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This Cuddly-Hermit-Crab Game Plays Like Dark Souls

Another Crab’s Treasure has the secret sauce of challenging combat plus environmental storytelling — and also you play as a cute little crab.

Another Crab’s Treasure incorporates all the fundamental trappings of a soulslike, including exploration-based gameplay, limited healing items, level-up currency that disappears upon death, and save points (“bonfires”) where players respawn and restock their loadout. Where much video game combat can devolve into mindless button mashing, Another Crab’s Treasure and Dark Souls give players a sense of agency, with the limited durability of each shell encouraging them to go into fights with different equipment, abilities and strategies. And by the time you enter the final stretch of the campaign, Another Crab’s Treasure evolves into something darker and more profound than the innocent Saturday morning cartoon it originally presents itself as, delivering a message about the cost of environmental pollution that not only contrasts with the game’s jolly aesthetics, but is also genuinely haunting and tear jerking.

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