Another Crab’s Treasure Devs Talk Putting a Colorful Twist on Soulslike Games

Another Crab’s Treasure is undoubtedly one of the most unique Soulslikes to hit the genre in quite some time, flaunting a bubbly nautical aesthetic and a cast of aquatic creatures as opposed to skeletons, demons, and monsters. The game cleverly leverages the trash-inhabiting lifestyle of hermit crabs by making garbage the foundation of its equipment system, leading to a Soulslike arsenal with surprising variety both mechanically and visually that also touches on very real issues with underwater pollution and climate catastrophes.

Game Rant recently sat down with Aggro Crab studio head and art director Nick Kaman, along with creative director and narrative lead Caelan Pollock, to discuss Another Crab’s Treasure‘s approach to this colorful, comedic, aquatic Soulslike game. They weighed in on aspects of Soulslike games that they either honed in on or deviated from, and they also spoke about how they approached the game’s sense of humor, which strongly contrasts with the genre’s typically serious settings. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Why There May Never Be Another Soulslike Game Like Another Crab’s Treasure

Another Crab’s Treasure is unlike any soulslike game before it, and it’s likely to either set a new precedent or forever be the only one of its kind.

How Another Crab’s Treasure Approached the Soulslike Genre

Q: You went from a mobile game to a Soulslike game. What were the elements of the Soulslike genre that you felt were the most important to include to define this game as a Soulslike?

Kaman: It all starts with combat, and how do you get that Souls combat across in a game that doesn’t look anything like Souls, right? So we started with: Okay, you’re a hermit crab. What does the hermit crab want to do? He wants to hide in his shell. A lot of our gameplay is focused around that ability to block with your shell, parry, counter-attack, that sort of thing. So, in that sense, it gets us closer to a Sekiro style of gameplay, as opposed to straight-up Dark Souls, where you’re encouraged to stay up close in the fight. Our game doesn’t have stamina, as well. So you really do just want to get in there, take some hits with your shell, dodge when you can, but keep whaling on your opponent.

It starts with the combat aspect, but the world-building of it all is also secretly pretty Souls, right? Like, we made an April Fool’s joke about how our game is too light-hearted and cartoony to be a Soulsike, but, when you look at the plot, the lore of our game, and the inspiration for it, it’s that decaying, sad world that you would expect from any Souls game. It’s just presented differently, but that aspect of the genre is really important to us.

Pollock: It’s a colorful but sad world, which I would say is very similar to Going Under, our previous game.

Q: In a similar vein, were there any common Soulslike mechanics that didn’t fit into your vision for Another Crab’s Treasure?

Pollock: We argued a lot about the existence of the “corpse run” in the game, where you essentially drop your money when you die and need to go collect it from the world. It does exist in the game. You will lose your money if you don’t re-collect your corpse. Since we’re going for a more approachable game it was a big question for us. We think this sense of risk and real stakes to dying is really important to the Souls vibe in a way that’s much deeper than just “Oh, this makes the game harder.” A lot of what we want to do, even though it is a more approachable Soulslike, is invite people to experience the Soulslike genre. We don’t want to make it more approachable by cutting out what makes the genre interesting or unique. So, at the end of the day, we decided to keep it as that kind of “risk-reward” element from Soulslikes.

As for anything that’s cut specifically, we did mostly eliminate long run-backs to a boss. Almost every boss in the game, you can respawn very close to it. It was kind of inspired by Elden Ring, doing something similar to a lot of their bosses. They’ve got the Stakes of Marika, where you can respawn very close by. We decided, once we started doing that, why not take it all the way and eliminate pretty much all of them. I mean, people who are real gluttons for punishment do enjoy it. I don’t think it’s an objectively bad part of early Dark Souls, but I do think it’s something that keeps a lot of people away and makes the game a lot more frustrating. Ultimately, it isn’t necessarily totally required to achieve the right vibe.

Q: How did you approach balancing the Soulslike elements with being approachable for newcomers?

Pollock: A lot of back and forth on difficulty was part of it. We had a big sort of open question as to whether or not we wanted the game’s default difficulty to be considered the gold standard. Is this something that people can increase the difficulty of? Is it something you can decrease the difficulty of? Ultimately, we have the assist settings to make it easier, but the default version of the game is its hardest version, which is something that wasn’t known from the beginning. We originally had thoughts on adding options to make it harder, but I think that was kind of our version of that sort of “difficulty bragging rights” that Souls presents. I’m definitely against the idea that somebody else choosing to play the game in an easier mode devalues your victory. But, at the same time, it’s really nice to have a version of that victory that’s like a signpost where you can feel proud of it if you do it right, just without tearing anybody else down. So I think the default version of the game being very challenging is something that’s important to the game as well.

Pollock: Yeah, Elden Ring is an interesting one because I would argue, with Elden Ring, the easy mode is items that do make the game somewhat objectively easier like Mimic Tear. The summons are a big one, but Mimic Tear in particular takes a long time to get, and a lot of the summons aren’t good. It’s far from a cut-and-dry easy mode, but I did think it’s interesting how Elden Ring offered these options that you don’t have to use that do make the game easier. That was pretty new to Dark Souls, but they do it just in like, playstyle. Have you heard about the gun? We’ve got the gun. That’s our Mimic Tear.

Q: Yes, I love the gun. Your social media presence is amazing, like your “Can you pet the dog” campaign? That was great.

Kaman: Get this in the article! I was testing last night, and I died because I pet the dog mid-combat.

Pollock: I bet you did.

Kaman: I tried to pick up a shell, but it pet the dog instead.

Pollock: Maybe that will be fixed by launch.

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Every Shell Shown Off for Another Crab’s Treasure So Far

Players can collect various shells for Kril to wear in Another Crab’s Treasure, several of which have already been revealed.

Q: Lies of P was a big hit because it had this unique fairy tale slant on the Soulslike genre. Obviously, this is a more colorful, more humorous approach. If we’re talking the capabilities of the Soulslike genre, what kind of mark do you hope to leave on it with Another Crab’s Treasure?

Kaman: We would really like to see Another Crab’s Treasure be kind of the mark of a new era for the genre, where there is more breadth to the genre in general. Credit to Lies of P for doing what they did, but, if Souls was here, they’re over here, and we’re like waaaaaay over here on the other side.

Pollock: It’s also just very aesthetically different, you know. The “FromSoftware grimdark kingdom,” you know what I mean? It’s very Bloodborne in its aesthetic sensibilities. It’s a fantastic Soulslike, but I would definitely group it in the same aesthetic genre as FromSoftware games.

Kaman: To their credit, they have a lot of hooks, and they have this specific aesthetic that is unique in the space. But, again, with what we’re doing, I think by making it this far different from every other Souls game, there’s now room for everything in between to exist. If we do well, it opens the door for a lot of different kinds of games to be Soulslikes, and I think that’s exciting.

More Crab-like games, yeah?

Kaman: That’s the takeaway. Just more crabs. The new aesthetic to mimic is playing as a crab.

Another Crab’s Treasure As a Humorous Soulslike Game

Q: What was it like creating a humorous, colorful game within this sort of genre?

Kaman: It kind of felt…not easy, but natural to us. If you’ve played our previous game, this is just the kind of thing we like to make. Caelan likes writing funny dialogue, and I like colorful graphics. So it feels like, in a way, we’re just doing a Soulslike our own way.

Q: I find that humor can sometimes be hard to communicate in video games. How do you generally approach humor and getting it across?

Pollock: That’s a large question because I feel like it is a very complicated thing to describe. If I were to go into great detail on how we approach, let’s say, humor and timing in our games, and the way I write things, I do think I could go on all day. What I will say is that our games are never just there to laugh at. Both of these stories start from a core of somewhere very emotionally important to us, and, ultimately, they are full stories with a lot of heart to them. So I feel the humor is kind of included. They are funny games, but they’re not 100% comedy games.

I think it’s about finding that balance and spending time interrogating that balance. Is this too dark for people to still be having a good time? Or is this line too silly for where the stakes are here in the game? We spend a lot of time evaluating and discussing that sort of stuff. But ultimately, I think a splash of humor can make intense or emotional stories more intense and emotional. And, in the same way, being hit with a funny line when something dramatic is going on at large makes it even funnier.

Kaman: I think humor’s just something we try to have everywhere, right? Most of the NPCs you talk to, there’s a joke somewhere in that conversation, and there are jokes in the descriptions of items that you find. The items themselves, we try to make them funny. The bosses have a pun or something in their title. And, obviously, the combat has a slapstick element to it. Having comedy permeate throughout the whole experience, I think is important.

Pollock: I think it’s also worth bringing up that classic Soulslike games – FromSoftware, Dark Souls games – are funny. They are. The jokes are explicitly few and far between. We have a lot more written jokes and one-liners than FromSoftware, by a lot, but I will laugh my ass off playing Elden Ring. I don’t think that is by any means an accident. Look at how they animate skeletons. FromSoftware understands that skeletons are silly. They understand that being a little guy hit around by massive demons is a very silly slapstick experience. I think that element of lightheartedness is a part of FromSoftware games that often gets overlooked. I think that’s an important counterbalance to the very depressing lore, for example.

Q: There’s humor, but there are also dark elements and serious stuff in the game. When it comes to the pollution element of the game, are there any particular lessons about keeping the oceans clean that you’re trying to communicate?

Pollock: I mean, you could keep the ocean clean, you know? How’s that for a lesson? [LAUGHS]

From the very beginning, when we started talking about the premise behind this game, sort of figuring out what we were and weren’t saying, I knew this game was very important to me. Because, at the end of the day, we’re not making games for an audience of people who don’t know that throwing trash in the water is bad, you know what I mean? Or don’t understand that pollution is a real thing, or climate change is a real thing. So I was very interested in less approaching it from the perspective of “How do we solve climate change or pollution?” and more about how do we, as people, build community and maintain something to live for in a world that feels like it’s dying.

This is very much a game about, not just climate change, but climate catastrophe. That’s what’s shown to be going on in the underwater world here. I think a lot of people in general, especially people growing up right now, have this sense of “the crumbling world right now.” Sharing how we feel about that, or helping people find catharsis and what that feels like, was always much more important to me than “Oh, hey, the moral is pollution is bad.” That’s taken as a given in the game’s storyline. “What do we do from here?” is more of the open question.

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Another Crab’s Treasure

Aggro Crab’s Another Crab’s Treasure provides a maritime twist on the Souls-like formula. Using the trash around him as armor and weapons, Kril must travel across an underwater kingdom while fighting off all sorts of impressive threats.

Released

April 25, 2024

Developer(s)

Aggro Crab

Publisher(s)

Aggro Crab

Genre(s)

Adventure , Soulslike , RPG

Engine

Unity

ESRB

T For Teen Due To Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence