My expertise with One other Crab’s Treasure will be summed up with the next commentary: after 20 hours adventuring the ocean ground, the sport crashed throughout the last cutscene.

A refreshing tackle the soulslike style, One other Crab’s Treasure is the most recent recreation from Seattle-based developer Aggro Crab, makers of different indie hits Going Beneath and Subway Midnight. And whereas the sport markets itself closely as an try and be the cute soulslike, at its core it is an action-platformer with some very darkish and existential themes. At occasions actually enjoyable and typically actually irritating, One other Crab’s Treasure is a memorable entry-level souls-like that’s, sadly, plagued with efficiency points.

One other Crab’s Treasure is a cute — however bleak — undersea journey

Credit score: Aggro Crab

Set below the ocean, the sport’s hero is Kril, a hermit crab who spent most of his life topside till sooner or later when his shell will get repoed by a mortgage shark. Kril’s journey takes him into the ocean, sporting trash as safety, on a quest to get his shell again. Throughout this mission, he discovers that the ocean under him is polluted by trash and is being slowly corrupted by its gunk — which means whether or not he likes it or not, he may be the one one who can put it aside.

In contrast to some video games I’ve reviewed like Harold Halibut, which use delicate critiques of late-stage capitalism as set dressing for his or her tales, One other Crab’s Treasure is a brutal satire that is not afraid to feed gamers a message loud and clear: how we reside really fucking sucks. All through the story, Kril shortly learns the undersea society he is been avoiding lives and breathes the trash and air pollution his fellow surface-dwellers produce. The sport’s hub metropolis, New Carcinia, runs on trash, with all items and providers utilizing microplastics as its foreign money.

Within the metropolis, you will shortly discover the clear wealth disparity between the residents within the higher and decrease ranges. Within the Higher Crust, the roads are CVS receipts, with homes made out of coral and costly bottles of whiskey. Down under, there is a stark lack of any sort of street together with the constructing constructed from wonky bins of cardboard. Although it is all junk, speaking with city-goers will make it apparent that to them, there is a distinction between good trash and unhealthy trash.

All of us lose within the trash financial system.
Credit score: Aggro Crab

It is laborious to take plenty of Higher Crusters severely after they flex their clothes to you — made out of silica gel packets and discarded orange peels — whereas the decrease metropolis inhabitants put on literal rubbish luggage as attire. It is all one large, unified trash idea, and it is a form of delicate, however at occasions very express, type of environmental storytelling that’s constructed into the main points.

The creatures that inhabit New Carcinia and the ocean round them are memorable if a bit one be aware. Firth is a blue hermit crab who’s an apparent riff on annoying libertarian tech bros; Neema is a motherly, down-to-earth crab who runs the dive bar together with her two daughters within the poor a part of city and lives simply sooner or later at a time; Chitan is a noble lobster knight who seeks for the ability to avoid wasting the ocean.

Aggro Crab’s cute soulslike is unabashedly a critique of how man-made local weather change and air pollution are destroying our planet. It is refreshing to see a developer take an precise stand for a problem reasonably than simply dance round it hoping to not make anybody upset. Regardless of all of the attraction and coloration, One other Crab’s Treasure grapples with a type of existential dread that is simply as gloomy as every other soulslike with out being a grimdark medieval European fantasy.

One other Crab’s Treasure is a Soulslike at its core

You’ll be able to unlock numerous fight abilties like a air-dodge or the power to make hammers out of shells.
Credit score: Aggro Crab

Like many different style imitators, One other Crab’s Treasure‘s fight is of the dodging, rolling, and slashing selection. Nevertheless, it isn’t as deep as Darkish Souls or Lies of P, as an alternative, it is form of like Sekiro and Fallen Order — pretty static fight that meets you at your degree and asks you to grasp what’s been handed to you. What makes Crab’s Treasure‘s fight stand out is the power to, at any time, swap between shells crammed to the brim with distinctive magical skills known as “umami.”

There’s a heavy emphasis on shells in fight, as they function each your armor and entry to your umami skills. Similar to all the pieces else within the ocean, these shells are on a regular basis human junk that is been thrown out — from tennis balls, springs, soda cans, to even boxing gloves. Most shells have their very own distinctive skills that riff off their widespread use by people. Soda cans can launch a magical blast of fizz; sporting fuses will protect your armor in electrical energy that can shock opponents that assault you; and sporting a shot glass or salt shaker can flip you into a pointy ball of glass.

Alongside together with your “umami” skills, you possibly can connect stowaways to your shell. These are items of junk and small animals that provide you with enhanced skills in fight. Examples embrace a sea star that grants you additional well being, or a rubber band that makes you proof against electrical assaults.

Oh barnacles.
Credit score: Aggro Crab

The fight isn’t that arduous in comparison with Darkish Souls, but it surely’s not with out its challenges. After reaching the second or third main space of the sport there is a noticeable lack of enemy selection. You will get totally different enemies to struggle, however they principally all exist throughout the identical archetypes — besides now they do extra injury. Moreover, there’s a deliberateness to the fight meant to punish button mashers. This contains enter lag and a scarcity of I-frames when dodging. Nevertheless it’s not all the time clear the place intentional problem ends, and efficiency points (I am going to get to these in a minute) start. I am unable to inform, as an example, if the sport does not acknowledge that I am attempting to heal myself, or if I am timing the command incorrect or one thing.

As if to try to be honest to the participant in mild of the added challenges, sure gameplay components make issues a lot simpler too. Enemies telegraph their strikes to an annoying extent. And if in some way fight remains to be providing you with hassle, the sport has accessibility options that may negate injury, add additional I-frames, and even provide you with a gun that insta-kills enemies (that isn’t a joke, I swear to God).

At its coronary heart although, One other Crab’s Treasure appears like a religious incarnation of traditional platformers like Jak and Daxter, as there’s a degree of verticality you’ll not see in every other soulslike. As you journey round, you possibly can climb on fallen nets, entry excessive areas utilizing a fishing hook, and make lengthy gaps by urgent and holding X, which is able to allow you to drift by the water. It is an invigorating mechanic for a souls-like, though at occasions it is method too irritating – particularly if, like me, you’ve fats fingers and when you’re floating in direction of a niche you unintentionally press the dodge button and now you’ve got air-rolled into the abyss under.

One other Crab’s Treasure is buggy

As a lot as I really like the sport’s story and characters, it is buggy. The assessment copy given to me by Aggro Crab and Popagenda was performed on PlayStation 5, which has had efficiency problems with late with video games like Dragon’s Dogma 2. There have been a number of cases the place the sport would crash, principally from loading up new areas throughout the map.

As the sport says, you are gonna die loads, but it surely will not all the time be your fault.
Credit score: Aggro Crab

Throughout fight, Kril would mysteriously launch into the air after doing — or being hit by — sure strikes. Different occasions had Kril getting caught on the earth’s geometry, to the purpose the place I had to enter the menu and use the “die immediately” possibility so I may reset. There was an occasion in grappling over a lake of gunk that induced the sport to set off the falling demise animation as a result of Kril’s hitbox would barely glide over the gunk.

Much more annoying, when nearing the tip, I inadvertently warped into the ultimate space of the sport after glitching by the ground.

Some video games have taken benefit of the PS5’s SSD to do issues like conceal their loading screens through transitional gameplay mechanics, comparable to taking an elevator, or by making the character navigate by a slim crevice a-la Bloodborne or God of Struggle. Whereas One other Crab’s Treasure makes an attempt this, it is fairly apparent {that a} cutscene or new space is being booted up as a result of the sport will freeze and stutter till it is loaded.

Though discovering shortcuts is a giant element of the style, soulslikes have lengthy stretches of gameplay in-between areas the place it can save you your progress — so think about the sensation that each one your laborious work will be wiped at any second as a result of the sport typically crashes attempting to load up a brand new space. And as I mentioned on the high of the assessment, throughout the recreation’s last cutscene, it crashed — which compelled me to struggle the ultimate boss once more simply so I may watch the final half of the ending.

It is an added layer of problem that does not add any enjoyable, and as an alternative form of appears like a hostage scenario.

Is One other Crab’s Treasure price it?

Cowboy Crab.
Credit score: Aggro Crab

For just below $30, One other Crab’s Treasure is a superb, if a bit fundamental, soulslike for anybody trying to get into the style. From its lovely environments to its solid of charming, cute characters, the sport’s story is intelligent, witty, and a biting reminder that we reside in neighborhood with one another and never for ourselves.

Nevertheless, I would hesitate to suggest this immediately until the sport will get a hearty day-one patch to shore up its myriad efficiency points on PS5. Exterior of these complaints, Aggro Crab’s cute soulslike is, to date, top-of-the-line video games I’ve performed this 12 months.