If you’ve ever wanted to live a version of your life where you spend a bunch of time just eating things you find on the ground and then randomly evolving, then good news, because Everything Is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelike is here to fill your very specific niche.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Everything Is Crab is a Survivors-like, given the general presentation, but it’s not. There are no auto-attacks here, and it’s all timing and moving and dodging instead. Your aim is still to survive, but that’s about where the similarities end in terms of gameplay.
As you run around attacking creatures, they’ll turn into food for you to eat, and doing so earns you experience. Every time you level up you get to mutate slightly, with new attacks and new traits on offer. Some of these are things like health regen, some let you eat more food faster, and some work together to let you just obliterate a run with no issues. Go for elephant trunk, body slam, health and size boosts and you’re golden.
Just be careful what you pick, because some parts can exclude others – if you go for the antlers you won’t be able to get the horns, for example, or if you go for tentacles then you can kiss legs goodbye. It means that you’re constantly picking and fine-tuning your build as you go, and you get to choose different evolution paths, like becoming a shelled creature with wings, multiple eyes, and an alpha mentality. It’s all deeply silly, and seeing what you end up as is always a delight.
Each run lasts around 20 minutes, with multiple bosses to fight along the way along with different things to find to either fight off alpha enemies or choose from different upgrades. It means that it’s pretty easy to just hop into things and do a run before leaving your house to try and evolve a little bit yourself. The only thing I found a little irksome was that some of the runs end up feeling very similar despite the options available. I guess the name sort of hints at that.
There are a lot of different evolutions to choose from, both active and passive, but it all sort of coalesces and blends together across a lot of runs. While attacks might have different properties, many of the early ones are just “hit thing in a specific direction.” I wish there were a few more truly wild options to choose from sooner, as it can feel very samey after a fair few runs, especially if you can’t get a good build going.
