Overview
What is Everything is Crab?
Everything is Crab is a survival simulation game where players speedrun the course of evolutionary history to become the most well-adjusted, mutated organism within their evolutionary niche by eating or outlasting the competition.
Borrowing game mechanics from standard horde survival games, Everything is Crab lets players decide their evolutionary traits and build toward an apex existence.
Everything is Crab features:
⚫︎ 21 ascension levels of increasing difficulty
⚫︎ Dedicated challenge mode with 7 tiers and 13 challenges
⚫︎ 54 unique creatures to encounter and outlast
⚫︎ 101 unique evolutions with branching paths
⚫︎ 21 genetic modifiers with splicing mechanics
⚫︎ 101 achievements across 4 categories
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Epic Games |
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| $9.99 | |||||
Everything is Crab Review: Another Crab Game to Treasure
All Roads Lead to Crab
"Crab" certainly wasn’t a sub-genre of video games that I expected to exist, yet here we are with titles like Another Crab’s Treasure, Crab God, and now, Everything is Crab, to fill out the Soulslike, Strategy, and Action Roguelite niches, respectively. It’s certainly odd, but not unwelcome, in much the same way our decapod friends would be in Grand Central Station.
That said, these three games have nothing in common apart from the crustacean infestation in their code, so we’re snapping claws in the dark for Everything is Crab. I managed to get my pincers on it early and take it for a spin down the evolutionary tree, and let me tell you, it’s quite the trip.
Not to jump the natural order of a review, but I can say from the get-go that this game is great overall, if a bit underwhelming in some areas. Like some undercooked seafood, you’re gonna like most of it, and maybe you won’t be able to stomach others. There’s much to evolve from here, so let’s just pick our first evolution and start.
What? An Amorphous Blob is Evolving!
Let’s begin with the game’s story and setting. It has neither, unless you count some random stretch of grass and the natural process of evolution as a story and setting, respectively. The game is very simple in this regard, just throwing you into the action of surviving the wilderness as an amorphous blob of flesh.
Whether that’s a good or bad quality of its make is up to you, though I’d consider it rather detrimental to the game’s overall potential. Comparing this game to its most appropriate thematic counterpart, Spore, it doesn’t have the same impact of a whole planet and species as the latter.
Sure, the value of both can be derived from how you shape your evolutionary history in specific environments, but that’s a stretch I’m not willing to consider worthy of a higher score. That said, it’s not a bother, just a case of wasted potential that hard limits what the game can achieve. As you will see further into this review, there’s much to laud this game for, if not these.
Branching Paths in the Evolutionary Tree
Moving on to gameplay, Everything is Crab operates on the widespread scientific meme of all things eventually evolving into crabs, a process officially called Carcinization. Though that’s a gross oversimplification of a complex evolutionary process, the meme itself is easy to understand, and the gameplay reflects this simple yet fun concept.
Everything is Crab splices the DNA of action roguelites with horde survival games, creating an environment where you have to hunt for your own food and grow stronger through a selection of helpful evolutions. Following an EXP and level-up system borrowed from the latter, except the EXP is food you need to fight other organisms over, Everything is Crab also incorporates a means for you to "fight" for survival.
It’s not like PopCap’s Feeding Frenzy games in the way that you just eat and get bigger. No, you need to fight, adapt, and overcome other creatures who are evolving at the same rate as you, killing them over found food or hunting them down as your main food source. They will fight back, so naturally, you’ve got weapons of your own.
Horns, claws, poison spit, quills, tentacles, shells; you name a weapon, odds are, Everything is crab has an evolutionary equivalent for you to equip through your journey. Some help with fighting, others give you stats, while others, still, just let you eat faster, more efficiently, or from farther away.
You only attack when you want to and have free rein over what builds you want to construct over the course of a game, so it’s not a horde survivor in that way. It’s closer to Hades, though your godly weapons are swapped out for the potential for more arms.
I love this. I loved Spore for the freedom it gave me to create entire species, and though this game technically lacks the same level of complexity, it’s a veritable lite version that’ll have you by the throat before long.
See, the evolutions, just like in real life, branch out and manifest on your person. Picking something like a Beak wouldn’t just give your blob a beak, but it would also open the path for a sharp, eagle-like beak, or a thin, stork-like beak, each with its own benefits and playstyle alterations.
It’s a lot of things to play through, with no two runs ever being the same, which is what you’d want from an action roguelite in the first place, paired well with the dopamine loop of a survival shooter. The best part is that all that I’ve mentioned so far is at a base level, and Everything is Crab has 20+ difficulty ramps on top of that, with challenge levels to boot.
Challenging Mother Nature Made Fun
Any fun you gain from this game’s easiest mode is made more fun (or less, if you’re not that good at action roguelites) by the Pressure Levels, DNA Splices, and Challenge levels. The Pressure Levels add compounding modifiers with each increasing level, from 1 to 25. Think Slay the Spire’s Ascensions, except everything is about crabs.
The DNA Splices, meanwhile, are run modifiers that change the fundamentals of each attempt, be it by making some evolutions guaranteed, granting bonuses for not having evolutions, and so forth. You can splice two of these together, so have fun mixing once you’ve unlocked a healthy selection of them.
Lastly are the challenge levels, which are unlocked by reaching certain pressure levels in a run. These are wacky versions of the base game that range from "Oops, All Desert!" to making everything but you the size of a blue whale.
All three of these comprise the game’s additional content, and I’m very thankful they exist, because even if the base game is fun, it’s too simple to comprise the entirety of Everything is Crab. Throw in the bestiary of all your previous runs and logs for all evolutions and enemies, and you’ve got the accoutrements to a game you can get lost in.
So, that’s everything about this crab’s gameplay, but how’s it looking? Well, like a crab, first and foremost, but as we get into the game’s visuals and sound, the lost potential I alluded to early in this review rears its ugly head once more.
Simple Pixel Art with Competently Exhausting Audio
Everything is Crab’s presentation is one of its weaker points, second only to its lack of story, notable setting, and characters. Though I can excuse the latter set of mutations for their lack of necessity and the game’s charm despite it, it’s hard to see past the game’s inadequate visuals and, frankly, grating and repetitive music.
There just isn’t much variety there, though I can see the appeal of its pixel art. I think something higher-resolution that keeps the same aesthetic would capture the innate wildness of rampant evolution better. More bits, essentially. I want to see how crazy my creature can truly get, and I need more pixels for that to happen.
As for the game’s sound, including its SFX and music, there isn’t any variety to speak of, such that it becomes tiring to listen to and better to play on mute before long. I’ve grown to loathe the sound of the evolution selection screen whenever it comes up, which is a darn shame because it does very often. I think a different sound for that altogether, or none at all, would’ve been the right move.
Not Golden, But Treasured Nonetheless
So, we’ve reached the apex of this review, and we look down at the crab by our feet to see what it’s grown up to be. In short, it’s an imperfect creation, as evolution tends to be. There are a lot of things it could’ve been, some that it should’ve been, and we’re left with what it is: a game that’s fun to play again and again, but not fun to look at, hear, or experience for its story.
It’s a hyper-specialized environment of challenge that makes itself more and more rewarding to beat, but only if you can similarly conquer the quirks of its form. I like this game. I treasure it despite its shortcomings. There are things it does well, and thing sit doesn’t do so well. It’s a mixed bag veering toward great more than it does awful, but one thing remains certain: Everything is Crab.
Is Everything is Crab Worth It?
So Cheap, Its Imperfections Don’t Really Matter
This game has a few quirks more than a sideways evolution, but it’s so darn cheap that you can ignore all of it. What’s missed potential and mutable sound problems to a greatly replayable, majorly challenging action roguelite experience for the reasonable price of $10?
That’s right, it’s nothing. For a very, very low price of entry, this game also has great replay value, so it’s more than a bargain; this is a steal. I don’t know what kind of crab dinner ten bucks is gonna get you, but I can assure you that this game will have that beat.
FAQ
How Do I Unlock Challenge Levels in Everything is Crab?
Challenge Levels are unlocked by completing a run on each challenge level tier’s requisite Pressure Level.
What Are Apex Cretures in Everything is Crab?
Apex creatures are enemies with improved stats that provide bigger food rewards when killed. All apex creatures tend to be bigger in size, have some modifier to their movement, attacks, and stats, and are denoted by a gold star above their health bar.
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