Another Crab's Treasure review: A shellacious journey

I’ve had my eye on Another Crab’s Treasure for a long time. It might be a Souls-like, but Aggro Crab brought an interesting twist to it: You are a hermit crab and the various junk you find to serve as your shell gives you swappable abilities. Add to that a beautiful undersea adventure with lots of action and a ton of cheek, and this might be one of the most memorable takes on a Soulsborne action-adventure title I’ve seen in a long time.

What’s a hermit without its hermitage?

Another Crab’s Treasure puts you in the role of a hermit crab known as Kril. Kril has a problem. Some dungeness duchess has moved into his neighborhood and she demands taxes from those who live in his area. Kril takes the hermit part of being a hermit crab a little too seriously and doesn’t keep up with the fact that the main currency of the modern times are microplastics (the Souls element of this game) sifted from trash that falls into the ocean, so a very-near-literal loan shark takes his shell as collateral and he has to chase them to get it back. Along the way, Kril finds an issue affecting the ocean: pollution from various capital-G Gunk is driving the denizens of the deep quite literally mad. He doesn’t care too much about all that, though. Dude just wants his shell back, and that’s the driving point of what becomes a long and interesting journey involving corporations, capitalism, and more than a few stabbies with a fork.

I was surprised to see just how extensive and beautiful Aggro Crab made this game. Another Crab’s Treasure does a great job of presenting a vast ocean world that's fun to explore, despite (or perhaps partially because of) all the trash that litters the world. You start out in a shallow stretch of sandcastles and beach junk, but soon find yourself in a cardboard city where many of the upper crust-aceans live. Further along is a junkyard of milk cartons that lead to a massive, rusted shopping cart.

Pushing the story along is a pretty bopping soundtrack that accompanies Kril’s adventures with lovely aplomb, especially when you get into fights with big bosses that have suitably dramatic music to go with them for such a silly game. I feel like we're pretty used to Soulsborne worlds where there isn't much music happening as the world simply breathes around you. That works for Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, but I appreciated Another Crab's Treasure's soundtrack because it adds to the colorful vibe throughout the game whether you're wandering across the seabed farming microplastics or fighting an really angry and large crustacean with a fork and knife strapped to its claws.

If Another Crab’s Treasure’s goal was partially to make me feel bad about how poorly we treat the oceans on Earth, then mission accomplished. This game is a cheery bop, but it’s hard to ignore the signs that every denizen in this game is in a heap of treasure caused by waste. They don’t know much about it other than treasures fall from the surface of the ocean and some of those treasures make them crazy. It expertly maintains a sense of purity amid depressing overtones in its presentation and narration.

There will be shell to pay

Of course, environmental messages and cuteness aside, this is still a Souls-like game, and boy howdy will it remind you quickly. Another Crab’s Treasure is an action melee game, and much like a real hermit crab, most things can kill you in a couple hits. It isn’t long before Kril finds a fork to defend himself, but his real power lies in his tendency to make whatever he can find into his new home. Amid all the trash in Another Crab’s Treasure, Kril can crawl up in a variety of objects that he can then carry around with him on his back, including tin cans, red drink cups, broken tennis balls, thimbles, coffee pods, and so much more.

The shell mechanic is where this game really sets itself apart and becomes amusing. For one, Kril’s shell grants him a shield against most attacks if he hides in it to defend himself. If the shell takes too much damage, it will break and Kril will be unprotected, but the other half of the fun is that every shell type has abilities associated with it through what the game calls “Umami powers”. A pop can allows Kril to launch a blast of fizzy bubbles that home in on targets. The tennis ball shell lets Kril spin and run into foes like Sonic the Hedgehog’s spin dash attack. The tin can (maybe my favorite) can be imbued with lightning that will shock enemies if they strike Kril when he’s defending. Each new shell adds fun opportunities to what you can do and shucking and replacing them frequently is key to your survival.

Of course, over time, Kril can also get his claws on abilities from a skill tree that make him stronger. You start with things like powering up Kril’s next attack when enemies hit his shell, but later, you get abilities like being able to fishhook foes and either yank them to Kril or yank Kril to them. You can even equip accessories called Stowaways that give Kril special attributes such as powering up his attack, defense, vitality, or umami stats, or giving more stagger damage to your attacks. There are tons of ways to personalize the way you approach Another Crab’s Treasure and a lot of them felt rewarding to explore.

You’ll need them too, because the enemies in this game are vicious and some of the bosses are downright terrifying. There’s one where you can’t (or rather, shouldn’t) fight it right away. It’s a well-known creature crabs of the city know about so they made a route of trash with a smell it hates that serve as beacons you have to sprint between lest he catch and murder poor Kril. I don’t want to spoil too much, but other bosses include a lobster that uses chopsticks as a sort of katana and a noodle-covered crab that uses a lid as a shield and a pair of tongs as a spear. This game’s enemies are often scary as hell, but they’re also funny and well-designed at that, even if they were often beating the shell out of me.

One thing I’m kind of iffy on in Another Crab’s Treasure is the platforming. There are a lot of places where you must jump platform to platform or climb and sometimes that got a little janky. A lot of times when I got to the top of a climbing area, it wouldn’t let me climb over the ledge and instead I jumped off and fell. Same thing goes for enemies. You can knock foes off platforms, but there were a few too many times where they would get caught on the edge and not be able to move, attack, or die. Heck, there was a segment with bouncy sponges that an enemy and I got caught on with me trying frantically to avoid their continuous attacks in the air. Platforming isn’t dreadful, but it did stress me out more than anything else in this game.

There’s also no lack of what felt like unfair deaths in Another Crab’s Treasure. Not just dying to strong enemies – I can deal with that – but silly things that lost me a lot of life in a jiffy. For one, there seems to be a discrepancy between guarding and attacking in this game where if you attack and then try to get in your shell, you still might take damage depending on when the attack animation ended. It was hard to tell where the sweet spot was, so I ended up dying a lot just trying to defend fast enough to survive anything. Also, enemy projectiles often track you from ridiculous ranges, which led to me getting shucked when, say, I fell off a cliff and then a homing “arrow” hit me from an enemy a mile away when I respawned on the ledge from which I began.

I will say that the game has a lot of assist options that help to lessen the difficulty if you’d just like to have a good time, so that’s nice. That said, I think some of the mechanics make the difficulty a little silly, even for a Souls-like.

Give me shell-ter

Another Crab’s Treasure is a shocker of a good time. The combat is mostly fair and interesting with all of the stuff you can do involving shells, level-ups, Stowaways, and other options. The world is also fun to explore, beautiful, if a little bittersweet, and full of secrets. Mix that with a good soundtrack and a funny story full of cute little crustacean characters, and Another Crab’s Treasure might be one of the most surprisingly sturdy Souls-likes I’ve seen in years.

This review is based on a digital PC copy supplied by the publisher. Another Crab’s Treasure comes out on Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on April 25, 2024.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.