Hey Guardians!

Tacticon 2024 kicks off today, and we're thrilled to announce that Crab God is a proud to be a featured game. To celebrate, we're offering a free demo! Join us in a festival of games that test your intellect, push your limits, and reward your foresight.

Birthing a new Crab God is a daunting task that requires planning, plotting, and patience. Let's dive into what makes Crab God a unique strategy game, from its inspirations to its mechanics.


Crab God is a unique blend of strategy, simulation, and roguelike gameplay that creates an approachable game with deep strategic options. We were inspired by the approachability of games like Kingdom when designing the core loop, and referenced both Viva Pinata and Reus when designing the strategy systems. (If you haven't checked out Reus 2 yet, we highly recommend it!)

Your main goal in Crab God is to birth a new deity by protecting and nurturing the sacred egg. However, to achieve this you will need to accomplish numerous sub-goals to keep progress on your migration: defending against threats, building defenses, developing your ecosystem, and collecting food.

The recently introduced Tide Trials add even more layers of challenge and objectives, such as completing a run with only 4 Crablings, with further updates on the horizon.


During your migrations through the various biomes, you will encounter Ritual Stones. These stones bestow powerful Blessings to your most dedicated followers, granting new abilities to combat the ocean's darkness. These Blessings allow you to customize your play style and respond to new challenges that your colony faces.

To unlock Blessings, you need to complete optional ecosystem challenges within each level. Completing challenges requires careful planning! Which plants to cultivate? On which spots? Which ones need to be upgraded first? Which species needs to spawn to satisfy the stone demands? The answers to these questions are never straightforward, making every playthrough a fresh puzzle.


Your Crablings are not just followers; they are your children and soldiers. The choices you make will shape their lives and the environment around them. You can assign your crablings to one of five roles, each crucial for either growing your ecosystem or defending it against invasive species.

Finding the right balance within your colony, picking the right Blessings, and adapting your strategy is critical as you face escalating threats. Each night brings waves of enemies, and surviving these onslaughts requires both tactics and resource management.

If you survive the nights and the waves of enemies, a more frightful and insidious threat will still have to be dealt with: hunger. Food is an important resource, and a lack of food might endanger your crablings and your whole strategy.

To assist you, we've created a Steam news guide on food collection. However, the best strategy often comes from trusting your instincts and adapting your tactics to ensure an abundant harvest.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2289390/view/4183362170393238891

We hope you enjoy Tacticon 2024 and explore the many strategy games being shown. Test your plans and strategies in the free Crab God demo and see if you have what it takes to raise a new Crab God. If you've already played the game, we'd love to hear your thoughts! Share your reviews and feedback in the Steam Discussions or on our Discord!

- The Crab God Team -

Patch Notes v1.1.113

📢 Indicates any changes inspired by community feedback

• Added 2 new blessings that reduce the growing and upgrading cost of plants and corals.

• 📢 Reduced the target for the “Life Giver” achievement to make it easier to unlock.
  
• 📢 The info overlay will show when you have 0 Crabling’s assigned to a role.
  
• 📢 Updated the language around restarting a run.
  
• 📢 Update the language around “Plant Whisperer” traits to clarify how they work.
  
• 📢 Fish now swim out of the way when you complete a run.

• 📢 Fixed an issue in the No Eggs trial where role costs were not always free.
  
• 📢 Fixed an issue where sacrificing too many Crablings could cause a progression issue.
  
• 📢 Fixed an issue where typing in the feedback screen would move the game camera.
  
• 📢 Fixed an issue where the lighting in the main menu could look too bright for some GPUs.
  
• Fixed an issue where the audio bus volumes would not always save correctly.

Hello Guardians!

For TactiCon 2024, Crab God has a free demo to make you discover the aquatic world of the Crab deity.

Grow your cabling colony by raising crabs, leading the migration, and cultivating a vibrant underwater ecosystem! In this demo, you will be able to:

• Explore the first 2 levels of the game
  
• Customize your crablings with names, roles and traits
  
• Encounter various aquatic species
  
• Cultivate plants and corals to create your own ecosystem

The demo lasts between 30 minutes to 1 hour of gameplay however you may replay as many times as you want to discover new traits, try different strategies and unlock other aquatic species!

Please, note that there will be no Eco Rewards implemented in this demo and that you will be able to keep your progress to the main game to continue your journey after the game's release!

Share your feedback directly in the Steam Discussions! We're impatient to know what you think of the game!


We’re also working on a highly anticipated (and requested) feature for Crab God and would love your opinions on it - Crabling customisation! We’re introducing hats, shell colours and even fishy buddies.

This new cosmetic update will help your Crablings look their best in their finest clawstume, and give you an even deeper bond with your little multi-legged followers.

Note: All of the above mockups are still a work in progress and could change significantly by the time they are released.

We also want YOUR input. If you could add any accessory to the game, what would it be? What are your thoughts on how customisations and accessories will be unlocked? Give us all your crabtastic ideas and thoughts!

– The Crab God Team –

Patch Notes v1.1.61

📢 Indicates any changes inspired by community feedback

• 📢 Added several new traits that can regenerate a Crabling’s health over time. Grow back those lost limbs!
  
• 📢 Added a 120 FPS option to the FPS capping settings.
  
• Added support for DualSense controllers and controller hotkeys.

• 📢 Improved Ritual Stone requirement generation to make them easier to complete with your current blessings.
  
• 📢 Different things that can be found within a level are shown beneath each level on the level map. There’s also a legend explaining what each icon means.
  
• 📢 Each Crabling’s health is shown with its icon in the bottom right colony HUD. Added a label to the main menu to clarify why you can’t start a New Game.
  
• It’s clearer when a Grow Zone is blocked by Caulerpa - it turns red and changes its icon, and can’t be selected.

• Fixed an issue where the Crabling icon outlines were not being coloured correctly.
  
• Fixed an issue where camera movement was slow while time was slow.
  
• Fixed an issue where too many movement speed debuffs could result in creatures and threats not moving from their spawn position.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Permanent Roles” Tide Trial was not providing a role cost discount.
  
• Fixed an issue where some forbidden traits were appearing with “Pending translation”. Spooky.
  
• Fixed an issue where the cursor would stay locked within the window while in ‘Windowed’ display mode.
  
• Fixed an issue where stopping building a wall or trap would not stop the VFX from playing.

Hey Guardians!

First, we wanted to thank you all for your support, feedback, and the love you showed to your crablings during this first week of release! So many great things happened in the last few days:

• The Wholesome Games team reposted our trailer
  
• We had an article in the New York Times[www.nytimes.com]
  
• 915 likes on our release trailer post on X[x.com]
  
• We are Very Positive on Steam
  
• We had so much love and support from our indiedev/indiegame community like AggroCrabs, Which Way Up: Galaxy Games, Noble Steed Games, Weyrdlets, Week of Rain, Trese Brothers Games, CaveBear Games, Purring Campfire… and so many of our dear friends! (go check all of their amazing games)
  
• And of course you, our amazing community who made us laugh with your crab jokes, smile with your feedback and cry with your crablings being sacrificed in the name of the Crab God!

We know you wanted more challenges in the game so, here's the most important part of this update: the arrival of the new game modes: the Tide Trials.
Tide Trials are gameplay modifiers that add extra challenge or silliness to a migration. They can be activated after completing your first migration, and added to each migration from then on! Completing a Tide Trial will earn you shiny new badges and achievements. There are 6 new trials, with more to come over time:

• Permanent Roles Trial: Once a Crabling’s role is selected, it cannot be changed. Adapt or perish!
  
• Fast Trial: Everything is faster - movement, attacks, favor generation, and food drops.
  
• Deadly Trial: Crablings' health is halved, while threats become twice as tough.
  
• Chaos Trial: Traits and blessings are random. Embrace the unpredictability!
  
• No Eggs Trial: No new Crabling eggs. You start with just 4 Crablings. Role swapping is free.
  
• Timed Trial: Complete each level in a set number of days or face automatic migration and tough sacrifices.

Will your crablings survive these new hardships? Let us know how your colony fared in the Trials and if you have suggestions for new ones to be added later! To celebrate this amazing post-launch, the 10% discount sale is still happening for one more week!

We have a lot of plans for the future, and the Tide Trials game modes are just the beginning of new additions to the game! You can read the full patch note details at the end of this Steam News!

May the Claw be with you for the trials to come!

- The Crab God Team -


📢 Indicates any changes inspired by community feedback

• 📢 Tide Trials modifiers
  
• The Crabling icons in the Colony HUD have different eye shapes and colours to match the hatched Crablings.

• 📢 The name of what you’re hovering over appears after a short delay. Makes it easier to tell which Crabling is which!
  
• 📢 The name of your Crablings appears when you hover over their icon in the Colony HUD.
  
• 📢 You can now rename your Crablings at the beginning of a run, instead of just after a level.
  
• 📢 Reduced the amount of attack range debuffs, and capped the minimum attack range so that you can’t break Hunters by reducing their attack range too much.
  
• 📢 Crablings will now move to attack any threats that are near plants, corals, or walls, regardless of how far away they are.
  
• 📢 Added a ‘fast forward’ button to the intro and outro animations sequence after you’ve seen it for the first time.
  
• 📢 Increased the speed increase from using the “Speed Up” button when feeding Crablings in the shelter.
  
• 📢 In the tutorial, the food stockpile has a lower limit so you can’t sit there and farm food!
  
• 📢 Creatures that eat a plant or coral are shown on that plant or coral’s tooltip.
  
• 📢 What a creature eats is shown on that creature’s tooltip.
  
• Crabling traits are now shown in the role assignment screen, so it’s easier to tell what they are good at.
  
• Improved loading of the level select map from the main menu.
  
• The smaller background corals now also bleach when the foreground coral dies.
  
• Updated the lighting on the level select map.
  
• Improved a few levels where walls were rotated strangely.
  
• Improved a few levels where Lairs would spawn too close to the temple.
  
• Some creatures will spawn favour in addition to food when they eat.

• Fixed an issue with “Ritual Master” and “Crab Commando” achievements triggering when they shouldn’t.
  
• Fixed an issue with end-of-run high scores not always showing the “BEST” label.
  
• Fixed an issue where assets in the encyclopaedia were not lit correctly if the encyclopaedia was opened from level select.
  
• Fixed an issue where some creatures in the encyclopedia did not display the correct list of organisms they “Eat” or are “Eaten By”

Hey Guardians,

We wanted to give you a sneak peek of an upcoming feature and get your thoughts on what we've been working on - introducing Tide Trials! Imagine pushing your colony management skills with unique gameplay modes.

Tide Trials are gameplay modifiers that add extra challenge or silliness to a migration. They can be activated after completing your first migration, and added to each migration from then on!

Some of our ideas for some initial Tide Trials include:

• Permanent Roles Trial: Once a Crabling’s role is selected, it cannot be changed. Adapt or perish!
  
• Fast Trial: Everything is faster - movement, attacks, favor generation, and food drops.
  
• No Eggs Trial: No new Crabling eggs. You start with just 4 Crablings. Role swapping is free.
  
• Timed Trial: Complete each level in a set number of days or face automatic migration and tough sacrifices.
  
• And more!

Note: all of this is a work in progress and could change significantly before it's made available.

We’re keen to hear what you think! Is this something you could see yourselves playing? What do you think of the initial list of Tide Trials? Do you have ideas for other Tide Trials that we should include? Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments!

- The Crab God Team -

Hello Guardians!

Food is a vital resource in Crab God, but did you know there are many ways to generate it? Take notes, dear Scavengers!


Aquatic creatures are attracted to the various types of plants and corals that you grow in each level. In Crab God, having an ecosystem full of life is not solely an aesthetic feature; it allows you to produce food for your colony!

Indeed, the fish and other animals in your ecosystem will consume the flora you cultivate or other creatures in the environment, producing scraps of food you can collect and take back to the temple. Fish are messy eaters, and that is a bonus for your Scavengers!

Moreover, the biodiversity of your ecosystem will also help you in your journey against other invasive species that are menacing your realm. They will help your Hunters and Builders by attacking these threats, turning them into more food to be collected!

If you are ever curious about how to attract more creatures, you can always open the Eco HUD to see their requirements and how much food they produce!


During your underwater migrations, your Scavengers will encounter piles they can dig to find all kinds of treasures buried deep in the sand! Food is one of the most precious things you can uncover while exploring the ocean depths.


Hunters do more than just fight off enemies that threaten your aquatic paradise! Hunters have also mastered the art of finding food. Crabling Hunters will automatically generate food occasionally, letting your Crabling Scavengers bring this food back to the temple.


Ritual stones offer many different powers when they are completed. Among these various blessings, some will give you a large gift of food and favour.

Your Crablings can also be blessed with unique traits allowing them to produce food when they complete specific actions.

Now that you have the recipe for producing a bountiful surplus of food, it’s time to explore the ocean's depth with your fellow Crablings! Do not forget to leave us a review and give us feedback in the Steam Discussions or on our Discord[discord.gg]!

The Crab God Team -

Patch Notes v.1.0.69

Improved:

• The camera now follows creatures and Crablings that are selected with a controller (the same way they do when using keyboard and mouse).
  
• Improved the translations of the control remapping screen.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where using LT/RT to select entities on controller would sometimes skip over plants and corals.
  
• Fixed an issue where some settings would sometimes reset when returning to the main menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where audio settings would not always initialise to the correct values.
  
• Fixed an issue where “Generates favour when X” traits would apply to other Crablings.
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Exclusive Full Screen” Window Mode would not lock the cursor within the game window.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Stone of Preservation opened to the wrong encyclopedia page.
  
• Fixed some headings in the encyclopedia not being translated.

Greetings, future ruler of the crablings.

I, the Crab God, bestow upon you sacred knowledge to aid you in your journey. The path to becoming a revered deity among crustaceans is littered with opportunity but fraught with peril. Heed my wisdom, and you shall thrive in this watery realm.


In the realm of the Crablings, roles define destiny. Assign each Crabling a role with care, for changing their roles can be a costly endeavor, draining your precious favour points. Favour points are the lifeblood of your divine power, so make sure you collect enough for crucial moments. Be strategic by assigning roles that align with your grand plan.


Grow plants and corals to attract sea creatures.
Understand their wants and needs to create a thriving ecosystem.
Assign Scavengers to collect food, that the sea creatures leave behind.


Ritual stones are the keystones of your power, offering passive boosts and unlocking new abilities or building options. Prioritize the discovery and harnessing of these stones. Their benefits are manifold: they can fortify your defenses with traps and walls to protect your Sacred Egg, or bestow new powers upon your crablings. The earlier you secure these stones, the stronger your position will be against the relentless tides of adversity.


At the dawn of your reign, focus your divine energies on feeding and upgrading your Crablings, and select two who shall be your disciples. Select those with complementary skills and nurture them until they unlock a potent combination of abilities. These two chosen ones shall be your champions, for they can be resurrected and brought forth into your future endeavors. Their seasoned skills will give you a formidable advantage, ensuring their legacy persists beyond a single life.


The night brings with it the perils of darkness and the threat of nocturnal attacks. Your hunter, the eyes and claws of your realm, holds the key to your survival. As dusk approaches, observe where your hunter ventures, for it will reveal the direction of the impending night assault. Prepare your defenses accordingly, and ensure your crablings are ready to withstand the onslaught. Vigilance is your shield against the darkness.


In your quest for dominance, balance is essential. While nurturing your crablings and seeking ritual stones, do not neglect your defenses. The safety of your egg is paramount; build fortifications and lay traps to deter invaders. A well-defended nest ensures that your efforts in nurturing your crablings are not in vain. Remember, a strong defense is the foundation upon which your empire will rise.


Heed these words, aspiring deity, and let them guide you as you carve your path to glory. The world of the crablings is harsh, but with wisdom, strategy, and a touch of divine power, you shall reign supreme. May your claws be sharp and your shell unbreakable.

- The Crab God -