Trending
Everything is Crab has crawled back from the depths for another public playtest, and this time there's considerably more evolutionary chaos to experiment with. Developer Odd Dreams Digital's action roguelite demo runs until the new year on PC, giving you a chance to slap over 90 mutations onto your amorphous blob whilst tackling eight difficulty levels and various challenge scenarios.
The hook is physical evolution affecting actual gameplay. Each level-up grants mutations that visibly alter your creature whilst changing how you interact with environments and enemies. These are not just stat boosts since you're fundamentally reshaping your biology and playstyle with every upgrade choice.
Public Playtest 2 expands options considerably, with challenge runs ranging from Ice Age survival to boss creature gauntlets. The game encourages diverse evolutionary strategies: become an apex predator murdering everything, gather allied creatures into a coordinated pack, or go full pacifist and scavenge carcasses whilst avoiding combat entirely. Vegan builds apparently exist for players who'd rather munch fallen apples than tear into flesh, which is commitment to player choice if nothing else.
Players can share run statistics and capture GIFs of their bizarre evolutionary endpoints, because half the appeal is creating something genuinely weird and showing it off online. "What the hell is that thing and why is it bouncing up and down?" is apparently the intended community reaction.
The game launches sometime in 2026 across unspecified platforms, though the current playtest runs exclusively on PC. Secret Mode is publishing whilst Odd Dreams Digital handles development, making this a relatively small-scale indie project with ambitious mechanical hooks.
AltChar's Thoughts
We got to play a bit of this one over the last couple of days. The evolutionary concept has genuine appeal, constantly growing, morphing, and adapting your creature through runs offers more tangible progression than generic stats increases. The sheer variety of animal forms and mutation combinations provides plenty of experimentation fuel for players who enjoy build diversity.
However, the pacing feels sluggish compared to genre peers. Everything is Crab moves considerably slower than games like Vampire Survivors, where frantic action and screen-filling chaos drive the experience. This deliberate pace might suit players wanting methodical creature evolution, but it dragged for someone expecting faster roguelite rhythm.
Combat proved awkward, leaning heavily on manual attacks rather than auto-battler conventions. That design choice forces active engagement rather than passive management, which some players will prefer. Personally, I found it clunky, especially during challenging boss encounters where manual combat control became frustrating rather than satisfying.
The difficulty spikes noticeably during boss fights, which wouldn't be problematic if the combat felt smoother. Combined with slower pacing, tough encounters became slogs rather than exciting challenges.
There's potential here for players who genuinely enjoy evolutionary mechanics and don't mind deliberate pacing. If you're already lukewarm on action roguelites or prefer Vampire Survivors' streamlined approach, Everything is Crab probably won't convert you. Worth trying the free playtest if the concept intrigues you, but set expectations appropriately, it's targeting a specific niche rather than broad roguelite appeal.
The Everything is Crab Public Playtest 2 runs until January on PC via Steam.
