The Arcane Children, a online game collective from Los Angeles, have a manifesto that I take into consideration on a regular basis, however notably once I discover artwork that surprises me, or approaches conventional codecs in new and thrilling methods. The second line merely states: “The quickest solution to the reality is a joke.” One other Crab’s Treasure, the second providing from indie Australian studio Aggro Crab, is stuffed with fact and jokes – and one thing else, one thing rarer, too.
One other Crab’s Treasure is ostensibly a combat-oriented journey sport, during which you play a tiny hermit crab whose shell has been stolen. It’s essential to discover the depths of the ocean to discover a solution to retrieve it from the Mortgage Shark, so you’ll be able to return the wee crab to his peaceable life within the tide swimming pools on the shore. Unexpectedly for such a welcoming, colourful-looking sport, it has intense, advanced, Darkish Souls-style battling – and the juxtaposition is actually refreshing. Our hero, Krill, could solely be armed with a tiny fork, however with just a little focus and observe he can face down the big, grotesque crustaceans he comes up towards time and time once more.
Instead of his lacking shell, he can put on any variety of objects he finds on the ocean ground as safety: soda cans, Rubik’s cubes, Lego blocks, and one thing that appears suspiciously like a Scrub Daddy sponge. In the event you, like me, require a problem adjustment to the fight every so often, you’ll be able to choose the choice “Give Krill a Gun” from the accessibility part. His shell instantly turns into an infinite, disproportionate, however very helpful handgun that one-shot kills enemies on sight. When you’re achieved, you’ll be able to go away the weapon within the sand and transfer on. There’ll at all times be one other object to make use of as a shell. The panorama Krill lives in is a treasure trove of human castoffs. Plastic, so far as the attention can see.
One Crab’s Treasure could be very explicitly a sport about air pollution, however the topic of environmental decay is approached cleverly and with stunning levity. The crabs that we meet completely love their trash. They put on silica packets as clothes, crisp packets as hats. Maps on the again of cereal packing containers make them buried treasure – however when confronted with precise {dollars}, they don’t know what they’re. The forex within the sport is microplastics. Plastic is king, rubbish guidelines the world. Each piece of trash we encounter is useful to us.
This tactic – utilizing the plastic that people forged off as probably the most worthwhile factor to the creatures below the ocean – is a implausible purple herring. We’re complicit – isn’t this plastic nice, isn’t it hilarious? We’re continuously and cleverly distracted by good visible jokes. The darkish coronary heart of the story actually reveals itself in a staggering and stunning closing act – whereas all Krill needs is to retrieve his shell and go house, can he ever actually return after what he has seen? That is how Aggro Crab is delivering us the reality, hidden in a makeshift shell within the form of a rubber duck.
One other Crab’s Treasure holds quite a lot of highly effective qualities without delay. There’s satisfying, maddening fight; difficult and compelling platforming; exploration; and, crucially, a bizarre and distinct id and tone. The colors are brilliant and vivid, the jokes are foolish and prolific, however in some way the vital factor that this sport is attempting to say is loud and clear all through. It’s no small job to strategy the scary subject of our oceans’ demise whereas additionally having a riot alongside the best way. It shouldn’t work – however it does. Positive, we wish Krill to get his shell, to go house. However we’re additionally requested to consider what complacency means – what hiding from actuality means.
Video games like One other Crab’s Treasure don’t come alongside fairly often, however Aggro Crab has type right here – its earlier title, Going Underneath, was a brilliant, Company Memphis dungeon crawler. It skewered the world of startups, tech and labour exploitation with the identical brilliant, present humour that’s so efficient on this newest sport, and in addition had unforgiving, compelling fight to supply gamers.
Each video games are sharp works of satire and each are deeply political. Aggro Crab has achieved a implausible job of telling tales with big integrity, whereby there are such a lot of jokes to take care of that when the reality lands, it lands onerous. So, whereas I spent the overwhelming majority of One other Crab’s Treasure main Krill across the ocean ground with an empty espresso pod on his again, once I pulled again and turned the TV off, I out of the blue noticed the amount of plastic in my house for what it truly is. Not treasure. Removed from it. And the place will all of it go? What is going to it turn out to be?
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One other Crab’s Treasure will not be a piece of escapism – speaking crabs and shrimp apart. The sport attracts our consideration to one thing uncomfortable, and it does this so cleverly that we hardly discover, till it’s too late.
