Everything is Crab takes a running joke about evolution, that every creature eventually turns into a crab, and builds a roguelite around resisting it. You eat, level up, pick animal inspired evolutions and try to survive a living ecosystem long enough to beat its bosses. This page answers the questions people usually have before buying. For how to play a run, see the beginner guide, and for difficulty and achievements, see the progression guide.
1 What is Everything is Crab
A single player action roguelite developed by Odd Dreams Digital, its debut game, and published by Secret Mode. The store pitches it as Spore meets modern roguelites. Each run you shape a creature both mechanically and visually by choosing evolutions: legs, claws, pincers, wings, fur, tails, scales and tentacles all appear in the description.
2 How a run works
Reviewers at TheGamer, DualShockers and Rogueliker all describe runs of roughly twenty minutes. You begin as a small blue blob, eat fruit and mushrooms or hunt other animals, and each time you gain a level you choose an evolution. Enemies grow more aggressive in the later hours of the in game day, and the run is punctuated by boss fights.
Food fills your level, and each level offers a choice of evolutions.
Biomes, weather and night change what kills you, so your picks should respond to them.
TheGamer describes two earlier boss fights and a final one. The store notes that which bosses appear varies between runs.
3 How hard is it
The first run is gentle, and the difficulty is something you choose to raise. Wins are counted in Pressure levels, and the achievement list runs from winning a Pressure 1 run to winning a Pressure 20 run. Reviewers describe each level as raising enemy and boss strength, and TheGamer felt that by Pressure 10 the game was two or three times harder than at the start.
4 What carries over between runs
The store describes a large meta progression layer. The most important part is Genetics, which act as starting characters and can be combined. DualShockers explains that Genetics unlock by clearing Pressure levels and milestones, and that after Pressure 1 you pick two from a random choice of three at the start of a run. A Codex tracks your discoveries, and the achievements include filling the Bestiary and unlocking every Genetic.
| System | What it does |
|---|---|
| Genetics | Starting traits chosen before a run |
| Pressure | Difficulty ladder you climb by winning |
| Challenges | Runs with special rules, such as a hot desert or hidden evolution effects |
| Codex | Record of findings, progression and achievements |
5 What reviewers said
OpenCritic lists an average of 78 from 14 critics. On Steam it has received more than 6,800 reviews. Praise centres on how addictive the creature building is and how different each run looks. The criticism is consistent across outlets.
6 Requirements, controls and languages
The requirements are unusually loose. The minimum is Windows 10, a 1.8 GHz processor with SSE2, 4 GB of memory, a DirectX 11 or 12 capable graphics card and 2 GB of storage. The recommended tier only raises the processor to 3.5 GHz and memory to 8 GB. Note that the store gives processor speeds rather than model names, so treat those numbers as a rough guide.
Full controller support is listed, as are play without timed inputs, Steam Cloud and Trading Cards. Fourteen languages are supported, including Japanese, Korean, both forms of Chinese, Turkish and Ukrainian. The store also lists one DLC.
7 Who this suits
If you enjoy survivor style games in short sessions and like the idea of watching a creature turn into a strange chimera over twenty minutes, it delivers. If you want deep, varied boss design or dislike runs that hinge on what the random spawns give you, the reviews suggest the novelty fades sooner.
Everything is Crab is a single player animal evolution roguelite at a list price of USD 9.99, with runs of about twenty minutes where you eat, level up and pick from over 125 evolutions across four biomes. Difficulty climbs through Pressure levels up to 20, and Genetics, challenges and endless runs carry you beyond the first win. Critics average 78, praising the creature building while noting predictable bosses and heavy randomness. It runs on very modest hardware, supports controllers and is available in fourteen languages.
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