Video Game / Another Crab’s Treasure

A soulslike adventure set in a crumbling underwater world.

Another Crab's Treasure is a 2024 Soulslike RPG video game released by Seattle-based studio Aggro Crab.

You play as not a desperate waste from a dying world, but instead a humble and timid Hermit Crab by the name of Kril; who wakes up to find that his tidal pool has been annexed by a local despot known as the Duchy of Slacktide, and eventually finds his shell taken away from him in an attempt to get him to pay his back taxes; both things he has absolutely no idea about. Left vulnerable and afraid, Kril must pluck up courage and voyage into the deeper ocean beyond his tide pool, find his shell, and return home. But he has a lot to learn about the many, many dangers of the open ocean for a little hermit crab...and what the world above has done to it.

Unlike a lot of Soulsborne games, Another Crab's Treasure is actually a much more Lighter and Softer game with a more overtly comedic, satirical tone to its story and characters than its contemporaries, with gameplay and story elements that wouldn't seem out of place in games like SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and some combat elements that call to mind later releases of the The Legend of Zelda series. That doesn't mean it's any less tough, however, and its central gimmick revolves around the rapid use and recycling of various bits of ocean garbage to replace Kril's lost shell; each giving him different abilities based on whatever he's managed to scrounge up as a replacement home as he battles the many hopelessly insane crustaceous denizens of the deep.

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Another Crab's Treasure contains examples of:

• Anyone Can Die: As Lighter and Softer as is by genre standards, it's still a Soulsborne. By the end of the story, the only three major characters still confirmed alive are Kril, Tortellini, and Nenma. Every other major male character is dead, and it's unknown if Chitan survived her wounds from Praya Dubia's control and her duel with Kril. And who knows who died in Trash Island's impact on New Carcinia.
• Arc Symbol: A reoccurring motif in the story is the Spiral, described as an inevitable process where the world begins on the edge of an enormous whirl that travels towards the center until it eventually ends before starting over. This is represented visually both in the Big Bad, the Praya Dubia, which even identifies as the Spiral itself, but also in the Perfect Whorl, whose name literally refers to its spiralling shape.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Even though he himself doesn't live long enough to attempt to benefit, Firth's goal of dropping all of Trash Island at once on New Carcinia goes off without a hitch.
• Bittersweet Ending: With a heavy emphasis on "Bitter," almost borderlining a straight Downer Ending. The bad guys are all dead by Kril's claws and he ultimately reclaims his shell by brute force, but Kril loses both of his mentors, blames himself for destroying the Perfect Whorl in his fight with Firth and burying a hopelessly naive New Carcina in trash thus speeding up the city's inevitable demise with their trash-based economy, and his whole worldview has soured to the point that he even questions if his shell was worth this much trouble. But at the same time, Kril decides to try to do some good in the world and continues exploring the ocean to see whom he can help, starting with donating his shell to a far more helpless hermit crab.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Enemies encountered attack because they've been driven mad by pollution, gaining pitch black eyes as a sign of their corruption. Kril notices the strange eye color in his first enemy encounter, but before he acquires a weapon to defend himself.
• Capitalism Is Bad: The game's setting uses this trope on two levels. Humans' consumerist hubris has polluted the oceans with their garbage, forming the game's central economy, while sea creatures with capitalistic ideals like Firth and Roland are presented as villains whose plans and actions endanger and kill the other characters.
• Crapsaccharine World: While it is much sillier than most Soulsborne games, with puns everywhere and just about every person with dialogue cracking some form of joke here or there, it's still a game that is sharply pointed at how badly the oceans are polluted and what it's doing to the creatures that live in it; with trash floating or having sunk to the seafloor everywhere, and just about every enemy you face has been driven hopelessly insane by direct contact with pollutants, or having some piece of refuse plaguing it in some way.
• Colony Drop: Firth's plan after attaining the Perfect Whorl is to drop Trash Island onto New Carcinia and create an economy where everyone can have as much trash and microplastics as they want. Due to being blinded by his rage, Kril's final attack actually accelerates the process and leaves the city buried in trash.
• The Corruption: The Gunk is more than just mere pollution, it’s also a virus that spreads to every sea creature, making them into nothing more than a mindless husk of their former self.
• Cosmic Horror Reveal:
  • Before Praya Dubia is fully revealed, it telepathically speaks to Kril once he enters the Unfathom. It calls itself "This ocean's only God", and casts itself in the same role as the Spiral, a metaphysical concept representing the end of the world. Even after it is shown to be a giant siphonophore, the apocalyptic consequences of its actions coupled with its spooky deep-sea appearance nudge it near to, but not fully into Eldritch Abomination territory.
  • The true Eldritch Abomination of the whole story is, of course, humanity. The crabs never understand or question where the trash that pollutes their reef comes from, and only a few seem to realize that the madness-inducing gunk is connected to it. None of them even have a concept of what a human being is, let alone that what they consider priceless treasure at best and apocalyptic at worst, is merely humanity's discarded and forgotten waste.
• Cutting the Knot: How Kril ultimately gets his shell back at the end of the game. After Prawnathan negs out on his deal with Kril (since the whole thing was an Uriah Gambit on Prawnathan's part to get rid of Kril), Prawnathan attempts to tell Krill a.k.a., the guy who just shattered Trash Island all across New Carcina) to get lost. Krill kills him and simply takes his shell back, ending the game.
• Despair Event Horizon: Anyone infected by the Gunk will slowly lose any hope or joy they might have had, lamenting how meaningless their pursuits were before they become raving monsters who can only say "worthless" over and over again. Given that it was created by a Straw Nihilist, it's only natural that the victims take traits from the creator.
• Easier Than Easy: The Accessibility settings are genuinely very good, but at the very bottom of that particular menu is an option that says "Give Kril a Gun", which does exactly what it says it does; it gives Kril the shell of an otherwise accurately sized handgun and effectively trivializes the game from there.
• Functional Magic: Called "Umami", it is only available to hermit crabs; who can use it to augment their offense, heal themselves, and unlock new abilities.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Bosses, Elite Mooks and certain enemies will have purple glowing eyes.
• Green Aesop: The game none too subtly jabs at microplastic and petrochemical pollution of the world's oceans, as well as the greedy corporations who facilitate it for the sake of short-term profits.
• Madness Mantra: Being infested by the Gunk causes a crab to realize all the trash they surround themselves with is "Worthless" and utterly transient.
• Magic Knight: Along with martial skill, Kril discovers an affinity for sensing and channeling umami to cast spells.
• Money Is Experience Points: Microplastics, the currency of the game, is used both for leveling up and buying items.
• Nervous Wreck: Kril, appropriately. He is usually the smallest creature on screen aside from helper characters, and the lack of a shell doesn't help the poor kid.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Called Gunk, this toxic oil-like sludge will strip you of your hope, your sanity, and even your sentience. Enemies infected with it even weaponize it as Bad Black Barf.
• Pardon My Klingon: While the game does contain mild "normal" swears, what would normally be vulgar swears are replaced with undersea equivalents like "coddammit", "oh shuck", and "crab". The characters are somewhat sparing when it comes to the former, but throw the latter around like nobody's business.
• Polluted Wasteland: This is what the trash mine of Flotsam Vale is, what the Expired Grove is in the process of becoming, and what may happen to all of New Carcinia after Trash Island is dropped on top of it.
• Power Copying: Defeating bosses gains Kril access to a special move that they used called Adaptations.
• Precision F-Strike: While sometimes censored or euphemized, the game makes use of this trope to make a point about how its adorable, cartoony exterior doesn't make it a children's game.
  • Played for Laughs in the opening cutscene, which is framed like a nature documentary and uses this trope in a similar manner to True Facts.
  "What word comes to mind when you think of the Earth? [...] Others might say the world is 'hateful' or 'evil' or 'unstable' or 'full of s--t'."
  • Parodied with Kril calling the final boss a “mussel shucker” before landing the final blow.
  • Played straight when Inkerton calls Roland a "bastard" upon defeat.
• Pungeon Master: Just about every location, and friendly NPC.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: While things look bleak with the oceans polluted and the Gunk unaddressed, there is still a chance for a comeback to restore things to how they were. And if nothing else, Kril is still out there fighting the good fight to protect the people of New Carcinia and bring some good back to the ocean.
• Ridiculous Repossession: What starts off the entire plot; a loan shark comes to Kril's tide pool and demands he immediately pay ten tides worth of back taxes to a government he didn't even know existed, and when Kril can't pay the loan shark immediately seizes Kril's shell and runs off, not even bothering with discussing an extension or alternative pay plan.
• Scavenged Punk: The ocean is filled with litter that's made its way down to the seafloor, and quite a lot of it is used to form the underwater civilization, from buildings made from cardboard boxes to roads made with old receipts, and microplastics as the dominant form of currency. Garbage is also used as weaponry by Kril and many enemies, and makes up the vast majority of shells you can use.
• Shout-Out: Tons. Most notably, when you get to the reef, you can buy a costume for Kril that turns him into a dead ringer for Mr. Krabs (which is ironic given his role and personality).
• Shown Their Work: Almost all the enemies in the game are based on real species of marine animals, so much so that some Visual Puns rely on the player knowing that. For example, the boss Heikea doesn't merely unsheath its weaponized chopsticks from their wrapper like a samurai would unsheath a katana because it's cool, but is based on the Heikegani, also known as the samurai crab.
• Straw Nihilist: The Praya Dubia, who is revealed to be the one responsible for the Gunk infestation, show shades of this, talking to Kril about the inevitable destruction of the ocean and how there's no point in saving it.
• Subverted Kids' Show: In video game form. The game's aesthetics look like a cutesy cross between SpongeBob SquarePants and Splatoon and make it look like a typical 3D mascot platformer at first glance, but it's a Teen-rated affair set in a Crapsaccharine World with overt Capitalism Is Bad themes, with the mechanics and difficulty of Dark Souls and high levels of violence. As such, it's one of the few examples that doesn't rely on shock humor or exaggerated horror to prove a point about not being a "kiddy" work.
• Teach Him Anger: This seems to be Praya Dubia's plans for Kril. It hoped that by making Kril see how awful the ocean has become, he'd become so angry he'd willingly join it in destroying the world. While Kril did become angry as planned, he still remained somewhat hopeful,leading to Praya Dubia renouncing Kril and trying to kill him.
• Technicolor Magic: The supernatural power of Umami is associated with violet energy.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Nobody's happy to find out the third and final piece of the map is guarded by none other than Pagurus, the Ravenous.
• Unanthropomorphic Transformation: As crabs get corrupted by pollution they slowly start to lose their sentience, no longer walking upright on two legs and gaining bestial black eyes, before they eventually stop speaking altogether and turn into fully animalistic killers.
• Weird Currency: Microplastics. You can see larger bits of it floating in the environment just about anywhere in town areas, and it's picked up or broken down from all sorts of trash floating in the water and found throughout the game world. It even counts as In-Universe for Kril, since the heartkelp bulbs he used to use as currency are actively laughed off by the Loan Shark.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: The treasure that Kril and co. spend half the game seeking is a giant chest filled with cash — which is completely worthless as far as the trash economy is concerned.
• Xanatos Gambit: Prawnathan's deal with Kril to trade the latter's shell back for the Treasure of Captain Clawbeard practically screams this and Uriah Gambit. If Kril gets himself killed going after the treasure, Prawnathan's free to sell the latter's sell at his leisure. In the off-chance Kril succeeds, Prawnathan's rich. Unfortunately for him, his greed backfires on him when he tries to neg out on his end of the bargain, and Kril has had enough.