Crab Champions News

Remember that incredibly goofy dance music video with the dancing crabs that everyone loved back in like 2018? People did a bunch of memes of it. Anyway, the artist who made that, Noisestorm, made a roguelike third-person action shooter about crabs. It's called Crab Champions, and though it released into early access on April 1st, 2023 it's anything but a joke. It's actually kind of... good?..
Read more.

As the Early Access release drops on April 1st, I thought it would be a good time to share the Early Access Roadmap for those interested!



As always, I'll be very active in the Crab Champions Discord server and will do my best to address as much feedback as possible 🦀

I can't wait to see what everyone thinks of the game!

Join the Crab Champions Discord server: https://discord.gg/crabchampions

Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions

Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/

The first Crab Champions beta weekend launched a few days ago and I've been blown away by the amazing response! Things are just getting started with new beta updates dropping every weekend until the April 1st release date.



I really didn't expect people to drop so much time into the game in only 2 days and have such positive reactions, especially as the game still has plenty to be improved. Very surreal to see after all this time in development!


You can check out some random gameplay clips that have been captured from the current Beta build here!


If you are interested in joining the beta you can click this button on the store page to have a chance to get selected on future beta weekends (roughly 650 people will be chosen from now until the launch date on April 1st).

Join the Crab Champions Discord server: https://discord.gg/crabchampions
Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions
Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/

This will be the last development update (at least until after the beta launches) as I’ve added the last of the remaining features planned for the beta and am hard at work swapping out all placeholder visuals with final assets. This work doesn’t make for very entertaining updates (this old rock is now a new rock!) and I’d like to keep any more additions as a surprise for players checking out the beta and early access release. I’ll still be posting snippets in the Discord server but won’t be writing up these formal updates as the time is better spent directly working on the game at this point now that the design is solid and there won't be new mechanics to share. With that out of the way, let’s get into all of the new stuff that’s been added over the last two months!




The majority of my time was spent figuring out the final look of the game. It's super important to define visual standards for each asset before making loads of them and realizing that their styles don't match. I'm really happy with the chunky, semi stylized visual language that I landed on and am finally swapping out all of the ugly placeholder meshes that have been visible for far too long!

Here's a look at some of the new assets which will set the tone for all future visual work! My goal was to ensure a clean read (as most of the time there is a lot going on with enemies and projectiles) while having an uplifting and vibrant color palette. It was important to find a nice balance of detail and clarity as well as just figuring out shapes and styles that complimented each other- it took a lot of iterations but I'm really happy with where it ended up.

• Weapon Model Preview
  While this is untextured, I think it gives a good idea of how the weapons will look in the game- clean, chunky and semi stylized.
  
  
  
• New Trees
  
  
• New Cliffs
  
  
• New Materials
  New sand + ocean foam materials
  
  
  Improved snow and ice materials
  
  
  
• Honorable Mentions
  Here are a few islands that didn't make the final cut in terms of style or design but I still think are worth showing!
  
  
  As a final bonus point, all cliffs were created procedurally which allowed me to generate many detailed assets with a consistent style and make broad changes without having to redo lots of work.
  

In addition to figuring out the final visuals this month, I also needed to decide on many factors that go into how an island is actually designed: how it plays, what kind of spaces work, what scales feel good / bad and so on.

I made many many test islands: some vast and detailed, others small and minimal. In the end, while the vast detailed islands looked better in screenshots, they weren't as fun to actually play compared to the more open and focused arena style islands.

Since you only spend a minute or two on each island, having to navigate a huge island with enemies potentially being far away from one another quickly became tedious: this is a fast paced game and restarting runs happens frequently. The more focused open island layouts not only allow you to take everything in at once (enemies, totems, destructible rocks etc.) but also allow you to move around them more freely, making a fluid route as you dodge enemy attacks.



As the visual style was decided on this month, I quickly realized that all of the core biomes need to be taken into consideration to ensure that the processes for one biome translated well over to another. In addition to this, only having to clear 3 biomes to get a victory felt a bit short (even though you can loop), so I am now including the Desert biome in the beta meaning players will need to clear the Tropical, Arctic, Desert and Volcanic biomes to secure a victory.

Many of the desert specific enemies won't be added until later, but ensuring that the framework is down now means that the length of each run feels right. Any future biomes will be added as optional / random choices and as post loop content.



Totems previously all looked identical at a distance and were relatively confusing. I wanted to make each totem type more apparent with a distinct color as well as add a few new types to increase variation. Here are the current totem types in the game.

• Health Totem: 50% chance to double max health, 50% chance to halve max health
  
• Crystal Totem: Gain crystals but lose 33% of your health
  
• Loot Totem: Get a random pickup but lose 33% of your health
  
• Gold Totem: Get a random legendary pickup but lose 90% of your health
  
• Glass Totem: Get a random pickup (if not destroyed- any damage source destroys this totem)
  
• Fuse Totem: Get a random pickup (if interacted with before the fuse expires)
  
• Greed Totem: Get a random greed perk
  
• Chance Totem: Lose 10% of your health for a 25% chance to get a random pickup
  
• Gamble Totem: Costs crystals for a 25% chance to get a random pickup
  
• Reroll Totem: Costs crystals to reroll all pickups on the current island
  
• Random Totem: Randomize your entire inventory (explodes after 1 use)
  
• Life Totem: 33% chance to fully heal, 66% chance to take a small amount of damage
  
• Perk Totem: Takes one of your perks and has a 66% chance to increase the level and a 33% chance to consume it
  

More totem types will be added in the future such as Contract Totems which give you a mini objective to complete over a few islands for extra rewards.

Totems are guaranteed to spawn in shops with a lot of potential strategies opening up for example if moving back and forth between Life and Chance totems (if both happen to spawn on the same island). To prevent such situations breaking the game, each totem has a chance to explode after using it.

• Grenade Crab
  Lobbing a slow but highly damaging grenade at players, it's best to keep your distance when facing these guys!
  
  
• Slammer Crab
  This Elite variant attacks only via ground slams so choose your moments to dodge wisely!
  

As I was fixing bugs, a few new perks slipped in...

• Double Vision: Chance to get an additional reward chest after clearing each island
  
• Crystal Asteroids: Chance for asteroids containing bonus loot to spawn on each island
  
• Care Package: Get additional reward chests after clearing every 4th island
  
• Big Chests: Reward chests have more options to choose from
  
• Shockwave: Reloading damages all visible enemies
  

• Added Field Of View Slider
  A heavily requested feature across most games today, you can now change your FOV from a minimum of 60 to a maximum of 110.
  
  Low FOV (60)
  
  Default FOV (80)
  
  High FOV (110)
  
  
• Enemy Collision
  Enemies now have movement collision (meaning you can't dash through flying skulls as seen in the last update!). I tested being able to ride on top of big enemies but it led to some broken situations- maybe I'll revisit this in the future.
  
  
• New Elimination Hitmarker
  
  
• Enemy Attack Improvements
  I've tweaked many enemy attacks that felt unfair such as launch attacks happening very close to the player, not giving them enough time to react. Attack telegraph visuals have also been overhauled, matching the tint of the enemy and timing of the attack. Enemies can now also attack from multiple locations at the same time (such as skulls firing a stream of projectiles from both eyes at once).
  
  
• Foliage Wind
  Added wind logic to all foliage assets: it's subtle but really breathes life into each island.
  
  
• Updated Crab Materials
  The crab materials and skins are now more stylized to match the final look of the game. This just means more clean reads and less noisy details that no longer fit in.
  
  
• Challenge Crystal Improvements
  Challenge crystals now spawn a protected pickup for each teammate when playing multiplayer rather than just one for the damaging player.
  
  
• Improved Visibility
  When getting close to walls or your crab, you'll now be able to see through objects instead of having them frustratingly block your view.
  
  
• Loot Visibility Improvements
  Any non chest loot that spawns is now clearly marked with a location UI. This reduces situations where players would accidentally jump into a portal without first collecting some loot dropped by a challenge crystal or an enemy due to a perk.
  
  
• Improved Inventory UI Prompts
  
  
• Balancing And Adjustments
  Some outdated perk info was being discussed in the Crab Champions Discord server and it reminded me to mention that there are constant balance changes being made to weapons, mods and perks. It feels a bit fruitless to post these changes in detail here as the game is not out yet but expect detailed patch notes during the beta and beyond!
  

I wanted to clarify what work remains before the beta can launch as it's a common question on Discord. As you'll see, it's almost entirely swapping out placeholder assets with new ones and cleaning up + improving content that looks messy or broken such as many of the animations and FX that are currently in the game. The plan is to power through these and release the beta immediately after as there won't be trailers or other media needed to be created for it. That said, it's still a chunk of work so don't expect a beta to drop until the end of the year!

• Finish Remaining Environments
  Now that I've established the visual styles for each of the biomes and built a selection of islands that work well with the gameplay, I need to build out more islands so that there is enough variation per biome. I'll be making the bare minimum amount of islands (roughly 15 islands per biome) to start off the beta but many more will be added over time.
  
  
• Improve + Replace Animations
  As you could probably tell from some of the clips posted today, the animation side of things needs more refinement (make weapon recoil affect the crab properly, fix jarring transitions etc.).
  
  
• Make Final Weapon Models + Sounds
  Each weapon needs a unique finalized mesh and matching sounds as both of these elements have a huge impact on how satisfying it is to play the game.
  
  
• Make Final Enemy Models + Sounds + Animations
  Final versions of each of the non-crab enemy archetypes seen in previous updates have to be created. Some enemies (especially the Slugs) have been using very basic placeholder meshes for a long time and badly need new visuals. Keep in mind that the enemies are already fully designed: their behavior and attack patterns are all done, they just need new visuals.
  
  
• Make Final Sounds + Music
  Of course a huge part of the game are the sound effects and soundtrack. While I've been focused mainly on code and visuals over the last few months, I'm now getting back to finishing the soundtrack and making unique sounds effects for any elements that need it (I had been repurposing the same small set of sounds from the prototype for SO many different things so it'll be great to replace these with proper unique sounds).
  

That marks the end of the TWENTIETH development update- a crazy milestone that I never thought would be a thing. Developing a game solo is a huge undertaking and my deepest respect goes to all the devs out there getting projects finished!

With all that said, thanks for reading this update and for being patient while the game gets finished, it is hugely appreciated!



Join the Crab Champions Discord server: https://discord.gg/crabchampions
Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions
Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/

Another month zooms by in the blink of an eye! Here's what I worked on in July- really getting into improving the visuals now but there's still work being done tweaking design elements after each playtest, fixing bugs and adding plenty of quality of life features. This is a long one, let's get into it!

• New FX / More Vibrant Colors
  
  
• Visual Style + Level Design
  
  Since there's so much going on and a lot of information to convey at any given time in the game, I've settled on a clean, lightly stylized visual style for the environment to give the player a clear read on enemies and projectiles. These images don't represent final assets but more the general feel I'm going for- spacious arenas with clear boundaries to keep all focus on the action. I designed many types of islands this month, some with fall hazards or traps but I kept coming back to simple open spaces, they just felt much better to play. When the game is all about high speed and intense action, having to navigate a complicated level is just not fun!
  
  
  
  
• Early Lava Biome Visuals
  
  Previous previews of the lava biome had tinted the whole scene red which made it a bit visually fatiguing to play in after a while. I went for a more striking look in this pass to try and make the lava pop while maintaining the clean and simple style mentioned above.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• New Pickup Visuals
  New distinct meshes for weapon mods, grenade mods and perks have been added to easily identify them at a glance.
  
  

I've added most of the enemy archetypes needed for the beta this month- plenty of crab variants that each bring something new to the table. Many of these enemies aren't too difficult to fight alone but when spawning in groups they can test the skill of even the best players!

• Shotgun Crab
  Deadly up close, these crabs fire a volley of shotgun shots your way.
  
  
  
  
• Launcher Crab
  These crabs wield triple shot rocket launchers and can leap high into the air. Luckily they knock themselves back when firing so it'll take a little while for them to catch up to you again after each shot!
  
  
  
  
• Mage Crab
  Specializing in mystical ranged attacks, these crabs fire dense formations of projectiles which can be tricky to dodge if backed into a corner.
  
  
  
  
• Poison Crab
  Inaccurate and with sporadic movement, these crabs can easily add some chaos to an otherwise manageable situation.
  
  
  
  
• Sniper Crab
  Excelling at long range, these crabs fire arcing sniper shots that soar over obstacles and meet their targets with devastating accuracy.
  
  
  
  
• King Ant Boss
  The visuals aren't final for the ant itself but I've made a full set of unique attack patterns worthy of a giant poisonous ant!
  
  

Here are a small selection of the dozens of new enemy attacks added this month. I've gone over every single enemy and improved each of their attacks while ensuring that they have a consistent response, allowing experienced players to masterfully outplay them. Enemy attack formations can also now expand outwards instead of always aiming at the player. This creates bullet hell situations that can play out very differently depending on the island layout.

• Mage Crab Circular Attack
  
  
• Elite Skull Line Strike Attack
  
  
• Heavy Crab Weapon Attack
  
  
• Elite Skull Homing Attack

Something that was starting to become clear when playtesting was that the best strategy to succeed was to increase the fire rate of your weapon as much as possible as the vast majority of weapon mods were chance based, so more rolls of the dice naturally led to more success. This created an imbalance where very powerful mods such as Black Hole or Crystal Strike which would trigger much more frequently than intended on fast firing weapons and much less frequently on slower firing weapons like the pump shotgun.

To combat this, I've made the majority of these "low chance but powerful when triggered" mods cooldown based. This means that they are guaranteed to trigger every X seconds regardless of the fire rate of your weapon. In addition, it allows me to make each of them stronger with each level stacked (previously each additional level simply increased your chance for them to trigger which didn't scale well with the late game).

Finally I've made it so that damage based weapon mods no longer affect "secondary" mods such as Torpedo Shot (making already very damaging bonus projectiles deal broken amounts of damage) which crushes another meta that wreaked havoc in my playtests!


Remember I added the "final" weapon mods a few updates ago? Well one thing led to another and a few more slipped in this month! I really wanted to add more elemental and critical hit build options as well as embrace the cooldown changes mentioned above with more powerful "one shot" (high damage but long cooldown) mods that help spice up builds so I've added a bunch of new mods and perks to further diversify build options.

• Proximity Barrage: Shots that hit enemies spawn powerful missiles that seek out nearby enemies
  
• Hot Shot: Increased critical hit chance and damage but incoming damage is also increased
  
• Critical Blast: Critical shots that hit enemies create powerful explosions
  
• Critical Link: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 5 new shots that target nearby enemies
  
• Critical Chain: 100% critical hit chance for a short time after landing a critical hit
  
• Critical Blades: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 3 deadly spinning blades that seek out nearby enemies
  
• Spike Strike: Shots cause powerful spikes to erupt from the ground, damaging nearby enemies
  
• Ice Strike: Shots bring down powerful ice strikes that damage and freeze nearby enemies
  
• Fire Strike: Shots bring down powerful fire strikes that damage and burn nearby enemies
  
• Lightning Strike: Shots bring down powerful lightning strikes that damage and shock nearby enemies
  
• Poison Strike: Shots bring down powerful poison strikes that damage and poison nearby enemies
  
• Random Shot: Shots apply random debuffs to enemies
  
• Ice Storm: Shots create icy storms that deal damage over time
  
• Fire Storm: Shots create fiery storms that deal damage over time
  
• Lightning Storm: Shots create electric storms that deal damage over time
  
• Poison Storm: Shots create poisonous storms that deal damage over time
  
• Triple Shot: Chance to fire in a triple shot formation
  
• Arc Shot: Chance to fire in an arc shot formation
  
• X Shot: Chance to fire in an X shot formation
  
• Square Shot: Chance to fire in a square shot formation
  

• Driller: Destroying destructible rocks has a greater chance to spawn loot
  
• Finishing Move: Enemies eliminated with critical hits drop more crystals
  
• Ice Aura: Freeze and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
  
• Fire Aura: Burn and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
  
• Lighting Aura: Shock and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
  
• Poison Aura: Poison and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
  

The structure of each biome has changed multiple times over the last few updates, it's of course something that is very important to get right as it determines the pace, loot and general fun of each run. I made these changes at the start of the month and they are just as fun now as they were then so it looks like this is the last major gameplay loop iteration (at least until people play the beta).

The main issues with the previous structure that gave random portal choices to players after each island were:
A: Players would always pick weapon mod portals over every other type as those are the most instantly useful rewards especially in the early game.
B: It slowed down the pace of multiplayer runs too much to have to discuss which of the 3 random portal choices to go for after every single island.
C: Not having set island types meant that players sometimes faced 3 elites in a row which limited variation and broke the balance of the early game (as most players weren't equipped well enough to be able to take on 1 let alone 3 elites at that point).
D: Since players were opting mainly for weapon mod portals, they found it hard to heal and would often frustratingly die before finishing the first biome.

To fix A, reward chests now contain a random mix of weapon mods, grenade mods and perks. You might get 3 perks in one chest and no perks in the next- this unpredictability actually ended up being far more fun than choosing a perk portal and knowing that you were guaranteed to get perks- where's the suspense in that?

To fix B, C and D, I moved back to a set list of island types per biome with peaks and valleys in the difficulty curve, more opportunities to find heals and rewards corresponding to the difficulty of each island.

Island 1: Horde (Rare chest reward)
Island 2: Horde (Consumable (health, armor or crystals) chest reward)
Island 3: Challenge (Rare chest reward)
Island 4: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 5: Elite (Epic chest reward)
Island 6: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 7: Defense (Rare chest reward)
Island 8: Horde (Consumable chest reward)
Island 9: Shop
Island 10: Boss (Legendary chest reward)

In addition to these changes, flawless chests now have an 75% chance to be a consumable chest and a 25% chance to be a rare chest, allowing for both bonus heals or (if you are lucky) bonus mods and perks if clearing an island flawlessly.

Greed totems now also have a small chance to appear on any island, further adding variation.

One thing that I'll be keeping an eye on is how speedrunners handle Defense islands since you are forced to defend an area for 45 seconds to complete them with no real way to optimize or skip them. I may add a guaranteed portal choice after clearing island 6 to allow speedrunners to opt for a different route.

• Improved Inventory UI
  When hovering over individual inventory slots, you'll now see much more specific information than before: raw damage numbers along with a percentage increase. This makes it much easier to see which mods are doing the most damage without having to calculate it yourself based on percentages which was confusing especially if you didn't know the base damage that the percentages were based on! In addition, any mods that spawn damage areas (like the elemental Strike and Storm mods mentioned earlier) will now show the amount of damage + elemental damage stacks dealt over their lifetimes, making it much easier to understand their effectiveness. Many other mods have been updated to have better descriptions (like Splash Damage detailing the radius in addition to the damage dealt) because who likes playing games where you are forced to tab out and read a wiki every few minutes?
  
  
  
• Movement Improvements
  I've removed the dash, slide and land camera shakes, repositioned the camera and tightened up the movement heavily to make a much more focused movement experience- less bells and whistles actually keeps things feeling more grounded and responsive!
  
  
• Loot Balancing
  Generally Rare loot should be a "boring" stat up (often with downsides), Epic loot should be a "fun" stat up and Legendary loot should have much more unique and exciting effects. Because of this I've made a few adjustments to allow for Legendary loot to stand more clearly apart from the other rarities.
  
  Ice, fire, lightning and poison shot mods have been moved from Legendary to Epic rarity as the newly added elemental Strike and Storm mods take their place: the most powerful elemental mods in the game. Similarly with all the new more interesting critical hit based mods added this month, Sharpshooter (greater chance to critical hit) and Power Punch (increased critical hit damage) have been moved down to the Rare rarity.
  
  Finally both Growing Shot and Shrinking Shot have been removed as they were very hard to notice, generally weren't all too interesting and often resulted in confusing reductions in damage for players that had picked them up earlier in a run.
  
  
  
  
• General Balance Changes
  - Grenades now deal 50% more damage making Grenade Mods a more viable choice- previously Weapon Mods and Perks were by far the most popular when choosing loot.
  - Enemies have had their health increased across the board: it was easy to 2-3 shot most enemies which led to some islands being cleared very quickly. While I want to avoid bullet sponge enemies, this change allows more time for your mods to trigger and noticeably contribute to taking those beefier enemies down!
  - Shop prices have been adjusted so that Legendary loot now costs roughly 3x the price of Epic loot making boss fights the primary way to get Legendary drops.
  
  
• New Circular Lobby
  The lobby has been improved to have all interactable totems in an easy to reach circular layout: quickly change things between runs without having to spend time traveling.
  
  
• Fail Of The Month: Huge Slug Elimination FX
  I got a bit carried away with some of the early tests improving the FX that play when slugs are eliminated...
  
  
  
• Protected Chest Pickups
  Last month, protected chests were added (meaning each player is assigned a chest after clearing each island and only they can open it). To further this, the loot choices that each chest spawns are now also protected so other players can't grab your loot while you are deciding what to take. Players can still share loot by dropping mods and perks from their inventory.
  
  
• Improved UI Text Readability
  Shadows have been added to most important text UI elements for easier reading in bright lighting conditions.
  
  
• Ice Changes
  Enemies no longer instantly thaw from ice when taking damage, allowing you to keep enemies frozen while dealing damage. The only exceptions to this are if enemies slide into water while frozen or if they take burn damage.
  
  
• Removed Radial Damage Falloff
  It just felt better (and easier to gauge DPS) in playtests to deal full damage to enemies regardless of their position within an explosion radius!
  

TheeCrab has been making some amazing Crab Champions videos: if interested I highly recommend checking his stuff out here



Thanks for sticking around and reading this update, it turned out to be much longer than expected!



Join the Crab Champions Discord server: https://discord.gg/crabchampions
Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions
Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/