Another Crab’s Treasure answers the age-old question of what happens when you take a balls-hard Soulslike and make the protagonist a cute little crab. The answer is a mixed one for me. Over 20 or so hours I found a mix of frustration and joy in this Day One Game Pass release. It’s a game that I think I would have truly hated without its accessibility options. That’s a shame, as under the shell there is a game with heapings of wit and heart.
Under Da Sea
You play as Kril, a cutesy little Crab kid who does his best to stay away from everyone else. Life comes at you hard no matter what, though, and one day a Shark puppet shows up demanding you pay your taxes to the Duchess. She’s new in town and demands protection money, despite never offering any protection. Your ugly, useless shell is taken and Kril is devastated. He follows the shark to the Duchess’ cardboard castle and the adventure begins.
The game’s story ends up focusing on a treasure hunt where you and the citizens of the local coral reef city race a big-bad to find a prize. The writing is damned good, mixing humor into every line without it ever getting old. What does get old is the amount of text in some conversations. Some back-and-forth conversations would have upwards of 50+ lines of text to read. There is occasional voice acting in the game, mostly for major cutscenes. When it pops in it’s good, though a little jarring as it could be an hour or two in between voiced lines. The game is fairly long as well. If I had kept things to the default difficulty it would have taken me 25+ hours to get through. I did not though, as the base difficulty in Another Crab’s Treasure is infuriating.
Aggro Crab
Another Crab’s Treasure is a Soulslike. You’ll click in the right stick to lock on an enemy, use your right bumper to swing at them, left bumper is your block/parry, and you even get “magic” on the X button. Immediately it felt too imprecise to match the insane damage output enemies dish out. Even after being over halfway through the game and at a decently high level, I could still die to a single two-hit combo from most mobs. Mix in a camera that routinely gets stuck behind objects, making it impossible to see what you’re doing, and I was not enjoying myself.
I normally pride myself on finishing games on at least the normal difficulty, but this is one I had to make things easier. Using the game’s robust accessibility options, I lowered enemy damage output and immediately started having way more fun. There is a leveling tree tied to magenta-colored crystals. In that tree are two abilities that are a must if you want to get anywhere, Parry and the ability to put a shell on your weapon. Parrying is the only way to avoid taking either health or shell damage. Kril is a hermit crab, so he can make use of nearly anything in the environment to be a new shell. As the shell gets damaged a blue meter goes down and once it breaks you need a new shell ASAP.
To deal proper damage to mobs you’ll also need to unlock the ability for a charged attack to impale a shell on your weapon, this literally doubles damage output and I felt like an idiot for not unlocking it sooner. Spoilers, but I was at a 5 out of 10 in my head for the game until I unlocked these two abilities and lowered the enemy damage output. Once I did those three things I went from hating my time to legitimately loving it. For those times you are extra frustrated you can give Kril a gun on his back that has unlimited ammo, and one shot kills everything in the game, brilliant.
The game’s camera issues lessened greatly as I got into the later levels. In the early ones, especially in the Duchess’ cardboard castle, it would get stuck behind walls in the cramped spaces. Most of the later levels are larger arenas and it things worked just fine. The B button is a powerful dodge, full of delicious invincibility frames, and A jumps. There is a decent amount of platforming in the game, and it’s passable. I would also recommend turning on the “don’t lose health if you fall into a pit” accessibility option as well, to keep frustration down. Finally, Krill uses Heartkelps as his flask equivalent and you’ll press Up on the d-pad to heal.
Crabbro Agg
Xbox code wasn’t available before launch so I did my playthrough on PC. The game looks ok, not ugly and not beautiful. Most of it takes place under da sea and they smartly keep the particulate and bubbles to a minimum so that you can see what is going on. It’s not a particularly demanding title from a specs standpoint, so I would hope that it runs well on console. As I haven’t had it you’ll want to double-check at launch with those who have, though Another Crab’s Treasure is launching Day One into Xbox Game Pass so there’s little harm in giving it a download to find out yourself.
The game’s music is fantastic. It’s a smooth mix of jazzy pianos and light melodies that had me bopping during combat and relaxed during exploration. Bug-wise I ran into a few issues with getting stuck in the environment. The game has a built-in solution where it will just plop you straight up if you can’t move for a few seconds, but it doesn’t always work quickly. At one point I was stuck in between two rocks for three minutes before I finally glitched through them and was free.
Wrapping Things Up
Another Crab’s Treasure is a balls-hard Soulslike that was one of the most frustrating experiences of my reviewing career until I gave in and used its game-saving accessibility options. Once the difficulty was better balanced the game’s humor and heart were able to shine through.
Another Crab's Treasure
Played on
PC
PROS
- Some fun boss fights
- Humor
CONS
- Too difficult by default
- Imprecise platforming
Looks like it’ll be enjoyable for me (if only after enabling Nick-mode).
Nick mode = big gun and no cutscenes?
Those accessibility options are super welcome. Fuck any game becoming unnecessarily frustrating and unfair.
Only thinking about the less npc damage and more character damage. I do love story so cutscenes are fine, provided they dont pre-emptively take control away from you and go on for hours at a time like certain franchises do.
I just finished this game yesterday, and I had a ton of fun with it. I am not great at “souls like” games, so the ability to tweak those accessibility options was very welcome and kept me enjoying the game clear through the end.
I just finished it too. I like it, it is great to see someone making an easier/more accessible souls like. Thoroughly enjoyable for the most part.