save any grave items to last and, after stealing them, head straight for the exit.
  • Use enemies against one another. Most types of enemies can hurt or be hurt by the other types. Use this to your advantage by pitting them against one another and then reaping the Swaggy rewards. You can lead bears or pogosaurus into cactus turtles: they will explode upon hitting the turtles. A charging bull will kill anything in its path, including turtles. Enemies that get stuck in cloud spider acid will be killed. All enemies can kill rabbits for you. Same-type enemies won’t hurt each other—so two turtles can run into one another without dying—and bears and pogosauruses are immune to one another—they often end up chasing you simultaneously, in strange bear-dino cahoots.
LandSliders_bearwater
  • Lead enemies to an alternate demise if you can’t kill them via other enemies. Some levels won’t have cactus turtles or other helpful creatures, but you’ll still want to clear out some bad guys. First, it’s always better to kill enemies on-screen so you get their Swag. But if you can’t do that, send them off a cliff or into water. Bears are very easy to kill with this method, since they follow you directly. Get a bear to follow you, get a little bit ahead, and then slide around a body of water. The bear will continue heading straight for you, right into the water. Pogosaurus can jump over cliffs and water, but they can also jump into them. The timing and angle just has to be right, but again—if you’re on one side of a hazard and they’re trying to get to you, they’ll often jump into it and to their death. There’s another way to kill enemies: see the “altars” entry in this guide’s “Secrets Abound” section.
LandSliders_sleepingbear
  • You can bump sleeping bears in the back without dying. This is a quest you might pick up occasionally, which is a good time to practice this strategy. It won’t come up often, but another ridiculously fun way to kill bears is to knock them into water or off cliffs directly. If you slide into the back of a sleeping bear, you’ll actually shove them forward—so if they’re on the edge of a cliff, you can knock them right off. Super satisfying.
  • You can slide under Pogosaurus while he’s jumping. This is a somewhat risky move, but it can come in handy when you’re trapped. When Pogosaurus is mid-jump, you can slide under him safely. Just be sure you clear his area before he lands.
LandSliders_enemyelevator
  • Enemies can use elevators. The purple elevator buttons allow you to move up a level, but they also allow enemies to move up as well. While enemies won’t intentionally go for an elevator button, if they end up on one while chasing you, they will ride it up. You can use this strategy to lure an enemy to a higher level where a turtle or altar is waiting, but it also means you can be caught on an upper level by a lift-savvy bear.
  • Play with sound for enemy warnings. When an enemy notices you, they’ll get an exclamation point over their head and a chime will be heard. It’s a fairly distinctive noise and makes it easy to know when you’re being chased. Sometimes an off-screen enemy might be alerted to you, so having that sound as a notification is extremely helpful.
  • Try to tackle enemies one at a time. This is easier said than done on later levels that are filled with bears and other dangers, but whenever possible, weed enemies out one by one. It’s much easier to lead one enemy where you want when you’re not worrying about two others sandwiching you in. When forced to handle multiple enemies at once, deal with the fastest one first.

Secrets Abound

There are a surprising number of secrets to discover in Land Sliders. We’re still figuring them all out, but below is a list of ones we’ve found so far and what we know about them. Secrets appear to be random; they can show up at any stage, you may or may not come across one during a specific run, but you’ll inevitably see all of these at some point if you play enough. (Spoilers)

LandSliders_altar
  • Altars: these are stone areas carved into the world that have a skull icon in the middle and three pathways jutting off the center which terminate in circles. If you lead an enemy onto the skull icon, they will die and one of the circles will light up red. After leading three enemies to the skull icon, all three circles will light up and you will receive the message “Your sacrifice has been accepted,” along with a reward of 10 coins. After receiving this reward, you can continue leading enemies to the skull and they will still die, giving you their standard Swag bonus. But you can only get one sacrificial coin reward per altar.
LandSliders_StonePuzzle
  • Stone puzzles: these are a ring of raised, circular stones that can are depressed when stepped on. The top stone has a string of inputs listed and the other five stones contain symbols and numbers. You have to input the string from the top stone in order. So, if you had a ring of stones with the numbers 1-5 and the top stone said “3,2,5,4,1” you would slide onto the stones in that order: 3-2-5-4-1. Then, you step on the top stone to finalize your input. If you get it right, a red exit button will appear in the middle of the stones. If you get it wrong, the stones will be reset and you can try again. The symbols usually feature either shapes or dots connected by lines. For the shapes, count how many interior shapes there are. For the dots/lines, count the number of lines between dots.
  • So, for the above image, to input “4,1,3,5,2” as requested, we stepped on the “4,” then the lone circle, then the three lines connected via dots, then the three interconnected circles (which have five interior shapes), then the “2.”
LandSliders_coordinates
  • Coordinate tablets: These are stone tablets that appear on a small cross of concrete between hedges, with a set of coordinates on them. Sometimes there will also be an item mentioned, like “palm” or “rock.” We believe these are coordinates to some treasure (likely coins), but haven’t actually been able to uncover any as of yet.
LandSliders_sunburstpuzzle
  • Sunburst: These are large, flat areas of stone in the shape of a sunburst. If you slide into the middle of the sun and stand still for a few seconds, a keypad will appear on-screen with “Restricted” at the top and nine different buttons featuring a variety of symbols.
    LandSliders_sunburstkeypad

    If you press ten buttons you’ll get a negative response like you’ve input a wrong code, indicating that this keypad requires a 10-digit code. However, we’ve tried a variety of inputs and have yet to solve this particular puzzle.

  • Update!: If you’re having trouble with the coordinate and sunburst puzzles above, you’re not alone. It turns out that these two are related, and they’re part of a real life, global scavenger hunt. The gist is that the coordinates lead to real world locations which contain geocached USB sticks. On the sticks, players have found the symbols from the sunburst “Restricted” keypad. So, in order to solve the latter, we’ll need to wait for players near those real world locations to find the sticks and share what they discover. For the full details, see this article. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one!
  • Others…? These are just the secrets we’ve discovered so far. There are also other, less “secretive” areas of interest, like the ghostly grave and the trap-laden ruin with a stack of coins, as well as landmarks to uncover, like the giant snowman or spaceship. If you’ve uncovered any other puzzles (or solved a mystery like the sunburst), please share in the comments! We’ll update as we work through the game and its mysteries even further.
Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.