Review: Another Crab’s Treasure is a pearl for the capitalist pigs

How else do you explain that developer Aggro Crab’s second game is a soulslike, but at the same time reminiscent of the heyday of the PlayStation 2? And then it also provides strong criticism of our capitalist way of life. My passion for everything that resembles Dark Souls may be known, but I also have a soft spot for these types of 3D platformers. A colorful world, some humor if you want it to work and preferably a funny main character who can immediately start working as a mascot. What more could a person want, besides security of existence?

Antihero

In Another Crab’s Treasure you play as Kril, a hermit crab who leads a hermit’s life. He doesn’t do much, but that means nothing happens to him. He can’t make it more fun, but he can make it safer. Until one day his peace is disturbed by a shady ‘loan shark’ who comes to collect taxes. Krill has no valid means of payment and so the shell it lives in is confiscated. With great reluctance he sets out to earn his house back.

Kril is a kind of anti-hero in that sense. He is anti-adventure, anti-social and, above all, anti-capitalist. In Another Crab’s Treasure, an entire economic system has been set up around the waste that we as humans dump into the sea. One man’s trash, etc… Our empty packaging forms the building blocks for this underwater world. The area is littered with straws, receipts, lighters, soda cans and other junk. The message may be clear – we are making a mess – but it has become a bit muddied on the way to the bottom of the ocean.

Too good to be junk

Most residents see all those dumped and discarded items as a blessing. Collecting this creates jobs and because waste has become de facto the means of payment, the economy receives a significant capital injection every week on the day that the above-water containers are put on the street. But even in this literal one trickle downeconomy, wealth is not distributed fairly. Where there is money to be made, sooner or later a billionaire will appear who will skim off all the profits and push his employees below the poverty line. In Another Crab’s Treasure the houses may be underwater, but they are still unaffordable.

If you’re looking for an uplifting message, Another Crab’s Treasure is the wrong place for you. That doesn’t mean there isn’t fun to be had. The subject is serious, but the dialogues and references to our self-destructive tendencies are written very funny. Moreover, what the developer wants to say is seamlessly intertwined with what you do as a player. Waste is part of the ecosystem, but also of the game systems. For example, the currency you earn when you defeat enemies is called ‘microplastics’. And the houses that serve as a kind of temporary home along the way are almost all disposable products from our world. In addition to empty cans, Kril also nest in broken tennis balls, badminton shuttles, rubber ducks or napkin dispensers.

In heart and souls

It results in a wonderfully cartoonish world that is reminiscent of Psychonauts, Ratchet & Clank or SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. And yet Another Crab’s Treasure is also a soulslike through and through. There’s plenty of platforming fun, but violence is always the solution in the end. Aggro Crab works quite neatly within the lines of the genre. You can block, parry or dodge attacks and there is even a stagger-meters like in Sekiro. Enemies hit hard and are quite aggressive, so you’re bound to get killed a few times before you learn to read their movements.

The combat system is well developed, but does not have much depth. The fact that it remains entertaining for a long time is because as a Kril you always have to look for another home. Every shell has advantages and disadvantages. An empty can of Spam will make you take a lot of hits, but it will make you move much slower. With a roll of toilet paper you can race through the environment like Sonic, but it hardly provides any protection. Every shell, no matter how strange and impractical it may be, comes with its own special move and plays slightly differently. If you get hit too often, this ‘shield’ will break and you will have to urgently look for a new rental home. Fortunately, there is no shortage of junk.

Platform issues

These types of game mechanics characterize Another Crab’s Treasure. It’s not necessarily brilliant, but there is a very clear idea behind it. As a result, both the message of the game and the combat system feel quite deep, even if it remains secretly on the surface. It is therefore a pity that the game is technically flawed. In the PlayStation 5 version, the image delay occurred several times to such an extent that it became almost unplayable for a few seconds. This only occurs in a handful of places, but it shouldn’t hinder your progress. The platforming also sometimes feels a bit too precise for how Kril is controlled.

In that sense too, it is a game that is reminiscent of those typical PS2 platformers, but with a big nod to Fromsoftware. For example, one of the areas is called The Sands Between and if you take the wrong turn at the beginning, you will come face to face with a ‘Tree Sentinel’. Except it’s secretly a lobster with a scroll saw. Yet the developers are also very cautiously raising their middle finger, because unlike an Elden Ring or Bloodborne, Another Crab’s Treasure does offer all kinds of accessibility options. You can set how much damage enemies do, how much time you have to parry, whether you lose your microplastics when you die, you name it. And if you still can’t figure it out, there’s even the option to give yourself a handgun. Because you can also find things like that at the bottom of the sea.

Another Crab’s Treasure is available for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. The PS5 version was tested for this review.