When you consider what the crab has come to represent in terms of popular culture and online discourse, it’s actually quite hard to take a game about crabs too seriously, you know?! In fact, I’d wager that I’m not alone in initially dismissing Crab Champions as a joke game, something akin to Goat Simulator.
However, first impressions can often be deceiving, and after familiarising myself with this pincer-filled shooter just before and then after the recent Elemental Update, I’ve come to the conclusion that Crab Champions is a third-person shooter that has something serious to say.
What is Crab Champions, then?
Developed by Noisestorm, a multi-talented musician and game dev, Crab Champions is a third-person shooter about blowing up crabs, limpets, and giant fire-breathing ants. If that sounds a bit absurd that’s because it is, but it absolutely works. This chaotic run-based shooter is full of clever design decisions and it’s serious about all the right gameplay staples.
The game’s smart design ensures a replayable experience that I found rewarding every time I picked up the controller. It’s a straightforward run-based affair where you get upgrades after every round and these upgrades make you stronger for the next battle. That might mean more powerful bullets in the gun, or a bigger health bar, or more damage from explosive enemies.
Each round is a quick burst of action, and what I think I most liked about Crab Champions is that it wastes none of your time; rounds are short and a full run doesn’t overstay its welcome. Once you’ve completed your objective, the round simply stops. You get a chest (or two) to open, grab your rewards, and then you’re back in the action for more beach-side shenanigans.
Getting the essentials right
Getting a new upgrade every couple of minutes is great because you constantly feel like you’re evolving. As regular readers will know, this isn’t an exceptional or unusual setup, but I feel like the cadence of the upgrades is balanced just right here, especially during the early game when you’re relatively underpowered and eager to improve.
Your little crab is also a lot of fun to control, which I think is another big part of the game’s charm. You scuttle around at speed, you can double jump, strafing feels really good, dashing is dynamic, and overall it feels like you’re in the total control.
There’s also a decent shooter underneath the bright and breezy outer shell. Your crabby companion can wield pistols and shotguns from the get-go, and there are more exotic options to unlock through play including miniguns, sniper rifles, and the new ice staff.
It’s elemental, my dear crustacean
The new update brings a bunch of content to the party, including a brand new biome, both new and revised levels set in existing biomes, several new enemy types, weapons, abilities, and more.
There is loads of detail in the full patch notes on Steam, including notes on a raft of balance changes and minor gameplay updates. As for the headline additions, I’ve dropped a list of all the new content below.
What I can’t do is comment too much on how the game was before the recent changes and compare that to its current state, as I’ve only been playing the game since this weekend. So far that has given me enough time to get to grips with the basics and then start on my journey to unlocking all the weapons and abilities.
What I can do is comment on the run variety, which is pleasingly deep and, based on the roadmap ahead, is only going to get deeper. There is so much content here with tons to unlock, secrets to discover, and plenty of nuanced mechanics to master.
Pinch me, I’m dreaming
On top of the solo mode, there’s the option to play multiplayer online, which will please those of you with friends. There are also additional challenge modes to try beyond the main game. The arcade mode, for example, gives you an undiluted opportunity to practice before your next full run, for those of you who want to really sharpen their claws.
Finally, a word on the soundtrack. I’m not really into dance music, however, the soundtrack is full of toe-tapping beats that ease you into the high octane mindset that the gameplay requires. In fact, the whole audio-visual experience is solid across the board with bold environmental design, smooth animations, and great visual feedback during combat that lets you know what is going on around you.
There is a bunch of potential for replayability here, that much is clear. Crab Champions might have been born from a meme (Crab Rave) but it most certainly isn’t a joke. On the contrary, this third-person action-roguelite manages to be as fun as it is serious. Through measured design choices and the careful implementation of genre staples, Noisestorm has crafted an unexpected treasure that still has room to grow.
Crab Champions is out now in Early Access on PC Steam and I played the game via access provided by the developer, so thank you for that!
Crab Champions Elemental Update notes by Noisestorm
- Turrets have been reworked, all turret spawning turret perks have been moved to Ability mods in order to give you agency over when and where to spawn them as in the previous system they often spawned outside the map bounds or far away. Turrets now lose health over time but there are ways to extend their lifetime with perks and create infinite turret builds!
- Added new infinite shop pedestal type: one can be found on every reroll and the loot doesn’t despawn when purchasing, allowing you to invest heavily in one particular piece of loot
- Added new enemy: Hornet
- Added new enemy: Elite Hornet
- Added new enemy: Hammer Crab
- Added new enemy: Elite Ramming Grub
- Grubs lacked identity so have been reworked to have a ram attack and have been merged with mini grubs
- Added new island type: Harvest
- Added 1 new Tropical island
- Added 2 new Arctic islands
- Added 4 new Desert islands and reworked some of the least fun ones
- Added 1 new Volcanic island and improved some of the least fun / most cramped existing ones
- Added unique shop islands for each biome
- Added 5 new songs
- Added Tony snoring sounds
- Reworked Ice: removed max stack limit, enemies now take all stacks as damage when thawing and thawing now automatically happens a short time after freezing
- Added 23 new achievements: Abilities and Melee Weapons can now earn medals just like Weapons can
- Added new inventory category: Melee Mods
- The following Perks have been moved to be Melee Mods: Vampire, Big Claws, Sharp Claws, Iron Claws, Blender, Ice Claws, Fire Claws, Brawler
- Added new Melee Mods: Lightning Claws and Poison Claws
- Added new weapon mod: Pumpkin Shot: Chance to lob explosive pumpkins along with your shots
- Added new ability mod: Bounce Explosion: Abilities gain bounces and explode on each bounce
- Added new ability mod: Heat Sink: Ability cooldowns reduced
- Added new ability mod: Landmine Explosion: Abilities spawn landmines when exploding
- Landmine base damage increased from 33 to 75 (as it is affected by damage falloff)
- Added new perk: Lingering Fumes: Enemies apply existing poison stacks to nearby enemies when eliminated
- Added new perk: Poisonous Armor: Poison nearby enemies when breaking enemy armor
- Added new perk: Health Is Power: Damage increased by 1% for every 50 health you have
- Added new perk: Speed Is Power: Damage increased by 1% for every bonus movement speed % you have
- Added new perk: Silver Lining: Damage increased each time you take damage
- Added new perk: Lightning Dash: Dashing shocks and knocks back nearby enemies
- Added new relic: Turbo Ring: Fire rate increased by 2% after clearing each island
- Added new relic: Ring Of Healthy Turrets: Turret health increased by 400%
- Added new relic: Twin Ring: All turrets spawn in pairs
- Added new greed relic: Ring Of Tankiness: Max health hugely increased but movement speed heavily reduced
- Added new relic: Ring Of Wisdom: Critical hit chance increased by 1% after clearing each island
- Added new challenge modifier: Icy Enemies: All enemy attacks freeze you
- Added new challenge modifier: Twinned Enemies: Enemies spawn in pairs
- Added new challenge modifier: Healing Enemies: Enemies heal nearby enemies when eliminated
- Added new challenge modifier: Landmine Rain: Landmines rain down from the sky at random
- Many new VFX and sounds added to replace placeholder content
- The number of physics crowns in the lobby now match the wins of the hosting player
- Added 3 new skins: Chrome, Vampire and Heat
- Greatly reduced bandwidth when there is a lot going on in multiplayer games by combining damage events that happen in a short space of time together. This has the side effect of crits behaving slightly differently- if you land a shotgun blast on an enemy all at the same time, critical hits will be rolled on the total damage dealt, not per pellet. With this change you should no longer get kicked from a game due to too much going on. Also cases where you go down to 1 FPS due to a lot happening at once should be much rarer
- Enemies get knocked around less in general: I’ve made many tweaks here but in general you’ll notice enemies feel more “solid” and in place, allowing for more consistent and focused damage to be dealt to groups of enemies especially with abilities
- Perks like Juggernaut or Up The Ante now affect Elite and Boss islands- each 100% extra enemies reached spawns an extra boss / elite
- Hazard damage areas (fire, ice, poison) now only apply their effects when actually landed on the ground and stepping in them to prevent less cases where damage is taken in mid air which could often feel cheap. Lightning damage areas function the same for now as they don’t deal damage and just slow you down
- AOE explosions now have damage falloff to deepen the combat feel. Previously if an enemy was even slightly touching the outer radius of an explosion, they’d receive full damage so there was no real incentive to aim your abilities- it’s now much more satisfying to line up and directly hit enemies with your grenade and other explosions. This in turn also makes incoming damage from enemies more fair- if you dodge an enemy attack but are very slightly still in the hitbox, you’ll receive far less damage than before. The only AOE damage type that does not get affected by this falloff is melee as it felt bad to lose damage if not right next to an enemy
- Salvaging pickups now always gives 50% of the pickup cost even when the Expensive Shops modifier is active (previously it only gave 33% of the value)
- Shop prices on all difficulties are now closer (as on Easy they were cheaper than intended and on Ultra Chaos they were a bit too expensive)
- Shop prices are 5% cheaper per player in multiplayer (previously they were 20% more expensive per player, now are 15% more expensive per player)
- Added new “Arcanifying” enhancement (I will find a better name for this later)
- Added new “Targeting” enhancement (works like Targeting shot but for enhanced projectiles)
- Added rarities to Enhancements and removed Spiraling and Chaotic enhancements as they were pretty much debuffs
- Improved enhancement filtering to make it impossible to roll freezing on Fireball Shot or homing on Homing Shot for example
- Enhancement Totem price decreased and is 50% less likely to explode on use
- Valued Customer now works when using the Enhancement Totem
