ANOTHER CRAB’S TREASURE REVIEW – THE DARK SOULS OF KIDS’ GAMES
For once a new Soulslike tries to do something different, with a clever new spin on the genre that mixes in platforming and cartoon logic.
For years now we’ve been baffled as to why every new Dark Souls clone copies not only the gameplay but also the setting and visuals. Surely the easiest way to distinguish yourself and avoid the most direct comparisons – that are almost certainly not going to go in your favour – is to at least make the games look different. But no, they’re always dark gothic fantasies and they always end up looking and playing worse than the original.
The best thing about Another Crab’s Treasure is that it realises what folly that is and instead offers a completely different setting: a cartoonish underwater world where crustaceans fight for the right to wear the most luxurious home on their back.
Another Crab’s Treasure not only doesn’t look like other Soulslikes but has gameplay elements that most others don’t either, with a lot more platforming than usual. And yet other aspects are much more familiar, including bonfire equivalents, collecting lost experience when you die, and ultra difficult boss battles. Well, maybe not ultra difficult…
Rather than the twee storytelling you might expect from the visuals, the game’s plot revolves around a hapless hermit crab called Kril having his shell repossessed by an actual loan shark. The story only gets darker from there, with pollution being an ongoing, and intractable, problem for the whole ocean and Kril suffering from crippling depression.
Not everything is as hopeless as that sounds but developer Aggro Crab has certainly tried to retain something of Dark Souls’ tone in the fact that evil has already triumphed before the game has even begun.
Kril’s first priority is finding a new shell, since without one he’s virtually defenceless. In keeping with the pollution theme, the shells you find are usually man-made. All of them have different functions too, from a rubber duck that can be thrown as a decoy, to a drinks can that allows you to shoot fizzy bubbles to a tennis ball that allows you to roll around at high speed and smash into enemies.
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2024-04-25T14:26:59Z dg43tfdfdgfd