Dark Souls-inspired Another Crab’s Treasure is the first crustacean Soulslike

Indie developer Aggro Crab unveiled its next game, a Dark Souls-inspired adventure called Another Crab’s Treasure, in which players will battle as a hermit crab trying to reclaim its shell, during Nintendo’s Indie World stream on Wednesday. In lieu of your standard seashell for bodily protection, however, that hermit crab will scavenge armor in the form of cans, cups, and whatever jetsam it can claim from the sea … or from the corpses of its enemies.

Like Aggro Crab’s debut game Going Under, a satirical take on the dungeon crawler set in the “cursed ruins of failed tech startups” where office junk served as weapons, Another Crab’s Treasure will goof on the “Soulslike” genre. (That is the brand of action games inspired by FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne.) Aggro Crab jokingly called its new game a “Shellslike” during its reveal, which showed a heroic hermit crab battling other crustaceans armed with, and decked out in, manmade sea trash.

Another Crab’s Treasure will maintain the challenging difficulty of Soulslike games, its creators says, as players battle ocean fauna with forks, knives, chopsticks, and over 50 potential scavenged items that can serve as temporary shells. Crabs’ built-in weapons (pinchy claws) and natural strafing abilities make them the perfect animal for a combat-heavy game.

Another Crab’s Treasure will be released sometime in 2023, and will be available on Nintendo Switch and PC.