the Arcane Kids, a Los Angeles video game collective, has a manifesto that I think about all the time, but particularly when I encounter art that surprises me or approaches traditional formats in new and exciting ways. The second line simply says, “The quickest path to the truth is a joke.” Another Crab’s Treasure, the second installment from Australian independent studio Aggro Crab, is full of truths and jokes, and something else, something stranger too.
Another Crab’s Treasure is ostensibly a combat-oriented adventure game, in which you play as a small hermit crab whose shell has been stolen. You must explore the depths of the ocean to find a way to retrieve it from the Loan Shark, so you can return the little crab to its peaceful life in the tide pools on the shore. Unexpectedly for such a welcoming and colorful-looking game, it has intense and complex Dark Souls-style combat, and the juxtaposition is really refreshing. Our hero, Krill, may only be armed with a tiny fork, but with a little concentration and practice he can take on the enormous, grotesque crustaceans he encounters time and time again.
In place of his lost shell, he can use any number of objects he finds at the bottom of the ocean as protection: soda cans, Rubik’s cubes, Lego blocks, and something that looks suspiciously like a Scrub Daddy sponge. If you, like me, need a combat difficulty adjustment from time to time, you can select the “Give Krill a weapon” option in the accessibility section. Its shell immediately turns into a huge, disproportionate but very useful pistol that kills enemies on sight with a single shot. When you’re done, you can leave the weapon in the sand and move on. There will always be another item to use as a shell. The landscape in which Krill live is a treasure trove of human waste. Plastic, as far as the eye can see.
One Crab’s Treasure is a very explicit game about pollution, but the topic of environmental deterioration is dealt with intelligently and with surprising lightness. The crabs we know absolutely love their trash. They wear silica packets as dresses and crunchy packets as hats. The maps on the back of cereal boxes lead them to buried treasure, but when they’re faced with real dollars, they have no idea what they are. The currency of the game is microplastics. Plastic is king, trash rules the world. Every piece of trash we find is useful to us.
This tactic – using the plastic that humans throw away as the most valuable thing for creatures under the ocean – is a fantastic red herring. We are complicit: isn’t this plastic great? It’s not funny? We constantly and cleverly distract ourselves with clever sight gags. The dark heart of the story is truly revealed in a stunning, shocking final act: while all Krill wants is to get his shell back and go home, can he really one day return from what he’s seen? This is how Aggro Crab delivers the truth to us, hidden in a makeshift shell shaped like a rubber duck.
Another Crab’s Treasure contains several powerful qualities at once. There is satisfying, maddening combat; complicated and compelling platforms; exploration; and, fundamentally, a strange and distinct identity and tone. The colors are bright and vivid, the jokes are silly and prolific, but somehow the important thing this game is trying to say is loud and clear at all times. It is no easy task to address the terrifying issue of our disappearing oceans while causing unrest along the way. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Sure, we want Krill to get his shell and go home. But we are also asked to think about what complacency means, what it means to hide from reality.
Games like Another Crab’s Treasure don’t come around very often, but Aggro Crab is in form here – its previous title, Going Under, was brilliant and corporate memphis dungeon crawler. He traversed the world of startups, technology, and labor exploitation with the same brilliant, topical humor that’s so effective in this latest game, and also had relentless and compelling combat to offer players.
Both games are sharp works of satire and both are deeply political. Aggro Crab has done a fantastic job of telling stories with great integrity, where there are so many jokes to deal with that when the truth hits, it hits hard. So while I spent the vast majority of Another Crab’s Treasure guiding Krill along the ocean floor with an empty coffee capsule on his back, when I stepped back and turned off the TV, I suddenly saw the amount of plastic in my house to what it really is. It is not a treasure. Far from there. And where will it all go? What will it become?
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Another Crab’s Treasure is not a work of escapism, crabs and shrimp aside. The game draws our attention to something uncomfortable, and does it so skillfully that we barely notice, until it’s too late.