Crab Champions News

As I playtest Crab Champions daily to get it ready for the upcoming beta, one thing that really needed improving was how loot system worked. Previously when you cleared an island, a loot chest would appear near the exit portal: It could be a chest of any type, meaning that you often got a health chest while already at full health which was frustrating. Players also ended up with too much loot early on in a run since they'd get a chest after EVERY island which messed with the balance of the game. I'd rather combat islands be short and sweet with more spaced out loot instead of having to slow down every island, spawning tedious amounts of enemies to compensate for the high frequency of loot.

To solve this issue and also allow for more player choice, I've added a new reward based island type: Treasure islands! When entering a Treasure island, players are given a choice between two pathways, each with a different reward type.



After choosing a pathway, players will find a selection of locked loot chests with varying rarities. Keys are now earned after clearing each combat island and are saved for Treasure islands to open chests.

• Rare Chest - Costs 1 Key: Drops Rare loot with a very small chance of Epic or Legendary drops happening
  
• Epic Chest - Costs 3 Keys: Drops Epic loot with a small chance of a Legendary drop happening
  
• Legendary Chest - Costs 6 Keys: Drops guaranteed Legendary loot
  

Since there are new perks that synergize with keys, it's possible to open multiple chests in a single Treasure island which creates some difficult decisions: "do I spend all 6 of my keys on that Legendary chest or do I open 6 Rare chests?"

You may notice that the Common rarity is missing: I've decided to merge Common and Rare loot as in general getting a Common drop felt very underwhelming. My goal is to make all loot feel fun or useful even at the lowest rarity. All previously Common loot has been heavily buffed and many underperforming mods have been combined together such as Light Shot and Fast Shot to make them more enticing choices.

Overall these changes should help players avoid being at the mercy of RNG while still not having TOO much choice (as there's always fun in not knowing what you'll get). With limited mod and perk slots, the game has several build stages:
- The early game malleable stage where large changes to your build don't matter
- The mid game flexible stage where several potential builds are forming
- The late game hardened stage where you have committed to a specific set of mods and perks that work well together. Changes in this stage are much harder to pull off without messing up your damage output.

This brings a lot of skill into the late game rather than having unlimited slots and just picking up everything and spamming it- you can’t rely on the same strategy to work every run.


Previously after clearing an island, you'd choose a portal to the next island and get a matching reward for clearing it. This caused things to become unbalanced as once you got powerful enough to consistently choose the harder portals, you could get Epic / Legendary loot much more often than intended. Waiting for everyone to vote on a portal also slowed down the pace between islands. There is now a set route of island types but still of course with randomized locations, enemies and loot to make every run different.

• Island 1 + 2 - Horde Eliminate waves of easy enemies (1 key reward per cleared Horde island)
  
• Island 3 - Treasure: Choose one of two reward types to spend your keys on
  
• Island 4 - Horde
  
• Island 5 - Challenge: Face more difficult enemies with a randomly selected challenge modifier active (2 keys reward per cleared Challenge island)
  
• Island 6 - Shop: Spend your crystals (earned from eliminating enemies, getting island clear bonuses and destroying crystal rocks) on loot!
  
• Island 7 - Horde:
• Island 8 - Elite: Eliminate a powerful elite enemy (2 keys reward per cleared Elite island)
  
• Island 9 - Treasure:
• Island 10 - Horde:
• Island 11 - Defense: Hold an area down for 60 seconds against increasingly intense waves of enemies (2 keys reward per cleared Defense island)
  
• Island 12 - Treasure:
• Island 13 - Temple: Navigate through an ancient temple facing powerful enemies (3 keys OR a gold heart OR a large crystal bundle reward per cleared Temple: the player can choose)
  
• Island 14 - Shop:
• Island 15 - Boss: Fight a menacing boss before moving on to the next biome (6 keys, a large crystal bundle and a gold heart reward)
  

Armor is a simple but important addition to the game: players can now find and equip armor plates as part of the health loot pool. Armor is always damaged before your health bar and any excess damage on a hit that breaks an armor plate is ignored, making them a very useful protective tool. Armored enemy variants can now also appear but there are plenty of new armor related perks mentioned below to help counter them!


This month I added all of the remaining perks on my list for the beta. There are over 100 perks in the game now which offers just the right amount of variety that I was hoping for from run to run: enough that you aren't getting the same builds often but not too many that you can't develop favorites and plan out builds. A big focus was on giving players more melee and elemental damage build options as both of these are fun ways to play that didn't have a lot of room to scale up previously.

• Damage Aura: Deal constant damage to enemies near you
  
• Reinforced: Gain additional armor plates each time you pick up armor
  
• Vampire: Heal after each melee elimination
  
• Sentry Gun: A friendly sentry gun spawns at the start of each island
  
• Mortar: A friendly mortar spawns at the start of each island
  
• Explosive Armor: Create a large explosion whenever breaking enemy armor
  
• Flammable Armor: Ignite all nearby enemies whenever breaking enemy armor
  
• Regenerator: Health regenerates over time while in an active island
  
• Clearance: Random goods in shops are free of charge
  
• Power Armor: Damage increased for each equipped armor plate
  
• Regenerating Armor: Gain armor at the start of each island
  
• Double Vision: Chance for loot to be doubled
  
• Critical Thinking: Critical hits deal more damage but non critical hits deal less damage
  
• Red Fury: Damage increased for a short time after eliminating an enemy
  
• Silver Lining: Health and damage increased for each greed perk that you have
  
• FMJ: Damage increased to armored enemies
  
• Thrusters: Dash speed increased
  
• Sledgehammer: Regular enemies (not a boss or an elite) are instantly eliminated when at low health
  
• Damage Control: Incoming damage heavily reduced for a short time after taking damage
  
• Gold Coupon: Your first purchases in shops are free of charge
  
• Freezing Enemies: Enemies freeze all nearby enemies when eliminated
  
• Flammable Enemies: Enemies ignite all nearby enemies when eliminated
  
• Electric Enemies: Enemies shock all nearby enemies when eliminated
  
• Poisonous Enemies: Enemies poison all nearby enemies when eliminated
  
• Sharp Claws: Melee damage increased
  
• Ice Claws: Melee deals ice damage
  
• Fire Claws: Melee deals fire damage
  
• Bonus Keys: Gain additional keys each time you pick up a key
  
• Regenerating Keys: Gain keys at the start of each island
  
• Ice Cold: Increased ice debuff stacks
  
• Firestarter: Increased fire debuff stacks
  
• High Voltage: Increased lightning debuff stacks
  
• Toxic: Increased poison debuff stacks
  
• Dagger Dash: Dashing sends an arc of daggers wherever you are looking
  
• Layered Armor (Greed Perk): Gain 100 armor plates but max health is greatly reduced
  

Last month I mentioned that the final batch of weapon mods for the beta had been added.... but I really wanted to get a few more interesting ones in that weren't just stat increases. These took more time and care to implement than stat increase mods but I think it was well worth it as they open up many new build options.

• Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies and deal more damage but there is a short delay before damage is dealt
  
• Bubble Shot: Shots are surrounded by bubbles that deal constant damage
  
• Bomb Shot: Chance to spawn bombs when hitting enemies
  
• Health Shot: Chance to heal when dealing damage
  
• Targeting Shot: Shots that hit enemies spawn new shots that target other nearby enemies
  
• Recoil Shot: Shots deal more damage but firing knocks you back
  
• Money Shot: Gain crystals when hitting enemies
  
• Piercing Shot: Shots pierce through enemies (allowing you to deal damage to multiple enemies with a single shot)
  
• Double Tap: Shots have a chance to deal damage twice
  
• Triangle Shot: Fire powerful triangle projectiles along with your shot that regenerate over time
  
• Aerial Shot: Damage increased when airborne
  
• Uppercut: Every fifth shot deals more damage
  

Now that the vanilla mods and perks are finished (other than the last of the grenade mods which will be done early this month), each major update during the early access period will focus on new biomes adding themed enemies, mods and perks to the game with the goal of adding additional content in focused areas without bloating the original biomes and loot pool.


After a lot of consideration I've decided to focus on finishing the beta / early access version of Crab Champions with Survival mode being the main and only mode, and market the game accordingly (as a Third Person Action Roguelike). There are a lot of conflicting opinions on what the game actually is and it's important for me to get a focused game out with bonus modes being a consideration for the future.

It makes little sense to release a deep and fully featured Survival mode with Racing and Duel tacked on as side modes, having a fraction of the content. Both require a good deal more work before they are worthy of being standalone modes whereas Survival mode is in great shape, so it makes the most sense to me to double down on it. Having said that, I still love the Racing mode and it's something that I plan on finishing as a future update when people already have their hands on the game.

As for Duel mode: many of the latest Survival additions do not translate well at all over to Duel mode. That coupled with the fact that true competitive PvP gameplay (requiring dedicated servers, anticheat and many more features which are out of the scope of this project) was never really the plan has made me realize that if I was to release a Duel mode it would need all of these things to be successful. I definitely don't want to disappoint people in this regard, so the game being released and marketed as a PvE game meant to be played with friends will help clear up any false expectations. That said, there'll be a 1v1 area in the Survival lobby so that you can duel your friends while waiting for a run to start- this is exactly the kind of lighthearted dueling that I had imagined when originally announcing the mode anyway, so it's the best of both worlds!

• New Temple Design
  Temples have had a big rework in terms of level design: they are much more tactical than before and offer a refreshing slower pace compared to the chaos of most other island types. Players slowly advance, peeking corners, checking sightlines and playing more carefully in temples- getting knocked off into one of the many pits of lava sends you right back to the temple entrance so skillful aim and movement is required!
  
  
• Survival Victory Crown
  The Survival game loop is now complete! Players can choose to go to Crab Island after beating the Lava biome boss (or choose to keep going endlessly) and end their run by picking up the new gold crown that awaits!
  
  
• New Salvage Feature
  You can now salvage loot directly from chests without having to make room for it in your inventory! This becomes especially useful in the late game when you have no free slots left in your inventory (previously you'd have to just leave loot behind which felt like a big waste).
  
  
• Difficulty Scaling Changes
  I've been making tweaks to how the game ramps up in difficulty after each playtest to try and find the sweet spot between too easy and too challenging while still feeling like you are able to make an overpowered build. I noticed that near the end of each biome, player builds started heavily outperforming enemies so there is now a hefty bump in difficulty when moving to the next biome in addition to the per island scaling.
  
  
• Stats Pedestal
  Some simple player stats have been added to the Survival lobby- nice to compare your own stats with the players that you have matched up with!
  
  
• Damage Area Improvements
  Previously only a single damage area (fire / acid / crystal barrage etc.) could spawn after a grenade explodes. With the changes made this month, any number of damage areas can spawn: this allows for more grenade mod synergies that create potent damage area combos.
  
  
• Jump Flip Animation Returns!
  While the feedback was very positive to the new animations showcased last month, it was clear that the classic front flip animation was missed so I created one with the new rig!
  
  
• Fast Island Clear Bonus
  In addition to the Flawless Clear Bonus (clearing an island without taking any damage), I've added a bonus for players that complete islands quickly. Ideally this is a tradeoff: players that like to play fast but are willing to take a few hits will be rewarded while others that prefer a slower and more careful approach can also get a reward. The most skilled players will be able to consistently get both bonuses!
  
  
• Healing Rocks
  This new rare type of rock creates a healing aura when destroyed, healing anything inside it- including enemies! When playtesting I realized that there was actually quite a bit of strategy around using these effectively: when spotting them on an island I tried to keep enemies away to save the rocks from being destroyed so that I could break them when needed after getting hit.
  
  
• Quality Of Life Changes - Enemies have had a huge balance pass, from health, damage and speed to the minimum and maximum islands that they can spawn on, giving a much more varied and balanced experience
  
  - Enemies now credit the player that damaged them last and award crystals as usual when they are eliminated due to fall damage
  
  - A restart run button has been added to the pause menu to prevent having to go back to the main menu each time
  
  - Confirmation prompts when pressing the restart or quit buttons when paused have been added (I ruined so many runs by accidentally clicking the wrong buttons before this was a thing!)
  
  - New Greed Totem type: Claw For A Claw: Lose 33% of your health but gain a key
  
  - Greed Totems are now free of charge as they all come with a hefty downside
  
  - Health bars are now only visible when you are looking at an enemy instead of all enemy health bars cluttering up the screen
  
  - Damage areas no longer propagate randomly which led to unfair situations, instead they spawn secondary projectiles which explode into matching mini damage areas (this gives you time to dodge before they reach the ground and explode)
  
  - You can no longer dash while shocked, making getting hit by lightning a bit more punishing
  
  - Knockbacks can now only be registered once every 0.1 seconds to prevent spam and to allow for more consistent knockback damage
  
  - Plenty of bugs fixed, new sounds, FX and other visual content added this month also
  

That's all for this month, thanks for reading!



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/

Animation is by far my weakest area in game development so this overhaul was badly needed. The clunky placeholder animations that have been used for literally years now are finally gone!

[h3]New Grenade Throw Animation[/h3]


[h3]New Slide Animation[/h3]


[h3]New Melee Animation[/h3]


[h3]More Fluid Jumping[/h3]


Have a look at some comparisons of the old terrible animations compared to the new ones! Note that the new animations are not final yet but should be a big step up from the old ones. This animation pipeline is firmly in place now so I'm really excited to improve the enemy models and animations next.

[h3]Walk Comparison[/h3]


[h3]Jump Comparison[/h3]


[h3]Turn In Place Comparison[/h3]


All animations were actually authored in Unreal Engine itself using the amazing new Control Rig toolset. This saves a lot of time as I don't have to go back and forth between external software and import files after each iteration.




Grenade specific mods were introduced last month and are allowing me to create some much more powerful grenade buffs that can really synergize with your weapon to create interesting builds.

Here are some fun grenade mods added this month:

• Crystal Barrage: Chance for grenades to explode into a crystal barrage
  
• Fireworks: Chance for grenades to explode into fireworks that shoot in random directions
  
• Clone Explosion: Grenades spawn more grenades when exploding
  
• Spinning Blade: Chance for grenades to spawn a spinning blade when exploding, dealing damage to all nearby enemies for several seconds
  
• Dagger Blast: Chance for grenades to explode into a cluster of daggers
  
• Crit Grenade: Chance for grenades to crit when exploding
  
• Black Hole: Chance for grenades to spawn a black hole when exploding
  
• Chaotic Grenade: Grenades deal more damage but move in random patterns
  
• Snake Grenade: Grenades deal more damage but move in snakelike patterns
  

The final (for the beta) batch of weapon mods have been added this month! It's been really important to make sure that there are a nice wide range of mods to choose from even during the beta to allow for many different builds. Since you choose a specific weapon before starting a run, some mods are far better or worse depending on the weapon: for example the Uppercut mod deals bonus flat damage for every 5 shots fired: this synergizes nicely with fast firing rifles and is much less effective on slow firing shotguns and snipers.

• Targeting Shot: Shots that hit enemies spawn new shots that target other nearby enemies
  
• Zig Zag Shot: Shots deal more damage but fly in zig zag patterns
  
• High Caliber: Damage increased but clip size reduced
  
• Clip Shot: Damage increased for each bullet remaining in the clip
  
• Leech Shot: Chance to heal when dealing damage
  
• Sharp Shot: Shots deal additional flat damage
  
• Wind Up: Damage increased for each shot fired until reloading
  
• Long Shot: Shots have a longer range
  
• Steady Shot: Damage increased when aiming but reduced when hipfiring
  
• Trick Shot: Damage increased when hipfiring but reduced when aiming
  
• Boomerang Shot: Shots fly back towards you after a short time and have a longer lifetime
  
• Recoil Shot: Damage increased but firing knocks you back
  
• Streak Shot: Crit chance increased for each shot that hits an enemy in a row without missing
  
• Shrinking Shot: Shots initially deal more damage but shrink over time, dealing less damage
  
• Uppercut: Every fifth shot deals increased damage
  
• Precision: Damage increased for each shot you hit in a row without missing
  
• Exploding Shot: Chance for shots to explode on impact
  
• Juiced: Increased damage, fire rate and reload speed
  
• Accelerating Shot: Shots deal more damage but start slow and accelerate over time
  

These new mods below are triggered when firing your weapon: they inherit the effects of almost all other equipped mods: you can get some busted combinations here! All of the FX shown below are placeholder but you'll get an idea of how these mods will work.

• Fireworks: Small chance to fire fireworks with your shot
  
• Crystal Blast: Chance to fire a close range AOE blast with your shot
  
• Mace Balls: Small chance to fire mace balls along with your shot
  
• Sharpened Axe: Chance to fire a spinning axe along with your shot
  
• Fireball Cluster: Chance to fire a cluster of fireballs along with your shot
  
• Dagger Arc: Chance to fire an arc of daggers along with your shot
  

• Survival Enemy Variants
  It's been fun creating tougher versions of enemies that scale all the way up to elite or even boss variants. More of these tougher variants will show up as you get further into a run. Shown above are the new Ice Slug variants that explode into a freezing damage area!
  
  
• Crab Model Improvements
  It's not a very noticeable change but the crab is now fully symmetrical with new claws and has had many subtle texture improvements!
  
  
• Level Design Improvements
  While doing daily playtests, I'm constantly iterating on both how the levels look AND more importantly how they feel to play. Interestingly, wide open beaches seem to be much more fun to play compared to caves and other smaller islands.
  
  
• Survival Difficulty Levels
  I've put a lot of thought into how to make Survival mode challenging but still allow it to be fun and accessible at the same time. While Normal and Nightmare difficulties can do that, I'd like for players to be able to continue to escalate the challenge after each completed run to give them a building sense of mastery rather than going from Normal (a moderate challenge) to Nightmare (extremely hard) in one jump.
  
  To solve this, I'm testing a difficulty levels feature- each level adds a new rule that makes the game harder in some way: which of these rules are fun and also how many difficulty levels there will be is still to be decided (currently looking at about 10-20 difficulty levels). Ideally this system should give players a fun way to earn cosmetics and a reason to replay the game while increasing the challenge gradually rather than all at once. With this in mind, the potential level 20 difficulty is FAR harder than the original Nightmare difficulty was going to be.
  
  
  
  
• Audio Overhaul
  Many placeholder sounds have been replaced this month (crunchy explosions, whooshes while dashing, calming ocean soundscapes and much more!) as well as lots of overall sound mix adjustments to further increase awareness during gameplay. These changes will be showcased in an unedited gameplay video of a Survival run that'll be posted nearer to the release of the game.
  

That's it for this month, thanks for reading!



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/

At this point, the game is in great shape: the scope and gameplay loop are locked down and I'm playtesting daily to get it where it needs to be for release. The main things that I'll be focusing on moving forward are presentation and content: 3D assets, audio (including the soundtrack), animations, lighting, FX, levels and generally making the game feel polished (finally I'll be replacing these clunky movement animations!). As you'll see in this update, a lot of the changes come from frequent testing: I want any gameplay and balance issues to be solved BEFORE the game launches where possible and plan on using the early access period to add new content rather than to be reworking game mechanics. With that said, let's get into the new stuff added this month!


Many of the previous challenge island modifiers didn't feel all that challenging (like Low Gravity or Invisible Enemies) so they have been replaced with much more engaging challenge types.

• Mirrored Projectiles: Enemies fire projectiles back at you when hit
  
• Elemental Explosions: Enemies explode into a random elemental damage area when eliminated
  
• Dividing Enemies: Enemies divide into multiple weaker versions of themselves when eliminated
  
• Energy Rings: Enemies spawn energy rings when hit
  
• OTT: All explosions have a 5x larger radius!
  
• Careful Aim: Missing shots damages you!
  
• One Shot: Enemies can be eliminated in one hit but so can you!
  
• Shrapnel: Enemies explode into a burst of projectiles when eliminated
  

Previously, the main way of gaining speed was by sliding which often led to a spam strategy of constantly sliding in circles around enemies, easily dodging most projectiles. I wanted to tune the movement system to be more skill based and require timing, so a dash mechanic has been added as well as removing the ability to infinitely slide (you now lose speed if you slide for too long). Combining these mechanics, you can gain speed but also dodge enemy projectiles if dashing at the right moment. I'm currently finding the sweet spot between dashing and sliding to ensure that you can still have fast and fluid movement without it making the game too easy.

This also opens up a new category of cosmetics: dash trails! More on these in a future update.


Dashing of course nicely integrates with Racing mode, allowing for the optimal strategy between jumping, sliding and dashing to be developed across each course. I'm really excited to see what the speedrunning community will do with it. There have also been new perks added that reduce dash cooldowns and increase the number of dashes, allowing for some overpowered movement options in a Survival mode run!




After a bunch of great playtests, I noticed that when explaining the whole weapon mod / weapon leveling system to new players, it was more confusing than it needed to be. Especially when playing on controller, it felt a bit clunky and slow paced to have to manage your inventory and swap mod slots by hand (It's hard to even realize that you could put weapon mods on grenades for example) so I've settled on a few improvements that make the much game easier to understand and also stop you having to slow down in an otherwise fast paced game.

[h3]1: Grenade Mods[/h3]
Since weapon mods used to be interchangeable with grenades, I was a bit limited with the mod design and many weapon specific mods (like having a larger clip size) didn't make sense on grenades. On the flip side, many powerful mods more suited for infrequent grenades like black holes didn't make sense on fast firing weapons like the minigun. To solve this, I took the best weapon mods that make sense on grenades and added a bunch of grenade specific mods to form a new inventory category: Grenade Mods.

This means that there are 3 distinct "upgrade" pickup types in the game:

• Weapon Mods: Mods that influence each shot your weapon fires
  
• Grenade Mods: Mods that influence each grenade you throw
  
• Perks: Bonuses that don't directly affect each shot you fire but have an overall passive effect (like more movement speed) or are event based (like gaining more damage after finishing each island)
  

To further clear up any confusion between the different pickup types, a chest for a specific type of pickup will drop after each island rather than a chest containing a random mix of pickup types. For example Island 1 may drop a weapon mod chest, Island 2 a perk chest and so on.

Some examples of Grenade Mods:

• Ice Explosion: Chance for grenades to explode into an ice damage area, freezing all nearby enemies
  
• Glue Grenade: Grenades stick to enemies and have a delayed explosion
  
• Cluster Grenade: Throw a cluster of weaker grenades instead of a single grenade
  
• Energy Ring: Chance for grenades to explode into a damaging energy ring
  
• Chaotic Grenade: Grenades deal much higher damage but fly in random patterns
  
• Clone Grenade: Grenades that hit enemies spawn more grenades from the impact point
  
• Deja Vu: Grenades explode multiple times (this scales per level of the mod)
  
• Black Hole: Chance for grenades to spawn a black hole when exploding
  
• Spinning Blade: Chance for grenades to spawn a spinning blade when exploding
  

These mods essentially turn your grenade into a powerful tool to set up synergies with your primary weapon, which brings me to my next improvement!

[h3]2: No More Secondary Weapons[/h3]
In 100% of my playtests, the secondary weapon was ignored as players tend to want to stack all of their mods on one weapon for maximum effectiveness. This means that there's no real reason to have a secondary weapon at all! Since you can throw your grenade and also melee while shooting, you can make use of all of your inventory at once: this feels efficient and fun!

[h3]3: Weapon Selection[/h3]


While many games have lots of different weapons that can drop with fixed behaviors, the focus here is on letting you choose a base weapon and then use the countless combos of weapon mods to turn it into something new. By choosing and sticking with a specific weapon at the start of a Survival run, this functions like a class or loadout, allowing you to spend the run making a build around that weapon rather than constantly finding completely different weapons and pivoting.

Finding weapons mid run would make sense if there were many weapons in the game but since mods give weapons most of their interest, I thought that it was better to focus on a limited selection of core archetype weapons, each with their own set of mastery challenges and skins to unlock! The aim is for players to start coming up with builds for specific weapons as their knowledge deepens playing the game.

[h3]4: Progression[/h3]
With each weapon now offering mastery challenges, the progression system has been updated to help give players more reasons to play Survival runs.

When you first start the game, only 2 weapons will be unlocked: the Bamboo Rifle and the Claw Shotgun. Other weapons as well as mods and perks will be available to unlock with keys: the persistent currency that persists between runs. Keys are earned by completing weapon mastery challenges, as well as by defeating bosses. There'll be more info on the improvements to the progression system soon!


As part of my original plan to support more than just the four elemental damage types previously mentioned (ice, fire, lightning and poison), a new debuff system has been implemented. The full list of debuffs and their effects can be found below.

• Charm (Pink): If enemies are charmed, they heal you with their attacks (but if you are charmed, you also heal enemies!)
  
• Confusion (Multicolor): Movement directions are randomized and spread is heavily increased!
  
• Weak (Red): If weakened, outgoing damage is reduced
  
• Slow (Yellow): Movement speed is slowed
  
• Stun (White): Interrupts and prevents future attacks
  
• Ice (Blue): Prevents movement and attacks until thawed
  
• Fire (Orange): Damage over time is dealt when on fire. Can be extinguished with water
  
• Lightning (Purple): A percentage of damage taken is dealt to nearby enemies
  
• Poison (Green): Increases incoming damage and prevents all healing. Can be washed off with water
  

• New Destructible Rocks
  As part of my effort to add more variety to each island, there are a few more potential destructible rocks that can appear including challenge crystals (breaking them drops a good amount of crystals but summons high level enemies), black hole rocks, healing rocks, enemy spawners and more (in addition to the standard ice, fire, lightning and poison rocks that could show up before).
  
  
• Price Tags, Discounts and New Perks
  A random pickup in shops will be 30% off in each shop, with new UI added to show any discounts. In addition to this, a new discount based perk has been added called "Bargain Hunter" which gives a small chance for goods in the shop to be heavily (-90%) discounted.
  
  
• Faster Loading Times
  A lot of work has gone in behind the scenes this month to make sure that restarting (important to be zippy in a game where you die a lot) and moving from island to island is as fast and seamless as possible. I've been able to hugely cut down on loading times and completely remove loading screens during a Survival mode run. The clip above shows the expected loading time for almost any island, even when playing multiplayer!
  
  
• New Island Type: Rush
  This is a fast paced island type where the only goal is to eliminate as many enemies as possible before a timer runs out! It features a dynamic reward system that gives you the opportunity to score legendary loot if you are quick enough!
  
  
• New Island Type: Treasure
  If you choose the Random portal which occasionally appears between islands, there is a small chance that you'll be taken to a Treasure island which contains 2 free chests of a random rarity. If choosing a Random portal there is of course still a chance that you'll be thrown into a fight with an elite enemy, so come prepared!
  
  
• New Enemy Attack Types
  Enemies now have more attack patterns in their arsenal, from huge circular formations of projectiles to chaotic clusters!
  
  
• Flawless No Hit Bonus: Completing an island without taking any damage now grants a crystal bonus! This bonus increases with each island and is a nice reward for those skilled enough to pull it off.
  
  
• Temple Island Rework
  Temple islands show up near the end of each biome and are a true test of skill before the boss. They feature several areas separated by locked doors and contain enemy spawners that must be destroyed before moving to the next chamber. As mentioned in previous updates, temples are a great source of high quality loot so are well worth the added challenge!
  
  
• Hidden Loot!
  There is now a chance for bonus loot to spawn on each island, though it's usually somewhere hidden, requiring some platforming to find. Some bonus loot won't even be accessible without having several mobility perks (such as on top of cliffs).
  
  
• Soundtrack Update
  I've been chipping away at the soundtrack as usual, 3 more songs have been mastered and completed since the last update: very excited to share them with you!
  
  
• New Portal FX
  
  
• Bug Fixes + Balance Tweaks
  As always, countless bug fixes and balance tweaks have been made after playtesting to improve underperforming gameplay elements. Bouncing Shots for example has gotten a nice buff: as well as giving shots the ability to bounce, damage is now also doubled after each bounce!
  

Thanks for reading and for being patient with the development 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/

This month a lot of work has gone into increasing the replay value and variation of each Survival mode run. It's really important in any game with roguelike elements to have the potential for wildly different builds with a lot of difficult decisions to be made on each run. I felt that the game was lacking some of this depth so a big portion of the month was spent adding content and mechanics to give players more options. There'll be more on this next month with a look at the finalized weapon levelling system.







I've always wanted boss fights in Survival mode to be a lot more exciting than just facing a bullet sponge enemy doing basic attacks. After a few experiments and a lot of optimization, this bullet hell style encounter ended up working really well with the high mobility that you have as a player. It really increases the intensity compared to normal islands. The visuals and animations are still quite rough here (the boss itself will be fully redesigned, it's here mainly to test out the new mechanics) but the gameplay feels great and many of the other bosses will now feature more hectic, bullet hell attacks.





One of the most important parts of the shop in Survival mode is being able to experiment with weapon mods to create new builds. Without a target that has a damage per second indicator, there was a lot of guesswork in terms of the range and damage output of your build. Now there are multiple target dummies in the shop area, allowing you to clearly see how well your build is performing.







Being greedy and biting off more than you can chew, resulting in the end of a Survival run is always something that is really interesting to me. I've spent a good portion of the month revamping the old greed perk system in a way that offers a LOT of power to players but with some heavy drawbacks which can make for difficult decisions on each run.

The greed mechanics have been split into two sections: perks and totems.

Greed Perks: These offer a huge benefit but also come with a guaranteed downside. When you pick one up, it cannot be removed but has a lasting passive effect. They can be stacked for stronger effects as normal perks can.

• Leap Of Faith: Max health greatly increased, but fall damage is enabled
  
• Bribe: Max health greatly increased but lose crystals when taking damage
  
• Double Trouble: Max health greatly increased but so is enemy health
  
• Cracked Helmet: Block damage in front of you but take double damage from behind
  
• Heavy Armor: Gain immunity to a random elemental damage type but movement speed is reduced by 50%
  
• Glass Cannon: Damage massively increased but you lose most of your max health
  
• Playing With Power: Damage massively increased but you can hurt yourself
  
• Brute Force: Both outgoing and incoming damage heavily increased
  
• Beginner's Luck: All damage dealt has a chance to be greatly higher or greatly lower than usual
  
• Think Fast: Damage greatly increased at the start of each island, but decreases over time
  
• Metal Claw: Damage heavily increased but no more chests spawn for the next 10 islands
  
• Up The Ante: Damage greatly increased but easy portals no longer appear and more enemies spawn
  
• Untouchable: Damage is greatly reduced but is increased every time you eliminate an enemy. If you get hit, the damage boost is reset
  
• Slippery Slope: Gain crystals over time but also lose health over time
  
• Double Edged Sword: Gain crystals when dealing damage but lose crystals when taking damage
  
• Workaholic: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but you lose most of your max health
  
• High Stakes: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but elite and armored enemies have a chance to spawn instead of normal enemies
  
• Gambler: Chance for more crystals to drop when eliminating enemies but also a chance for no crystals to drop at all
  
• Cursed Lottery: Gain a gigantic amount of crystals but lose most of your max health
  
• High Roller: 50% chance for double chests to spawn but a 50% chance for no chests to spawn
  
• Hoarder: Double the chests spawn after each island but double the enemies also spawn
  
• Cursed Loot: Chance for shop loot to be free but also a chance for it to be empty
  
• False Confidence: Normal enemy health is reduced but boss health is greatly increased
  

Greed Totems: These have instant one-off effects (for example gain crystals but lose max HP) and can be repeatedly purchased (with the price exponentially increasing).

• Feeling Lucky: 50% chance to double max health, 50% chance to halve max health
  
• Last Resort: 33% chance to fully heal, 66% chance to take a small amount of damage
  
• Blood Money: Gain crystals but lose 33% of your health
  
• Instant Gratification: Instantly spawn a chest of a random rarity but lose 33% health
  
• Insurance: Gain 200 max health but lose all of your crystals
  
• Impatience: Upgrade a random perk tier but lose 25% health
  
• Focused Power: Lose a random 50% of your perks but gain +4 tiers on perks that remain
  
• Claw For A Claw: Lose 3 random perks but get a legendary perk
  
• Bill Pay: Gain 3 random perks or mods but increase future shop prices
  
• Scrap Metal: 50% chance to increase your weapon level, 50% chance to do nothing
  
• No Pain No Gain: Instantly get a level 10 weapon but lose 75% max HP
  
• Greed Heart: Gain a short term +500% boost in health, but it is reduced every second down to 50% of your original health
  
• Together Forever: Your currently equipped weapon gains 10 weapon levels but cannot be swapped for a new weapon later
  
• Inseparable: Your currently equipped weapon gains random (Rare+) mods in all empty slots but cannot be dropped or swapped for a new weapon later
  

Both greed perks and totems can be found occasionally in shops and temples, maybe saving a run... or dooming it?



Challenge runs (not to be confused with regular challenges) are Survival runs with a specific condition, loadout or world modifier applied to make the run difficult or unusual. The goal is always to simply complete the base Survival loop (3 biomes) with the challenge active. Completing each challenge run rewards the player with cosmetic unlocks and are a fun way to jump into a Survival run with a specific goal in mind.

Some examples of challenge runs currently added:

• Complete a run while keeping a friendly wandering penguin safe throughout
  
• Complete a run where ALL mods and perks you find are chaos themed (leading to an increasingly unstable run as most chaos related loot increases damage but makes projectiles wildly fly around)
  
• Complete a run with ALL greed perks active at once
  
• Complete a run where the instagib world modifier (enemies die in one hit but so do you) is always active
  
• Complete a run where enemies have less health but 4x as many spawn
  
• Complete a run in 30 minutes but time moves faster after each completed island
  
• Complete a run facing enemies from all biomes who are using random weapons
  
• Complete a run where only greed loot spawns
  

There will be many more challenge runs added to the game over time and they will also feature bronze, silver, gold and diamond medals for completing them with a certain score (score is calculated from damage dealt, damage taken, time taken and crystals remaining when finishing the run).

• Movement Speed Changes: Movement speed has been lowered for Survival mode and increased for Racing mode (though it's still possible to get incredibly fast with perks when on a Survival run)
  
• Grenade Weapon Mod Compatibility: Any weapon mods can now be placed in grenade slots, allowing them to synergize with your current build!
  
  In this example, the grenade has a Split Shot mod which splits a single projectile into multiple smaller ones shortly after being spawned.
  
• Enemies Using Mods: As mentioned previously, enemies will begin getting weapon mods after the first loop in Survival. This means that existing encounters constantly get spiced up.
  
• Weapon Choice: Because of the new weapon leveling system, players will no longer always start with a basic pistol and will instead get a choice of 3 random level 1 weapons when starting each run.
  
• Multiplayer Improvements: I've made some huge changes to ensure that players with high latency still have an experience as close as possible to playing offline (big improvements to movement, hit detection and more).
  

Thanks for reading!



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/

In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred!



Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and weapon mods!



As with all new biomes, triangle biome themed Racing and Duel maps will be added to the lineup of maps in the game.







Previously, weapons were either hitscan based (shots instantly hit targets in a straight line when fired) or projectile based (shots have a lifetime and can move with various forces like gravity). This led to a confusing split in weapon mods: some were hitscan only, some were projectile only.

Since I wanted a unified weapon mod system (where any mod could be placed on any kind of weapon, including grenades), all weapons were converted to be projectile based. With a bunch of tweaks and a completely rewritten projectile movement system, this approach actually ended up working nicely, and I was able to add a lot of new weapon mods that directly affect the movement characteristics of projectiles. This new system coupled with matching FX for each mod (projectile trails, sparks and more to help distinguish which mods are active) turned out to create some interesting results.



Since there are thousands of meaningful combinations of weapon mods and projectile types, I stumbled onto interesting and powerful synergies that had previously been unseen. This is exactly what I was hoping for when creating the weapon mod system: to let players mix and match different mods to create unique, surprising and overpowered versions of the core weapon archetypes.



Over 50 new weapon mods have been added this month, some reworked from older versions and others from the long list of ideas to add. Some examples:

• Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies with a delayed explosion
  
• Chaotic Shot: Shots fly in a chaotic pattern but deal increased damage
  
• Homing Shot: Shots home towards nearby enemies
  
• Piercing Shot: Shots can pierce through (and damage) enemies multiple times without exploding
  
• Growing Shot: Shots get larger and deal more damage over time
  
• Wide Shot: Shots are wider horizontally
  
• Damage Aura: Shots have an AOE damage bubble around them
  

You can probably imagine some combinations that'd work well together from those examples already. The fun part is that the same combination of mods will look very different on each base weapon type (like the Claw Shotgun or the Coconut Launcher) so there's some strategy to work out what mix of mods will best suit your currently equipped weapon.



Some mods now have cooldowns as they are too powerful to be triggered every time a shot is fired. Cooldowns are most often seen on mods that are triggered when a shot "explodes" after hitting a surface or enemy as they usually have very powerful effects.

Some examples of mods with cooldowns:

• Spinning Blade: Shots spawn spinning blades that damage nearby enemies
  
• Shockwave: Shots spawn shockwaves that knock back nearby enemies
  
• Black Hole: Shots spawn black holes that suck nearby enemies in
  
• Scatter Shot: Shots multiply in the air and scatter into smaller shots
  
• Spikes: Shots spawn spikes when hitting surfaces
  
• Bombs: Shots spawn a bunch of rolling bombs when hitting surfaces
  

In addition to this, a bunch of new firing patterns have been added for weapons to fire in more interesting ways rather than just straight forward. Weapons can now fire groups of projectiles in many shapes such as arcs, circles, lines, triangles etc.





Enemies now explode into tiny crystal shards when eliminated. These examples are a bit over the top but it's fun to push the explosiveness of the effect to the max!





I had never been fully happy with the gameplay loop in Duel mode: it felt a bit too basic and standard, a typical round based duel with no real interesting mechanics other than "you are a crab!".

With all of the weapon mod changes mentioned above (and the huge chunk of time it takes to properly implement and test each mod), a big change was made to the codebase to allow for weapon mods in Duel mode. With that, the rules have been changed to make the mode much more unique.

At the start of the first round, all players pick a weapon out of a random selection of 3 (all players get the same random selection).



At the start of all future rounds, players are offered a weapon mod out of a random selection of 3. This means that as the match goes on, players will become more and more powerful with a growing list of mods affecting each shot that they fire.

The losing players of each round will have their health doubled.

The players that reach the score limit first win the match!

In my early tests, this has created a much more dynamic and varied Duel experience, with no two matches turning out the same way. Players might make similar choices leading to a close fight, or completely different choices leading to chaotic battles being won or lost in sometimes unbelievable ways!

• Tony's Evil Brother: Word has it that Tony's evil brother has stolen some of his goods and is selling them at discounted rates!
  
• Survival Enemies Using Weapons With Mods: Thanks to the codebase changes mentioned above, Survival enemies can now make use of weapon mods: this is the perfect way to spice up late game enemies with unpredictable combinations of mods on weapons that they usually fire (stay clear of enemies firing chaotic shotguns!).
  
• Movement Speed And Scale Tweaks The world has been scaled down with enemy size and speed also tweaked to match: teammates are now much more visible and this also makes Duel matches more fair as it's much easier to target enemies.
  
• Hazards: Hazards now have a small chance to spawn on any Survival map, adding chaos for both you and enemies!
  
  
  
  
• Resolution Quality Setting Added: This allows players to improve performance issues by lowering the quality of the game resolution. It also can be raised up to 200% for those that want it.
  
• Target Dummies: Target dummies have been added to all shops in Survival mode for players to easily test out new build options.
  

As the weapon mod system is probably the biggest part of the game in terms of replay value and fun, I explored many different ideas before locking down the current system for the beta release. One of these ideas was a completely modular weapon system which allowed players to mix and match various parts to build unique and interesting weapons. Players would always start with the same basic pistol but build up to a much more powerful modular weapon as the run went on. While this idea sounded great on paper, when I implemented the prototype it ended up with a few shortcomings that ended up feeling worse than what I had before, mainly that it's not fun to find weapon parts that all look similar and then have to (sometimes tediously) put them together in a game that is mainly about fast paced action.

There are some things I'd love to explore more from this idea but it's more important to get this beta out, so that takes priority for now.

Thanks for reading!



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/