Another Crab’s Treasure Review: A Joke Game With Surprising Depth
Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Pros
- Surprisingly deep combat
- Longer than you may expect
- Genuinely very funny
- Impactful story
Cons
- Loadout variety suffers late-game
- Occasional bugs can frustrate
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence
Review code provided by the publisher.
At first glance, Another Crab’s Treasure appears to be a parody game that has gotten a little out of hand. The sort of April Fools joke indie devs like to prototype and then accidentally carry through to release on the strength of social media engagement.
Indeed, developer Aggro Crab’s marketing strategy has been to play into this interpretation, just this year announcing on April 1 that its cutesy, cartoony soulslike would contain a menu toggle to deliver the full FromSoft experience: Giving hermit crab protagonist Kril a depressed lumbering animation, turning everything into a poison swamp, and adding the entirety of Anor Londo.
Another Crab's Treasure
Release Date: April 25, 2024
Digital Only
What awaits below the surface of Another Crab’s Treasure, however, is a remarkably deep experience. There is plenty of that light, parodical tone that sees mainstays of the Dark Souls format lampooned or adapted for the undersea setting. But there is also a highly customizable combat loadout, a veritable seafood buffet of varied enemies, and – most surprising of all – a meaningful story with well-weaved messages ranging from environmentalism to worker rights.
That story starts out simply enough, forcing an insular hermit crab out of his cozy rock pool into the nearby shallows after a loan shark (played by an enterprising shrimp wielding one of those fun shark-headed grabbers) steals his shell to settle Kril’s tax bill to the local duchy. A classic opening. But later its themes of environmentalism shine through as a mysterious, polluting goop begins turning the citizenry feral. Also the currency is microplastics.
Props littered around the seabed never fail to raise a chuckle.
©Restart / Aggro Crab
One of Another Crab’s Treasure’s most charming aspects is the inventive ways the ever-falling trash is integrated into seabed society. Trash is revered in the game’s main city hub, New Carcinia, and larger items like the twist clips from the end of bread loaves can be exchanged for microplastics. Other props dotted around and used as architecture include city roads made of infamously long CVS receipts, apartment blocks fashioned from milk cartons – and the little boat they serve sushi platters on serves as a boss fight arena.
As with most soulslike games, bosses are one of the combat highlights, forcing you to reckon with dodge and block timings, learning their attack patterns. Aiding you in these fights are a huge selection of shells to equip. Kril learns the mystical power of umami which allows him to use a special ability, depending on what piece of trash he has decided to affix to his butt. These range from restoring health at the expense of a shell’s shield durability, to launching a salvo of magic bubbles while dodging backwards.
Skills offer many passive boosts to your chosen playstyle.
©Restart / Aggro Crab
Not all shells have unique abilities, as some basic ones are shared between multiple shells, though they have different stats for durability, weight, and sometimes buffs for stats. These stats like attack (ATK) and magic-based umami (MSG, lol) can also be upgraded at the game’s version of campfires, for microplastics of course. Your equipment loadout is rounded out with Stowaways, a take on Hollow Knight’s trinket system allowing you up to three additional buffs depending on the number of available slots you have to fill and the cost of equipping a Stowaway.
The Ultimate Crab Loadout
- Dump all your stat points into ATK
- Equip the Shuttlecock shell (+4 ATK, Spin attack)
- Stowaways: Lamprey (HP steal on hit), ATK boosts, Shell RES
- Alteration: Octopus Tentacle (levelled up to HP steal on hit)
Now, just cast the tentacle alteration, begin your spin attack, and watch enemy HP disappear. The spin attack cannot be interrupted, gains Umami charges on each hit, and triggers the Octopus Tentacle with HP steal. Most enemies melt, and you rarely take enough damage to need to use your Kelp heal.
On paper all this affords you the opportunity to experiment with builds, combining a MSG-boosting shell with an umami-buffing Stowaway and assigning levels appropriately. However, I found MSG to be particularly underwhelming as a damage dealer, given your need to recharge umami pips through basic attacks and negating any long-range builds you might be trying. I also happened upon a build early on that trivialized combat to such a degree that I ended up not changing my loadout for roughly 75% of the game. Though that may just be my particular desire to min-max all gameplay, it was a little disheartening to happen upon rarer unique shells even in the late-game that were no match for a shuttlecock I bought in my first shopping trip.
Disappointing combat options aside, the variety of situations in which you are asked to fight still provide the depth that Souls-likers will appreciate. These range from fiddly ledge brawls in tight spaces that restrict your dodge roll options, to open battles against gigantic enemies with terrifying ranged attacks. Often you’ll find your best option is to just run past enemies to secure safety, a mark of a good Anor Londo love letter. Harkening back to that April Fools joke, Another Crab’s Treasure actually does have a wild number of poison swamps to fight through as well, as they provide a convenient reason to implement the game’s true evolution over its source material: platforming.
The environmentalism aspect of Another Crab's Treasure leads to some striking vistas.
©Restart / Aggro Crab
A double-jump, glide, and grappling hook mean you can get pretty fancy in the air, though there is really only one truly challenging platforming section in the late-game. The action itself feels a little floaty, though what else would you expect from underwater aquabatics? Platforming relies fairly heavily on momentum, and Kril can actually curl into his shell to gain rolling superspeed down hills, though it is only built into platforming sections a couple of times. Some slightly iffy collision detection around props and uneven flooring can make movement feel stilted at times, which on more than one occasion led to my death in battle, but generally the purpose-built platforming provides a nice linear way to explore and unlock larger open areas.
Another Crab’s Treasure will provide surprising depth for those lured in by its cartoonish and comedic premise, and it manages to balance both tones well despite occasional dissonance. Much like its combat, accessibility options provide you with a huge array of tools to customize gameplay difficulty to your liking, even going so far as to provide Kril with a gun that one-shots any enemy. So even if the complexity you discover after just turning up for the funny crab game threatens to pull you out of your depth, anyone can still experience the joys of this undersea adventure.
Another Crab's Treasure
Release Date: April 25, 2024
Digital Only