Crab Champions News

It's been just over a week since Crab Champions released into Early Access and I still can't believe how amazing the community is already!

Since the last update, I've been trying to focus on the most commonly reported bugs and quality of life features to try and get the game into solid shape before starting on any major updates.



GENERAL

• Due to popular demand, locked inventory slots have returned with a few caveats. No slots are locked on Easy difficulty, 12 slots are locked on Normal difficulty and 16 slots are locked on Nightmare difficulty. The cost to unlock each slot has been reduced as it was one of the main issues with locked slots on previous builds
  
  EDIT: There is a lot of community discussion regarding this topic- some people love the locked slots, others hate it and want to just build without having to manage inventory. I think the only real solution here is to add a difficulty modifier system that lets players choose if they want bonus modifiers on their run such as locked slots. Having all modifiers active at once would be virtually impossible but letting players mix and match them without forcing a specific mechanic on them sounds like the best option here. I'm monitoring all of the feedback that's rolling in- since the game is in Early Access there will be some trial and error to find the right balance on mechanics like this. For now, all slots will remain unlocked until I add this modifier mechanic.
  
  
• Added new enemy: Blocker Skull
  
• Added new Tropical island
  
• Reworked how Combo works (it was pretty invisible / meaningless before and only affected your final score which isn’t relevant until the top 10 runs update (coming soon btw), but it now has direct use in making new build options).
  
  In short, combo starts off at 1.0x and:
  
  
  • Increases to 2.0x after eliminating 25 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 3.0x after eliminating 100 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 4.0x after eliminating 250 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 5.0x after eliminating 500 enemies without getting hit
    
  
  Once you get hit, your combo resets back down to 1.0x. The newly added perks below are designed for those that enjoy the “don’t get hit” style of gameplay without forcing it on everyone as a required mechanic and instead introducing it as a build option
  
• Added new perk: Crystal Combo: Enemies drop more crystals depending on your current combo
  
• Added new perk: Damage Combo: Damage increased depending on your current combo
  
• Added new perk: Healthy Combo: Heal when increasing your combo
  
• Added physics crowns to parkour islands...
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Orb Launcher damage increased from 30 to 35
  
• Launcher Crabs now only fire 2 projectiles instead of 3 and also have more telegraphing before they are about to fire
  
• Playing With Power has been removed from the loot pool for now as it was causing a lot of accidental deaths. I’ll look into improving and reworking it in the future
  

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added anti-softlock measures for enemies stuck in weird places on the islands that prevented being able to progress
  
• Fixed lightning FX being extremely bright and making it hard to see
  
• Toned back various bullet trail FX that made it hard to see when doing late game runs, this should also improve performance
  
• Touched up some of the more work in progress island visuals (like the one with all the vertical pillars)
  
• Added support for native Steam Deck resolution (1280 x 800) as well as some missing ultrawide configurations and 720p resolutions
  
• Fixed various out of map spots
  
• Improved hitboxes on many assets including trees and chests that you could get stuck in
  
• Fixed various spawn points that could make chests spawn on trees or rocks as well as some player spawn points that needed adjusting
  
• You can now no longer take damage from lava on Shop islands
  
• Fixed various difficult to understand UI descriptions to make things like the Spiked Chest cost more clear
  
• Spiked Chests now show the exact amount of health that they’ll take when opening instead of always “33” which was confusing
  
• If a Blessing is active, it’ll show up on the UI of the island (the same as a challenge modifier) instead of having to remember if you chose a flawless portal or not
  
• Homing Thorns are now red to not confuse them with the harmless crystal pickups that fly to the player
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue where aiming down on the ground beside you with certain weapons like the Rocket Launcher wouldn’t spawn projectiles
  
• Fixed an infinite key exploit (keys are no longer saved with an autosaved run)
  
• Fixed an infinite loot exploit (where laggy players could spam the drop button in inventory to drop multiple copies of the same loot)
  
• Fixed an exploit that could let players use spiked chests and damaging totems without taking damage (using the I-Frames when dashing to negate the damage)
  
• Fixed an issue where the blue collision border would persist back to the lobby after a run
  
• Fixed issue where falling off the edge of a completed parkour island that you had enabled a checkpoint for would spawn you back at the checkpoint, stranded
  
• The Target Dummy can no longer be broken in most cases (the most insane builds will still probably manage it)
  
• Bosses should no longer spawn keys under the map or inside cliffs
  
• Fixed issue where bosses would give more keys to certain players
  
• Fixed issue where you could evaporate if you swam too far into the sea in the lobby
  
• Fixed issue where it would be possible to die when spamming interact on totems with certain greed perks equipped
  

That's it for this update! As the bugs get ironed out I'll have more and more time to put towards completely new content 🦀

Thank you all for an absolutely incredible launch! I'm blown away by the amount of people enjoying the game and have been working hard to improve as much as possible. This update adds a few new features as well a bunch of bug fixes.

Quickplay was initially working in this build but there were issues where players were loading into previously started lobbies and were going past the 4 player limit so I've had to disable it for now while I work on a proper fix.

Now, onto the changes 🦀



GENERAL

• Added backwards sliding and being able to slightly move right or left while sliding (I tested being able to slide left and right at full speed but it was way too OP and made the movement far less skillful)
  
• Added 8 new songs! (most of them are demos but will give more variation to the existing playlists)
  
• Inventory slots are now all unlocked by default- the locked inventory slot mechanic was confusing to many players and was disrupting the flow of grabbing loot so for now you can just take as much loot as your inventory can hold without having to keep stopping to figure out what to drop. I want the game to move as fast as you want and this was a definite blow to the momentum. I'll monitor and see how this change affects gameplay and may introduce locked slots in some way again in the future (such as only the bottom row of each category being locked allowing for more early game freedom)
  
• Added checkpoints to Parkour islands so you don’t have to always start back at the very start when you fall
  
• Grenade Crabs and Sniper Crabs now telegraph their actions better so you have a bit more time to react
  
• Sniper Crabs shoot with a little bit of spread so they have a chance to miss
  
• Tweaked the Speedrun challenges to be actually challenging. Speedrun I is now island 20 in 16 minutes or less, Speedrun II is now island 50 in 40 minutes or less and Speedrun III is now island 100 in 60 minutes or less. I'll monitor to see if these times are too difficult or not!
  
• Fire Shot is now unlocked by default
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Reduced the amount of keys needed to use the Key Totem down to 3 but bosses now spawn 2 keys instead of 6 keys
  
• Auto Rifle damage increased from 24 to 28
  
• Grenade, Sniper and Launcher Crabs have had their health reduced from 800 to 700
  
• Reload Arc cooldown increased from 1 second to 5 seconds
  
• Bosses and Elites now have a 12 second cooldown in between each unique freeze applied (to prevent being able to easily cheese them with repeated freezing and them never thawing and attacking)
  
• Eagle Eye bonus damage distance threshold reduced by 50% (so it will now be far more useful especially on smaller islands)
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed ant boss doing the same attack over and over
  
• Fixed ant boss homing projectiles bugging out and moving extremely fast if you were out of line of sight when they were fired
  
• Enemies can no longer be frozen while their spawn animation is playing as it could lead to situations where they’d slide away under the map and be impossible to eliminate
  
• Fixed portal that would spawn in a bush and be hard to find
  
• Fixed the Speedrun I challenge not being completable
  
• Stats pedestals now correctly update your progression when you unlock new weapons or loot with the key totem without having to leave and re-join the lobby
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur under specific circumstances when using a Random Totem
  
• Fixed various rare crashes
  
• Optimized the Boss Skull bullet hell attack so it should be much more performant
  
• Reduced the complexity of the lava splash FX which should increase performance / visual clarity when many projectiles and enemies are hitting the lava at once
  
• Fixed a launch pad that caused you to overshoot a Parkour jump
  
• I made a fix to Quickplay but there were numerous new bugs that appeared when enabling it so I need to revisit and make a proper fix in a future patch
  

Thanks again for playing, happy crabbing 🦀💥

2018 April 1st, the music producer Nosiestorm dropped the single Crab Rave, which became a meme sensation. Since the music video was made with the Unreal Engine 4, it's no surprise that the Nosiestorm ventured into game development, and threw the rave cabe into a shooting game. After three long years of development, Crab Champions was finally launched - on April 1st this year.

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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?..
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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/