Dozens of games were streamed during Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase earlier this month, but only one featured a crab going off in search of treasure, sword in claw, and tackling the underwater world. The Switch game in question, Another Crab Treasure, sounded perfectly niche, but its developers at Aggro Crab touted it as “sold”. They were only half joking.
“Previously, Aggro Crab released Pass under and it didn’t make us rich, so this time we’re selling and giving people what they want: crabs,” said one of the designers, Caelan Pollock, during the Nintendo showcase. The studio describes Another Crab Treasure like a 3D soul in which players progress by fighting other crabs and stealing their junk to use as armor.
The punchline was the team’s tongue-in-cheek tongue-in-cheek setup for their latest reveal, and yet it also contained a bit of truth. “‘Sell out’ is jokingly said in our announcement video, but we really hope this game becomes more mainstream and brings new fans into the fold,” Pollock said. Kotaku in an instant message.
Soulslikes can be big sellers, and Crabs are a perfect vehicle for that Steam-bait formula, it’s thought. “When I say ‘mainstream’, I really mean it’s what’s hot right now!” said Pollock. “Ring of Elden has managed to bring a ton of new attention to the genre, both in the form of new players and many people who would love to play but are held back by its difficulty or oppressive atmosphere.
Pass under was a 2020 roguelike about interning at a Soylent-themed startup and working your way through the absurd and mind-numbing excesses of capitalism. It was fun, it was clever, but it didn’t become a huge breakthrough like some slick indie roguelikes have. He found a publisher in Team17 and struck a Game Pass deal as well. Eventually the money ran out and the future DLC had to be canceled.
“I want to recognize that even having a game funded and released, let alone this game working well enough to propel us into a second project, puts us Good among the luckiest 5% of indie developers,” said Pollock Kotaku. At the same time, having managed to “succeed” as an indie game developer, Aggro Crab now maintains a team of over 10 people, and the goalposts have moved.
“We had to move on to the next big thing if we wanted to keep the lights on,” he said. “And we really hope it’s next. wholesale thing. Another Crab Treasure is a huge step forward in the ambition of Pass underand we want to prove that Aggro Crab is capable of expanding beyond our niche and creating a game with real reach.
In the middle of ongoing debates find out if subscription games like Xbox Game Pass are long term sustainable, the glut of great games flooding storefronts like Steam and the Switch eShop each month has also raised the stakes for discoverability and success. “There are so many good quality games on the market that it’s hard to rack up the ‘hype’ for all games these days,” said GameDiscoverCo author Simon Carless. written to GamesIndustry.biz yesterday. “This is an independent and separate issue from Game Pass.”
Pollock hopes Another Crab Treasure will “sell” where Pass under couldn’t in part by capitalizing on the genre’s popularity with innovative difficulty settings. Aggro Crab is looking for that elusive middle ground between making a game accessible to everyone while preserving high-level Soulslike gameplay for those who are so interested. But the team isn’t ready to say more about that yet, he said. The game is currently slated for release on the Switch in 2023, and with private investment through game funding company Kowloon Nights, the studio has the funding it needs until then.
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