Another Crab's Treasure

Kril’ling time. 

Despite not being a huge fan of the Soulslike genre, I sure do play a lot of them. However, I tend to enjoy those that either feature functional co-op like Lords of the Fallen, a unique health replenishment system like The Surge II, or the recruitment of capable allies such as the Mimic Tear in Elden Ring. However, sometimes, a neat idea or aesthetic can charm me into dangerous waters, unfortunately, for as charming as Another Crab's Treasure can be on the surface, it sadly misses the mark.

Despite the colorful cartoonish crab in our protagonist, Kril, the world is largely out to get him. His home is snatched away in the opening few minutes, a shell that is taken against his will and held hostage unless he pays his newly accrued taxes, to a ruler that you'll meet fairly early on. While the story continues well past this meeting and beyond, the story nonetheless is built around Kril’s need to earn back his shell. To do this, Kril will slice, dice, dodge, parry, and load up on a wealth of unique shell-replacements, such as cans, rubber duckies, kitchen scrubbers, shot glasses, and banana peels, each sporting unique stats, abilities, and more. While you're sporting an upgradable fork, these shells are your main equipment piece, apart from cosmetics you'll discover that dress Kril up as an intern worker, Dark Souls character, and more.

What is immediately apparent is a lot of funny and endearing dialogue as well as a host of well-placed nods to the world above. This studio certainly knows how to write witty and charming banter, even around a story that is more or less pretty barren. I have to give it credit; however, as the game does dive into some darker themes, as well as a moment where Kril speaks his mind about the whole adventure that was extremely well handled. As someone who has felt taken advantage of throughout the years, this particular moment hit home. While there are several aspects of this game I find lacking, this is not one of them. 

The world is also populated with a ton of garbage, including certain bosses and characters using said trash for armor or, for example, a boss that uses a pair of chopsticks as a katana. Elsewhere, one of the more involved NPCs has a discarded orange peel as her curly hair and a silica package as her dress. These little touches are some of the best ideas the game has and it is loaded with them. I will say that despite these neat little details, food items don't suffer from the effects of being submerged in water, such as pizza crusts looking like they just came fresh off a slice.

During the roughly 15-20 hour adventure, you'll meet a few recurring characters as you encounter Carcinia, a large city that features a few shops you'll frequent. And just as the story begins to lose its focus, you'll be presented with a large cereal box that has floated down from the surface, missing sections that apparently will lead you to treasure. Tracking down these pieces becomes your objective for a while, and it's here where you'll meet the central foil of Another Crab's Treasure, Roland, even if they barely do anything with him for quite a while. However, when they do, it's a pretty interesting moment that caught me off guard.

While the initial few hours and change did well to introduce me to its world, and its characters, and giving me a clear indication of what to do, who to kill, and how to progress my capabilities, I ended up enjoying Another Crab's Treasure less as time went on. This is largely due to a level design that feels haphazard, messy, and largely unfocused. You'll constantly get lost, miss paths that are the only way forward, and often be unsure just exactly what you're meant to do. At least, this is the impression I got, so your mileage may vary. I’ll also state that while there is a map, you are only allowed to view your immediate surroundings. You cannot pan around and find areas you may need to go, you can only view a cropped section of what is nearby,

While games like Elden Ring left a lot of your destination up to you in the same way, its world rewarded your off-the-beaten-path exploration with so much to take in. The amount of new locations you'd find; caves, dungeons, settlements, and enemy camps, was awe-inspiring. Sadly, I never felt that here and I didn't find anything meaningful when I did just pick a direction and go. Granted, this is a very different scale and budget than Fromsoft’s masterpiece, but it does present a very large world to explore, it just doesn't offer much reason to take it in. Sure, you'll find a couple of outfits, and materials to upgrade your fork, but that's about it. I never found new off-the-beaten-path locations or experiences, things that make large worlds enticing to discover as you’ve felt like you’ve encountered something truly unique and memorable. 

A lot of that comes down to a very limited range of what you CAN explore. You'll often feel you can jump down to a lower platform, and then find that you have no way back up, forcing you to kill yourself to respawn back at a mystical shell, this game's overall campfire. The number of times I would climb a series of platforms that went nowhere was endless. This is also on top of a camera that made exploring smaller structures of things like milk cartons or styrofoam castles, for example, a mess as it would never cooperate and other things would obfuscate my view constantly. And should you fight anything atop these small platforms, well, you'd find yourself either falling to your death or surviving and then being back at square one, having to trek all the way back up there. It's these moments that happen frequently and almost made me just stop playing. In typical fashion, you also have shortcuts, but these rarely felt designed in a way where they felt like anything more than just getting you back to a previous shell to recoup your health and upgrade Kril. 

This is on top of several glitches that did everything to sour my time here. During the entire last arc, my targeting would only selectively work. I could swing my weapon with no issue, but it was a crapshoot (crabshoot?) if my lock-in would work and not recenter my camera instead. I also never had L3 work for sprint even once, forcing me to use B. Other issues pertained to a boss getting stuck in the floor, to me falling through the environment about a half dozen times, or landing on a platform and being caught in a weird animation as if I was falling. I also had a few instances of the game going to a weird red screen whenever I killed a very specific enemy for the first time. That said, the developer is aware of this and is expected to have a fix soon. Considering this happened every single time I killed one of these enemies, I’m surprised it was not discovered sooner. 

Combat brings with it some typical mainstays. You can block attacks which has you hide in your shell, to simply dodge out of the way instead, especially as you’ll want to prevent your shell from taking damage. That said, you’ll also be able to parry attacks by timing your block just right. While combat is pretty simple at the start, you’ll eventually purchase upgrades such as a plunging attack from above, a riposte attack, to even attaching a possible shell to the tip of your fork, turning it into a hammer. 

The upgrades and additional skills you can add use a crystal currency you’ll find pretty much everywhere. This allows you to work towards three builds. However, by the time you reach the credits, you’ll easily have the entire board filled out. Way of the Hermit, Predator, and True Crab are your three routes, each containing their own skills, such as said plunge attack and creating a hammer out of an unused shell. Additional skills are taking advantage of an overturned enemy, to becoming invisible after your current shell is broken. 

Combat itself with the fork is the same as any normal Souls game with the same basic idea behind everything you have available. Where Another Crab’s Treasure shifts things around is that your shells are your basic ability equips. Each shell has its own unique spell, such as turning Kril into a mage with powerful magic blasts with the bubbles from a soda can to absorbing nutrients from a Yogurt container to slowly replenish health. There are 69 shells to collect that range from boxing gloves to toilet paper, a snowglobe, a party hat, to even the husk of a dead crab, that allows you to abandon your shell and cause enemies to attack it instead for a brief period of time. 

Personally, I found the combat, even with these shell spells to feel very basic and that may come down to the fork being your only weapon. The shells are interesting, especially with spells that have you spinning around like a top, racing forward to slam into your foe, or a host of glass shards that attack your enemy, but since the general approach to combat is just the fork, it can feel limiting, despite being able to level it up to do more damage. And lastly, while you do have special attacks called Adaptations, which can fire projectiles and or attack with giant claw, there are not many of these and I found their use to be situational, especially as their use can be limited. 

Kril too can be leveled up, placing points into Vitality, Resistance, Attack, and MSG, which powers your special Umami attacks, which are the spells that come forth from your shell. You’ll level up Kril by spending a trash currency called microplastics that can also be used to purchase and level up Stowaways, which are little friends that allow you to gain all sorts of benefits. These range from barnacles that increase your defense, fruit stickers that increase microplastic rewards, and mussels that boost your attack. Stowaways have a slot amount they use and you can upgrade how many slots they occupy. For example, some Stowaways have a use cost of 3, and others less or more. So, if you have only 5 slots available, then you can equip a 3 and a 2 to use what you have available.  

Another Crab’s Treasure has a decent amount of voice acting, but sadly, not everything is spoken. It cuts to the typical Animal Crossing/Sims gibberish, despite having paid actors hired to bring these characters to life. Some characters don’t even get a voice attached to them until the final few hours, which left me puzzled as to who was even talking for a brief moment. It’s a shame since the voice work here is pretty good. 

I went into Another Crab’s Treasure expecting it to be a solid adventure, especially considering the 8’s and higher across most of the review scores out there. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t into what the game offered after a few hours, leaving me with a world I didn’t want to explore, and one that felt like a chore to even navigate. While it has some decent accessibility options, and even a gun to one-shot anything in the game, the standard approach here is nonetheless pretty challenging, especially given its aesthetic. I know many will likely look past some of the issues I personally had and enjoy their time here, but I simply found the game to lack polish, focus, and a sense of enjoyment that I really did want from it. 

Developer - Aggro Crab.
Publisher - Aggro Crab.
Released - April 25th, 2024.
Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PS5, Switch, PC.
Rated - (T) - Blood, Violence, Use of Tobacco, Language, Crude Humor.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X.
Review Access - Another Crab’s Treasure was downloaded and reviewed off Xbox Game Pass.