skybridge

Rated Another Crab's Treasure 9/10

Another Crab’s Treasure is probably the most cheerful-looking soulslike I could have picked for my first introduction to the genre. The game is absolutely bursting with vivid, bright colors and has this bizarre underwater environment that at times feels like Bikini Bottom after everyone got really into Dark Souls. And honestly, I kind of love the contrast. You have this colorful, goofy world full of crabs, trash and ridiculous enemies, while the game underneath it all is purposefully hard and very much wants you to die repeatedly. It creates a surprisingly fun combination where the game looks like it should be a relaxing afternoon at the beach, and then something enormous comes along and beats the crap out of you.

This was actually my first soulslike, so I don't have much of a reference point for comparing it to other similar games. What I can say is that it definitely sold me on the idea. The difficulty is obviously a big part of the experience, but I never felt like the game was trying to make things difficult just for the sake of being miserable. There are also assist options that let you adjust the experience if you really want to. I particularly appreciated having that escape hatch available, because sometimes I want to experience the challenge and sometimes I would rather experience what it's like to give Kril a gun and solve my problems with extremely questionable amounts of violence. That became particularly valuable when, at one point, I finally killed a boss, only for the game to crash before I reached a save point. Normally, that is the sort of thing that makes me want to launch the Switch into the ocean (to, perhaps, become a shell for another crab). Instead, I turned on the assist option that gives Kril a gun and gleefully shot that boss's ass. For perhaps the first time in my gaming life, a game crashing actually resulted in me feeling better about the game.

The story is another thing I really enjoyed. On the surface, it is wonderfully low-stakes: you're a crab trying to get his shell back. That's it. Well, technically there's considerably more going on, but I really like how that simple premise is paired with heavier themes around inequality, abuse of power and the generally shitty behavior of corporations. The game manages to talk about those things without completely losing its sense of humor, and the little jokes and absurd situations fit the world really well. There's something funny about dealing with serious societal problems when you're a tiny crab wearing a piece of trash as armor.

On Switch 2, the performance was OK in general, but definitely not great. Most of the time it wasn't enough to bother me too much, but there was one major exception: The Unfathom. This late-game area is intentionally extremely dark, with visibility limited to your immediate surroundings and various light sources. Unfortunately, the frame-rate instability there really got in the way of the experience for me. And because The Unfathom is already one of the more difficult areas of the game, having performance issues on top of trying to navigate and fight in near-total darkness made the whole thing considerably more frustrating than it needed to be. It's one thing for the game to kill me; it's another thing for the game to drop frames while doing it.

Overall, Another Crab's Treasure was a surprisingly good introduction to the soulslike genre for me. The colorful underwater world, goofy humor and ridiculous premise make it approachable, while the challenging combat gives the game some real teeth underneath all the silliness. I especially liked that it could take its themes seriously without taking itself too seriously. The Switch 2 version isn't technically perfect, particularly in The Unfathom, but that didn't take away from the fact that I had a genuinely good time with it. And if this is what a soulslike can be then I understand the appeal now.