I am one of those fellas who believe with adamant fervor that the World lacks Whimsy. Not that the whimsical is completely gone, withered and forgotten. But it is more and more rare, pushed aside or even dismissed when encountered. Words like 'Cringe' or less impactful descriptors of Corny and Childish conspire to thwart anything whimsical. And I say what's wrong with enjoying something quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing and amusing way? In short - I love things that can elicit this sensation in me and by Jove, the CRAB GOD for me is whimsy cracked up to eleven.
In this cute, vibrant game you'll take on the role of the titular CRAB GOD. A benevolent deity of mighty pincers, stalked eyes, and strong carapace who, unfortunately, withers. Its time is coming up, the cycles of death and rebirth wait for no one, even undersea deities! And so we embark on a quest to heal the underwater depths. How do we achieve such a lofty goal? By harnessing the industrious power of adorable crablings! With our guidance, they will regrow the reef, plant corals and plants aplenty, fight off scavengers, and fuel the growth of the Holy Egg with food and fervor. To do so we will assign them crucial roles - gardeners, hunters, scavengers, and more.
This might come as a bit of a surprise but the game is, in its core, a Roguelike - even including a stage-by-stage map as we descend further into the abyssal depths. Each level offers its challenges and consists of multiple goals we would want to check clear of our to-do list. First and foremost, to clear every stage we need to gather enough food. While you can migrate to a new stage as soon as you hit the minimal threshold, you probably want to keep going a few days and fearsome nights more. Simply because you can gather twice the amount needed to migrate and food acts as experience for your crablings. You need that experience to level them up as they gain semi-random abilities to grow their capabilities. And trust me, you can't hope to survive the depths without getting a few beefy, veteran crabs in your posse, able to dish out serious damage to the meanies trying to invade your cultivated pieces of the reef.
But that is just one aspect of the game. The biggest feature you'll be working with is the whole idea of restoring a vivid ecosystem. By growing plants and corals, you will attract various aquatic animals. The best part is that they aren't merely decorative. These animals start forming a food chain, with predators hunting prey, and herbivores nibbling on your plants... All that provides morsels of food for your crabs to gather. Good to be a scavenger! Predators, on top of that, can help you every night by attacking unsavory critters trying to eat your poor crabbies as well as devour your hard gardening work. A friendly Shark can put quite a bit of work in keeping them at bay. This system of relations between fauna and flora is pretty engaging, giving the main puzzle of the game. A challenge in managing resources and limited space to attract and establish the biggest workable number of animals to help you out. And heck, they look pretty too, swimming around, doing their things. It's a nice visual aid showing your progress through the level.
But wait, there's more! You can build traps, and raise walls. Dig for treasure, and acquire loot that gives you cosmetics to edit your crablings. You can recolor them and put fancy hats on top of them. Who doesn't love a crab with a mustache or a monocle? The game also has a pretty nice index of animals and plants, giving you both a bit of in-game info about what you can expect of them as well as some real-life data on the item in question. Neat! To add to that, fulfilling certain goals allows you to unlock Ritual Stones - a crucial part of the game - that grant you run-lasting new abilities and passive powers across the board. As you trace your trail downward into the abyssal depths, you should do your best to get as many Ritual Stones cleansed and done as possible. Also, have a lookout for new crabling eggs to hatch! More members of your temple equals more working hands... well, pincers.
The game consists of a few biomes, each offering new animals, plants, and enemies to tackle. They all look gorgeous and sound fantastic. Crablings are particularly adorable with all the cute little sounds and actions they can perform. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy the visuals and the great audio, the game has some performance issues. I do own a rather beastly gaming rig and yet at the last few stages where many, many animals were spawned I've lagged and seen FPS dips below 50. Ouch. Hope some further optimization will come with future updates.
While I enjoyed my time with the game, the difficulty can be a little demanding. Enemy spawns ramp up a lot, and if you didn't have a bit of luck with drawing your crablings skills, you might be facing an insurmountable challenge. This wouldn't be an issue in a roguelike game - 'dying' and retrying is the name of the game. Unfortunately, though, CRAB GOD suffers a little bit from a very limited scope of content. The runs tend to be very... Same'ish. There isn't enough variety of enemies, animals, or even biomes to keep the game fresh for long. The abilities you get from the Stones and for your Crablings also do not offer this wild, far-fetched variety one could expect from a roguelike that asks you for repeated runs. It's great fun for the first few runs, that's for sure, but after the initial charm of its gorgeous audiovisuals and concept wear off, it's hard to find some novelty to sink your teeth into.
What hurts it the most is the lack of any between-runs progression. No upgrades to work towards that would ease the future runs. No altering mechanics between them. Tide Trials - extra challenges you can embark on after you finish your first run - is a fine little addition, but the word 'little' is crucial here. It's not enough to keep me wanting to return to play another hour-and-a-half long run.
Nonetheless, despite some technical issues and a bit of repetitive runs where the game runs out of steam, I can recommend CRAB GOD. It's very well crafted, with charming visuals, a great concept, and a fun blend of mechanics that are more immersive than expected. I believe I got my money's worth from the two dozen hours I sank into the game and I have a feeling that I will revisit it a couple of times in the future. The developers keep updating the game and with new biomes, creatures, and abilities, it can become fresh again. Oh, and almost forgot a very important bit - the game is very Eco-Friendly. Actively so, as you have a choice to impact a real-life environmentalist activity, with devs contributing a part of their income from your purchase to a goal of your choice. I sure do hope I could help the trees a tiny bit with my contribution via purchasing and playing this whimsical title.
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