Part 1 (Sep 2023) · #8 of 14 in that tierWatch the moment (0:26:06)
Crab Champions
- Developed by
- Noisestorm
- Published by
- Noisestorm
$9.99
Claw your way across exotic islands combining fluid movement with fast paced combat to become a Crab Champion in this third person roguelike shooter.
Consensus
B72.1/100
Steam players97.9% positiveOverwhelmingly Positive31,207 reviews
VG Insights estimate ↗≈936K copies · ≈$6.9M gross
What creators say
Ranked Jun 2023 · #12 of 17 in that tierWatch the moment (0:47:25)
Ranked Apr 2023 · #11 of 16 in that tierWatch the moment (2:03:54)
What players say
A third-person roguelike shooter by solo developer Noisestorm (the Crab Rave musician) where you play an armed crab clearing 28 islands across four biomes, solo or in up to 4-player co-op.
Crab Champions is one of the best-reviewed Early Access roguelikes on Steam: about 97.9% positive from roughly 31,000 reviews (Overwhelmingly Positive), after launching in Early Access on 1 April 2023 at around $10. Players praise the fluid movement, satisfying gunplay, build variety and a responsive solo developer, and often compare it to Risk of Rain 2 or Gunfire Reborn. Critics have treated it as a pleasant surprise rather than a joke game (Rogueliker, mein-mmo, GameStar coverage), but there is no aggregate critic score. It is still in Early Access with console versions hoped for but not confirmed in what I found. The recent negative reviews are mostly about a major update that reworked maps, difficulty and loot, plus a long Prismatic grind, not about the core game.
Players love
- Fluid, momentum-based movement (sliding, jumping, dodging sideways) that players compare to Risk of Rain 2 and Doom-style movement shooters
- Deep build-crafting with very broken, synergy-heavy combos and an enormous variety of weapons, abilities, perks and melee
- Short-to-long flexible runs (roughly 20-40 minutes, or hours if you loop the game) that are easy to jump into and easy to sink a weekend into
- Co-op for up to four players, with item and money trading and strong word-of-mouth (one reviewer gifted it to about 15 friends)
- Customisable difficulty: stackable modifiers that score points towards harder tiers for both casual and hardcore runs
- Responsive single developer who reads and filters community feedback and keeps shipping updates
- Synthwave-style soundtrack and goofy, positive crab-with-a-shotgun identity; no microtransactions, cosmetics unlocked via play
- Good optimisation and QoL such as auto-pickup of money and auto-looting the map
Common complaints
- Visual clutter: chaotic particle effects, low-contrast enemies and health bars are hard to read, especially in turret builds; no colour-blind options yet
- Frame-rate drops and even crashes when huge numbers of projectiles, clones or chests spawn in extreme builds
- Late-game and top-difficulty balance swings: Prismatic/Diamond feel punishing, with instant-death style mechanics, tiny boss arenas and lunging enemies, per negative reviews
- Loot RNG feels harsher after the big update, with good perks moved to higher rarities and fewer epics and legendaries seen
- Some players call the game shallow or repetitive once everything is unlocked, with similar-feeling weapons and little new content at the end
- Reports of cloud-save and unlock-progress loss for a few players, and startup crashes for others
- Enemies occasionally spawn in unreachable spots, and small or restrictive maps leave little cover
- Several post-overhaul reviews say movement feels sluggish ('stuck in mud') and that beloved fun items were nerfed in the name of balance
Can feel tedious
- Grinding Prismatic: clearing the game twice (56 islands) and redoing every weapon for the new top tier
- Collecting all-items and diamond achievements, described as not a fun process by long-time players
- Gauntlet portals that reviewers say are too hard for too little reward
- Extreme chest or spawn scaling that slows or crashes the game
- Repeated islands with similar layouts after many hours, per some reviewers and Reddit-style discussions
- Heavy RNG dependence when chasing 100% completion across every weapon, called painful by players who finished it before the overhaul
What's unique
- Made by the Irish musician behind the Crab Rave meme, which began as an April Fools joke and grew into a real, polished game
- Crab-themed third-person shooter with platforming-style acrobatics, a rare mix in a genre dominated by top-down and first-person games
- Looping runs that can go past 100 rounds, with stacking greed perks that scale enemy spawns into absurd numbers
- Extremely modular difficulty system where player-chosen modifiers define the challenge tier
- Turret and ability-mod builds, elemental effects (ice, etc.) and melee claws alongside a fully automatic rifle loadout
Players want
- Colour-blind and enemy-visibility options plus less particle noise
- Ease the top difficulty grind and avoid forcing players to redo every weapon to earn the new top rank
- Restore larger, more varied islands or add a hard cap on simultaneous elites
- Better tutorial and a simpler lobby system for new players
- Permanent lobby upgrades and more late-game content or variety
- Split-screen and console versions, which reviewers request explicitly
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
Early AccessAction RoguelikeSoundtrackLooter ShooterRogue-likeArcadeMultiplayerThird-Person Shooter3DCo-op
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Tier list Part 1 (2023)
Crab Champions is a third-person 3D shooter where you play a crab with a gun, and it became popular off the back of a meme. He finds it visually good and genuinely funny, but thinks the balance is terrible, with some items absurdly overpowered and others useless. He was surprised by how well it was reviewed given how underwhelming it felt to him. He puts it in high C and might revisit it if the balance gets fixed.
Liked
Disliked