Another Crab’s Treasure review

Another Crab’s Treasure is one of the most deceptive games I’ve ever played – and I don’t mean that as a criticism. It’s a game that almost looks like it was made for the Nintendo Switch, a baby’s first Soulslike, a kid’s game to keep your little whipper-snappers happy. In fact, for the first half hour or so, it plays like that, too. And then you meet the first boss, immediately get mulched into a cracker topping, and realise exactly what you’re dealing with. Another Crab’s Treasure, ladies and gents, ain’t pissing about.

As Kril, an adorable little hermit crab, you’ll face horrors untold beneath the shimmering surface, but everything is so colourful and twee and blatantly tongue-in-cheek that you’ll often forget what genre you’re in and then, well, splat. When Kril’s shell is taken by a greedy loanshark, the resourceful little fella sets out to get it back. No lofty world-building or background story here, just a simple case of retrieving what’s his.

Snatching up a rusty fork as a rudimentary weapon, Kril uses odd items he finds to make new shells. Soft drink cans, teacups, salt-shakers, old tins, tennis balls – all these and many, many more mundane items can be used, each with different attributes. They also double as shields, allowing Kril to duck under them for perfect parries, which are used alongside his dodge move to stay out of harm’s way. Each of the 69 different shells has different abilities, stats, or durability, and while not every single one changes the game in a significant way, collecting them is part of the fun anyway.

Some do have specific skills though. One of the early examples remains pretty useful throughout, which is the drinks can’s ability to shoot a stream of bubbles, granting Kril a ranged attack. It’s not massively damaging, but adds another option in a scrape – and you’ll get in a lot of scrapes.

Make no mistake: this is a Soulslike through and through. It adds a kind of grapple move and removes stamina management in favour of shell durability, but the mechanics of dodging, counter-attacking, resting and levelling at set areas, and respawning enemies are staples of the genre that are all present here. Areas are open, and beg to be explored for new items and shells.

Microplastics form the main currency, and are dropped on death. During boss fights you won’t have to make corpse runs, though, as a generous checkpoint system allows you to launch right back into the fight – unless you want to go and grind up some XP and level up a little. Or, if you really want to, you can adjust the difficulty down with a number of Assist options that even go so far as to make you invulnerable. It’s nice to have these options, of course, but they do kind of circumvent the point.

Crucially though, Another Crab’s Treasure lacks the precision and weight of the genre’s exemplars. Combat movement is sometimes a little floaty, no pun intended, and the windows for parries and dodges are remarkably inconsistent at times, especially during boss encounters. Some of the shells break incredibly easily, too, which leaves you exposed. Fighting more than one or two enemies at a time is also frustrating, as many have wind-up attacks or can track your movements from off-screen, making it hard to dodge or pre-empt an attack.

For the most part, though, combat is a fairly satisfying affair, and really helps to counteract that colourful aesthetic with an atmosphere that can, occasionally, get pretty grim. Pollution is a major theme, with discarded human detritus making up most of the shells, and rubbish generally everywhere. Another major theme is oppression of the underclasses, with many of the bosses representing military factions or individuals of influence, while our erstwhile hero is a tiny little crab with barely a chance. He seems to know it, too, which makes the overall journey mildly depressing where it should be a story about overcoming adversity.

What Another Crab’s Treasure certainly is, though, is unique. There’s no other game in the genre quite like it, and it makes up for some of its imbalance with genuine pluck. There’s a ton of heart in it, so even when it’s a little frustrating or, perhaps, undercooked in places, you won’t mind. The world is colourful, the mechanics fun, and the challenge as steep or as smooth as you want it to be. It’s a game full of ideas, and one that deserves to put indie developer Aggro Crab well and truly on the map.