As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, a new game will enter the Soulslike genre, be a little weird and stir some attention. Last year that was Lies of P, merging the world of Pinnochio with gritty and cruel action RPG combat to surprising effect. This year’s answer is Another Crab’s Treasure, the second release from indie studio Aggro Crab.

Graduating from the roguelike genre with Going Under, and heading into new territory with this crustacean-starring adventure, the game feels like the title the developer has been building to in a big way. A growth on gameplay mechanics and further narrative exploration of human consumption. It feels like their entire mission statement realised. Another Crab’s Treasure meets and exceeds these goals, offering a Soulslike adventure that packs a meaningful story.

Kril is our hero, a crab that is robbed of their shell and home. On a hunt to get back what is rightfully theirs, this adventure becomes more complicated as they stumble into a city that adorns trash into their environment, engage in a course-correcting treasure hunt and butt heads with a money-hungry company that is destroying the deep. It provides all of this in a tidy but well fleshed-out foray that can be wrapped up in less than 20 hours (18 on my clock), something rare and otherwise lacking in the genre.

There’s a touch of friction when you first dive into Another Crab’s Treasure. Kril is quite nimble, and although you still have to get used to strafing, locking on, and dealing with animation-locked attacks in combat, their movements feel much smoother. This takes time to adjust. Though it’s worth sticking with, I can also see people bouncing off that adjustment period with the first hour or two of playing. It also doesn’t help that crucial abilities such as performing a fatal strike on a stunned enemy, something always available in just about every FromSoftware game, aren’t available until a decent way through a skill tree. When you finally make progress, you’ll feel like you’re soaring through the deep blue seas, getting the rhythm down pat, poking and prodding enemies and mastering the parry by hiding in and popping out of your shell. It just takes time.

Despite being set deep under the sea, Another Crab’s Treasure mixes up environments often. What begins with your little recluse in the high tide soon becomes areas dense with seaweed and kelp, emulating a biome that is half jungle, half bayou. A subnautical junkyard will be rife with water transformed into toxic sludge. The most captivating environment of all is New Carcinia, a metropolis with upper and lower districts. This will be the hub area that you visit regularly to upgrade Kril’s trusty weapon of choice in a two-pronged fork, pawn off items in exchange for currencies to purchase upgrades and so on. Each visit I find a new curious oddity. It’s striking the way the upper district’s buildings are made up of repurposed wine bottles and fairy lights illuminating the deep ocean blues. Juxtaposed with the lower region being dark and gritty, its inhabitants use boxes and are a seedier bunch.

There is just damn good environment design everywhere you step. Each platforming section mixed with tight combat quarters feels considered and thought out. It certainly helps that verticality is a big factor.

Another Crab’s Treasure’s biggest crime is not always being original. Thankfully, that’s far from an issue when the meat here is just so, so good. You’ll get hints of déjà vu as you travel trepidatiously across castle ramparts or loop around an area to unlock a shortcut. None of it matters because it’s always fun and they even give you a grappling hook (something all good games should have) to help with that manoeuvrability and verticality. It’s also worth noting I’ve probably played nearly a dozen Soulslikes in my time. Shoutout to Another Crab’s Treasure for being the most colourful and vibrant of them all.

As you progress through the game, a real sense of place is felt. Locking on to an enemy turns the screen resolution to a letterboxed view, adding cinematic impact and focus on those dead in front of you. Your bonfire resting points are larger shells that can be used as teleporters. Your currency for upgrades is known as microplastics. Everything fits. You learn about the world and how all the deep sea critters and creatures love this trash found all around them. Each to varying degrees. There are the trash goblin weirdo NPCs you’ll meet that just revel in the stuff, wearing an orange peel or lopping off a few ramen noodles as hair. Some can’t make much sense of all this waste that’s floating down from above but also it’s all they know. They live and breathe the stuff. It’s no secret that the game certainly goes there and has a lot to say about pollution—a natural progression to Going Under’s tale of consumerism, tech companies and Silicon Valley.

It’s emphatic through the dialogue and narrative writing that Developer Aggro Crab feels strongly about environmentalism. There are some heavy-hitting palpable lines and anger at the world they’re living in as more dawns on the cast, including Kril. It’s just occasionally that little bit jarring when it’s coming from a character that has otherwise been voice-acted to be very shrill and soft-spoken so far – their progression not quite fully charted successfully.

Each shell has a different durability, something you’ll need to take into consideration if you’re struggling to master parrying. Durability decreases until the shell breaks, leaving you even more exposed. This novelty of the variation and Fashion Souls potential (there are even fun and referential cosmetics you can buy with your microplastics!) is enough on its own. They all come with shell spells—abilities that are often either passive or active buffs and different attack styles to help along the journey. A highlight is the coconut’s ‘Rollout,’ ability which lets you essentially spin dash Sonic the Hedgehog-style into enemies. Shout out too to the box of tissue shell which is surprisingly more durable than you’d think and has a ‘cleanse’ ability that removes negative statuses. A real lifesaver in toxic sludge areas.

At the best of times, Another Crab’s Treasure is truly tough. It isn’t the most difficult of the genre but there are certainly moments that had me sweating. Boss encounters and designs are frequently engaging, which is a relief because Soulslikes live and die by that. A majority of the bosses are just crabs of different domineering nature; those big and bouldering as opposed to smaller and versatile.

Mileage comes out of the idea of taking down a crab bigger than yourself. I’ve come toe-to-toe with a crab that dual-wielded chopsticks like blades, diseased beasts that I had to be constantly on the move with, a pair of gun-wielding shrimp that made an arena very busy… even gimmick foes that felt referential to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. 

It’s here where keeping a calm and clear mind will help you triumph. Just as crucial as making use of all your resources. Though there aren’t exactly ‘builds’ in Another Crab’s Treasure, you can add barnacle-style ‘stowaways’ to your shells, adding passive boosts to damage and health, giving you a second life before taken back to your last resting point. Fine-tuning all of these details is an exponential aid, often realising maybe having enough health to just outlive a tough fight is more important than stacking on damage and being more vulnerable.

Another Crab’s Treasure is a full-circle video game. Aggro Crab, the crab video game development company, now has their own game starring a manifestation of their mascot. They’ve expanded on not only narrative and thematic ideas found in their first title Going Under, but also blowing their project scopes out of the water with a broad and sweeping Souslike experience. Aggro Crab is only a relatively new game studio, but they’re on the up. The proof is in the pudding. Another Crab’s Treasure is no joke and it’s going to be even more exciting to follow the team’s trajectory from here.