The upcoming underwater Soulslike game Another Crab’s Treasure is dedicated to portraying many different aspects of the ocean. From colorful coral reefs to the darkest depths of the trenches, protagonist Kril will have quite a vast and varied world to journey through as he seeks to recover his shell, clear his debt, and save his home tide pool. Aggro Crab, the developer of Another Crab’s Treasure, knew pretty much from the start that they wanted to make an underwater game. This vision led to an undersea setting that was cohesive and fun to explore while also bringing in that trademark Dark Souls difficulty.
Game Rant recently spoke to Another Crab’s Treasure creative director/narrative lead Caelan Pollock, as well as studio head/art director Nick Kaman, about the creation process behind the game’s underwater world. They discussed how protagonist Kril drew inspiration from 3D platformer mascot characters, how Another Crab’s Treasure differentiates itself from the infamous “water levels” of The Legend of Zelda and other series, the mysterious Gunk that threatens Kril’s ocean home, and much more. The duo also shared a fascinating story about the very first map ever designed for the game. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Underwater Was Always The Plan
Q: Was Another Crab’s Treasure always planned to be an underwater game? Did you ever consider any alternative settings, like a beach or anything like that?
POLLOCK: We’ve talked a lot about the setting, and there are out-of-water mechanics in the game. They’re used pretty sparingly because underwater turned out to be a bit more fun, as far as you have the ability to swim a little bit. There’s a lot of this sort of fake-y, “SpongeBob-y” underwater physics in the game. When that’s the base of the game, making you do a lot of out-of-water platforming didn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t think we ever really considered it being an entirely out-of-water game. I think what we’re interested in is the sea creatures. You can fight down there in the ocean a lot easier than on the beach, right?
Q: How has the underwater setting grown or changed through development?
POLLOCK: I kind of want you to talk about the map.
KAMAN: The OG? Yeah, sure. I mean, this was always the premise. The map that Caelan is referring to is a map I drew eight years ago that says Another Crab’s Treasure on it. And it’s the world map of this game that I wanted to make back then. Obviously, since then, the game has gone through a lot of changes. When I first thought of it, I was going to make it a mobile game, and now that we’re actually working on it, it’s a Soulslike, right?
That being said, most of the locations on the map made it into the game in some way. I’m going to post them up on the Internet at some point, but I’ll have to blur half of it out. These locations that I drew eight years ago are still present in the game and I would say they constitute spoilers.
In that sense, the areas that we wanted to explore in an underwater setting have been known for a while. For example, we’ve known we want a big city in a coral reef and the deep, dark depths of the ocean. I think we’ve revealed already that we’re going there at some point. But yeah, we’ve known what biomes there would be. Let’s say that.
POLLOCK: There hasn’t been much of a change if you look at the map. Not everything’s completely the same, but it’s very easy to say: This is the parallel to that area. This changed in this way. It’s pretty easy to see “A to B” of that original design vs. where we are now.
Another Crab’s Treasure Is Different From The Average Water Level
Q: We’re very excited about the underwater creatures and environments. Were there any you wanted to include in the game but couldn’t, for whatever reason?
KAMAN: The only level we cut was the level that was going to be inside a whale that swallows you. It’d be kind of like the level in Ocarina of Time when you go into the big guy, Jabu-Jabu. It’d be like that, except he’s eating a ton of trash, and it’s really sad and gross. That’s kind of the name of the game with Another Crab’s Treasure, right? But yeah, we just ran out of time.
Q: It’s funny you mentioned Zelda. Water levels are pretty infamous in gaming. You know, the Ocarina of Time Water Temple – it’s still a nightmare. So when designing an entire game set underwater, did “the infamous water level” concept stand out to you at all during development?
POLLOCK: I feel like a lot of the reason people hate water levels is that they tend to mess up your control scheme. When we’re entirely underwater, and we’re just focused on whatever physics we decide feels good to experience underwater, I don’t feel like it’s nearly as much of a problem. You also don’t swim vertically in this game. Your swim is just like a flutter, so it’s not really like it’s an underwater game in the sense of “Oh, this is like Subnautica.” It’s a platformer first and foremost, so the water physics of it all kind of operates on… SpongeBob logic, like I said. I consider that to be the big thing that people find frustrating about being under the water, so I’m not too worried about it.
KAMAN: If anything, I think people will find our out-of-water sections more frustrating.
POLLOCK: Yeah, we have the opposite. The dry sections.
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Gunk Threatens Kril and the Entire Underwater World
Q: Could you tell us about the society of Another Crab’s Treasure and some of the key characters? I understand Kril is in a lot of debt.
POLLOCK: When Kril starts the game, the story kicks off because the tide pool that he lives in has been taken over by the Duchess of Slack Tide. Slack Tide is this sort of medieval duchy, essentially, that is claiming territory around itself and constantly expanding and building up new sand castles. There’s this large sand castle in the center, which is where the Duchess lives. Because of that, he now has to pay taxes on that land, which he never did before. But then, the journey takes him to New Carcinia, which is this much larger, bustling coral reef city, which is more along the lines of this industrial revolution. There are these naturalistic villages in the game, and there are places that are like a company town. There are a lot of different areas that are all based on different ways different people come together to do society, different types of settlements. I don’t really know that there are two that are super alike. All of these different spaces coexisting, and sometimes not coexisting, was a very interesting part of the lore for me.
KAMAN: I would add that it’s important to consider that all of these societies have only sprung up since the trash started “falling from the sky.” They’re kind of using the trash as a vehicle to jump-start industrialization and society in general, and you’re kind of seeing the cascading effects of that throughout the game.
Q: How did the team approach designing Kril? How did he change? What’s his character and personality like?
POLLOCK: I don’t remember offhand what the visual design process of Kril was. Do we have a bunch of rejected concepts or did you just kind of draw him?
KAMAN: It’s just vibes. I’ve drawn versions of Kril that are more hermit crab-like. I did a lot of sketches, actually.
POLLOCK: In particular, it took us a while to settle on how his legs worked.
KAMAN: Yeah, like how many he should have.
POLLOCK: A bipedal sort of character is much easier to read. That makes sense to people controlling a platformer and gave our animator less agony. So, eventually, we settled on this design where some of his legs are in the back holding up his shell. Like, that’s just kind of how this sort of more humanized hermit crab chooses to move around.
KAMAN: At the end of the day, it was important to kind of get across that “scrimblo bimblo” 3D platformer mascot-like character archetype. That was kind of what the goal was. Iterating on that concept, like: how do we get this little crab guy to read as a Banjo-Kazooie type guy?
Q: Could you tell me a little bit more about the Gunk and its impact on story and gameplay?
POLLOCK: The Gunk is, essentially, this substance that has the appearance of crude oil that is spreading across the ocean. And then, as time progresses, it sort of becomes clear that this isn’t just a physical substance, but is also spreading through people’s minds. So – I don’t want to get too into what the allegory of it all means to me, because I think that actually is something people will experience for themselves later in the game. It’s not exclusively just a representation of physical pollution. It’s this mental deterioration that’s taking place across everyone as their world starts to crumble.
[END]
Another Crab’s Treasure
Aggro Crab’s Another Crab’s Treasure provides a maritime twist on the Souls-like formula. Using the trash around him as armor and weapons, Kril must travel across an underwater kingdom while fighting off all sorts of impressive threats.
- Released
- April 25, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Aggro Crab
- Publisher(s)
- Aggro Crab
- Genre(s)
- Adventure , Soulslike , RPG
- Engine
- Unity
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence
