Everything is Crab Steam Charts & Stats

There just isn't enough variety in the game at this point. In a standard run you're going to see pretty much every option and that means that all of the builds start to feel pretty similar after a few runs. Fun game for a few hours, but there's not enough here right now.

I'm in the middle. This game is not bad by any stretch. Actually pretty fun. The part that tired me out was climbing the pressure ladder. The difficulty of the game is ramped up just by weakening the players stats and enhancing monster ones. Difficulty feels shallow and uninspired. Feels like im getting less for the same amount of effort.

This game has some really odd quirks. Conceptually this is a really fun roguelike, with its main strength being the creativity behind upgrades and their relation to realistic flavor and character presentation. I absolutely love this game, it's quite endearing, and brings some unique gameplay ideas to the table. Everything is Crab sets out to do the roguelike 'twin shooter' ala Spore creature stage. It is visually endearing, with an art style that matches some of the more cutesier aspects of critters, instead of the horrors of evolution. Not balancing the two plays well into the favor of the references that exist. Eat enough food, and you'll evolve to gain a new trait, or potentially upgrade one you already have and unlock a milestone for it after so many upgrades. Upgrades, instead of being limited by a rarity descriptor, instead will gain stat boosts for the higher the rarity it appears, meaning the pool is at your disposal instead of shutting yourself down of potential mutations. After all, the theme is returning to an aspect, not starting as such; meaning that is a design decision that works in favor of the theme, despite lacking mechanically due to such. Right now, difficulty can feel hot and cold. The pressure system is a smart idea, but in lies the exact problem: There is no speed up button, and the starting speed of the character in relation to the enemies makes this really difficult to sit through. Each run takes roughly a half an hour to an hour alone, and doesn't ever make itself feel satisfying enough to play at the speed it is. I don't want to say the problem is the game lacking content, as indie games are subjected to such. The gameplay loop is just standing and moving, but movement never feels satisfying, and enemies attack patterns are so shallow it feels like there should be 10 pressures at the speed the game currently is at. However, if the gameplay loop is currently established, everything needs to be sped up maybe 2 - 2.5x the speed it is now. You're asking for 100 hours of gameplay at least for 200 successions. That's not taking into account the time it'll take you to throw one of your runs at the higher pressure just to be doubled in time it takes to get there because combining two genes is only rewarded for reaching the first boss. Asking your players to redo something does not increase the gameplay variety, especially where roguelikes are meant to be done over and over, this can easily make or break your game. Strategy blurs together by halfway through a run because the pool of abilities are small and mostly exist between the same handful of ~5 modifiable numbers. Carcinogen points are a really unique idea, but where are the downsides to having these evolutions? Why give the players options for terrain movement when that doesn't consider flying generally negates most of that. Its fine to represent these things through simple stat points, but there is no characterization besides the target of the themes themselves and not the representation of that through the mechanic philosophy in itself. This game is incredibly redundant in that idea to the point that nothing feels rewarding besides seeing your character change appearance. The art style is great, but the 'outfits' only really stack upon themselves. By the end of the run you'll look similar enough to the previous run that the charm overstays its welcome very quickly. A few of the points of interest overlap in abilities, and that doesn't do well for creating a flavor. Why distinguish a difference between an oasis and a small pool of water when the outcome of coming to such is the exact same? That disintevizes actively drawing real life equivalents to the game. Everything is Crab is fundamentally a roguelike. Right now, though, the pool of gameplay is so incredibly unvaried that each run will feel the exact same. Asking your fans for content additions doesn't really look good when you only have a fundamental system set up. Your roadmap doesn't do anything to actively tell your players your thought process from a glance, making me feel as though this potentially is what the final iteration of the gameplay loop is going to look like. I REALLY like this game, and want to see it become the best piece of art it can be. However, I reviewed this before I 100%'ed it to urge others wait for whatever this mid summer content update is going to be, or wait for a game-speed increase feature. Otherwise, this will feel something akin to the quality of Ubermosh games in fundamental design philosophy.

The difficulties mostly just make the enemies more spongey, and you more soft, either that or just making the player weaker in an uninteresting way, like making damage reduction a tiny bit less powerful. Terrains barely shake up gameplay, with there only being 4 of them, and them only giving you a different debuff, with 50% of those debuffs making you take damage over time, making it so those terrains are just worse than the other terrains, even when having their SPECIFIC damage reduction stats. Enemy variety barely exists, with most enemies not even being worth the effort to kill, providing nearly The same rewards as the weaker enemies. Most evolutions are just better than others, with the better ones being barely rarer to find than the worse ones, especially with the constant rerolls you are given. Music is very repetitive, same instruments, same bpm, same pace. No real strategies or builds, just get all stats except for the damage type you don't use up.

1 of Many (see comments) The game has a great concept that really clicked with me when I found out about it. Having the "Evolution" choices visually represented on your character is incredibly fun! I do wish I could sometimes choose how the odd Evo looks on the character. For example, the "Wings" "Branching Evolution" will look different depending on your current affinity values, and is chosen based on your highest affinity (from what I can surmise); this is extremely cool, obviously, though I do wish I could choose the "Imposing" affinity wing style usually (and/or ban whichever is the butterfly wings, I think "Gregarious" affinity but I could be wrong). I also think this game concept could be turned into an incredible long form survival game (even a 3d one a la Spore but better), *cough* hint, hint *cough*. It's got legs, even when Darwin doesn't! ...moving on... While I really love & enjoy the game, I cannot recommend it in its current state. Don't get me wrong, you could buy it, have fun, and enjoy your time playing; play long enough though and you'll come to notice its flaws and potentially, as I have, become frustrated with them. Currently there are too many issues that make the game feel non-fun and unfairly weighted for me to recommend the game. There's also a lack of variety in builds that becomes noticeable after awhile. Don't get me wrong there is some variety but not much. Addressing All Bosses: · "Aquaconda" gets bullied unless you have taken no Branching Evolutions with "Terrain Adaption". · "Clawdia" can overwhelm you with her children and webs, as they don't seem to have a reasonable spawn limit, causing you to be unable to move. Her children also do not drop food on death. Which makes this fight feel exceedingly unfair as she gets unlimited backup and you get stuck in place with nary a heal. · "Crabtuar" is a similar story to Shellephant, without extra speed the only way to effectively survive is to kite her around a tree. If you don't, her horn attack will most assuredly hit you as the timeframe to avoid it is very short. If you can dodge at the exact right moment and right direction (as it will do a mini charge if you just dash straight away from it) it will miss but if your dodge is on cooldown then you have to hope you're fast enough to move to the side in the small window. · "Krabaroo" gets bullied more often than not. Only issue I have with him is at times his jump and slam attacks visual damage zone seems to be smaller than the actual damage zone, but that could just be bad positioning luck. · "Krabken" can overwhelm you with all his allies being spawned making movement difficult (see first normal enemy point below) while at the same making it extremely difficult to actually see where you are if you end up beside or behind him unless you have gone for a plus size build. Add on the Tentacles he spawns and the meteors that spawn faster and faster and it becomes a visual nightmare. Also, the allies he spawns have all their attacks available to them; so, you can get stun-locked by Spiderfrogs or Spitfish++ traps in the middle of the boss fight and be promptly, unceremoniously, killed. For a boss fight where the player needs to keep moving to survive even more than others there are far too many ways your movement is specifically prevented. · "Shellephant" requires you to kite her around a tree in order to not get hit by her roll, you can ~at times~ time a dodge perfectly to avoid it. The trunk attack, which swings twice, is also most likely to hit you at least once. As, if you have to dodge the first, chances are the second ~will~ hit you and vice versa. So, the overall boss fight is just kiting her around a tree if you don't want to die, or if you're lucky you gained enough speed to be able to avoid her without it, ex she was your third boss and you have wings + legs, wings + slither/tentacles, or slither + tentacles. Addressing Normal Enemies: · All enemies (bosses included) can block & prevent your movement. Dodging can sometimes get you through, but it depends on the dodge type and pure luck. But enemies can push past you and push you around (in the literal sense). While you cannot do the same back. · "Beewares" can overwhelm you if you're on any terrain other than grass if you have no speed upgrades. It's technically possible to circle kite them on other terrains before speed upgrades but the majority of the success rate is luck on their attack timing. · "Blobfish". Poor Blobfish, they could use another prey counterpart that gets bullied too. They're all alone right now since HatBirbs just hide forever & get allies and SnowHares run away at lightning speed. · "Crabbybara" are hypocrites. · "HatBirbs" can stay in burrows forever. Which means, not only do they become immune from all harm, but they also prevent you from using an otherwise functional burrow forever. Unless they deign to come out of the burrow because sometimes, they feel like it or they're hungry, but don't hold your breath. · "Pantthers" will aggro on you before anything else and rush you, sometimes 3+ at a time. Just beat a difficult boss and survived by the skin of your teeth? Have 3 Pantther++'s running straight at you from 3 different directions past every other newly spawned animal, while the other animals around them aggro to each other as well as they should. Also, their speed is broken, I don't know what "Super Legendary" version of the "Sprint" Dash they have on top of there already high move speed but they're impossible to catch 90% of the time once fleeing, making fighting them & their alpha versions pointless and incredibly deadly unless you can kill them before they decide to turn into The Flash & never be seen again. For such a high damage dealing and fast enemy they have far too much health, it is as if they were meant to be glass cannons, but the developers decided to give them strong health anyway. Also, no, making them un-willing to go into water doesn't negate any of their BS. · "Pilferrets" can hide in burrows for a hilariously long time "eating" a piece of food they grab and run away with. They seem to be immune to damage as soon as they start the "enter the burrow" animation. Meaning, if you had one more hit to kill them and they get to the burrow you are better off forgetting about that Pilferret in most cases. · "SandSharks" attack damage zones are hard to see against the sand biome (hope this isn't how I find out I'm colour-blind lol) and their attacks happen too a bit too quick to be avoidable in my experience; if you are in the attack damage zone when it appears chances are you're taking that damage. Though, part or much of that could be caused by the aforementioned visibility difficulties. · "SnowHares" are also impossible to catch unless you can one-shot them, making their existence in the game almost pointless as you'll rarely interact with them. They do give a decent ally bonus (if you can get them) at least. · "Spineapple" are adorable. · "Spitfish", specifically the + & ++ varieties', headbutt attack can be hard to avoid but it's not as bad as the Sandshark for comparison ~as the attacks seem to function similar~. The Spear Stab/Swipe attack of the ++ variety is extremely annoying to try and avoid though and its speed doesn't help. They seem to also be able to lay traps that stun you, I am unclear on how to spot them visually. Which at the game-stage they appear it can be particularly frustrating if not, at a minimum, rude; especially during the Krabken boss fight. · "SpiderFrogs" tongue attack stuns you, this is only really bad during the Krabken boss fight where he can spawn multiple as allies, thereby potentially stun-locking you. I would also like their tongue attack as an attack option for the player; the closest we get is "Spit" but it's a different move shared with Spitfish & Aquaconda and lacks the stun functionality. Continued, 1 of Many (comments)

Gets boring really quickly, I think the demo overplayed it's hand, its a solid 80% of the game. The main problem is the pressures (difficulties) actively make things worse. It basically turns the speedy game into a slow one where enemy density plays far too much of a factor in how the game progresses. The aesthetics are very charming, with good audio and visual polish, the idea is great, and its initially interesting. Overall there is far too little variety, in evolutions, attacks, movement abilities, enemies, overall builds and bosses, after about 5 hours you've seen everything the game has to offer and then some, after that its all repetition. Even the challenges don't change much, they are minor difficulty modifiers, or they zoom in the screen, just basic small modifiers that don't substantially change how the game is played, there just isn't enough to remix to notice a difference. The game needs about double its content, beyond its charming veneer there is little substance, its just doing the same thing with minor variations. Ultimately you are moving around, hitting things with a similar sized attack, using one of the very similar dodges while your numbers go up slightly, sure your character might change visually, but your mechanical inputs and how you think of the game stays almost exactly the same. If this was one of the first bullet heavens you could give it a pass, but the fact that basically all its competitors have more depth is not a good sign. The fact they are already talking about a paid expansion while the game is so barebones is NOT a good sign. Its a very affordable game, but honestly Steam is too competitive, you can get some of the greatest indie games of all time bursting with content for a similar price, it just needs more, a lot more, so much so that it will be multiple months if not years before I can recommend this game.

Pretty fun rougelike. Terrible dating simulator. 7/10 the blob doesn't even know I'm alive

In its current form, it's fun for a few hours, but it feels very shallow. There isn't any variety in the enemies, and the evolution paths feel very similar. The result is that every run feels the same.

It is very fun. But the game needs more base content for replayability rather than just standard difficulty scaling. The game as it stands is fun, but there are builds that completely outshine others in terms of power scaling. There should be more evolution options, variety, balance and content in the base game before you release paid DLCs. The enemies with the turtle shell ability being completely invulnerable until they're already attacking basically make them an enemy to avoid completely rather than strategically attack. You will basically encounter all available enemy types in the game in your first run. With a game centered around evolving and different species abilities, why aren't the enemies (especially the alphas) capable of having randomized mutations to mix up the gameplay? I enjoy the game, but there is way too much untapped potential to have paid DLC already in the roadmap before the basic game has even tapped into its own mechanics.

It's definitely fun and imaginative, but after a few runs with each different playstyle, it gets pretty boring. There's not enough to do for all the runs to end up feeling basically the same