Everything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite

Everything is Crab is one of those games that's incredibly easy to jump into. The gameplay loop is simple, satisfying, and immediately understandable, making it ideal for picking up for a quick run without much commitment. Despite its simplicity, there's enough variety in how you can build your little evolutionary monstrosity to keep runs feeling distinct. The customisation options for Darwin are surprisingly diverse, with upgrades supporting a range of different archetypes. Whether you're focusing on poison, speed, ranged combat, ability damage, physical attacks, shrinking yourself down, becoming an enormous tank, or even attempting pacifist and herbivore runs, there are plenty of viable directions to experiment with. Each build changes the way you approach encounters, and it was fun seeing how different combinations came together over multiple runs. Unfortunately, this is also where one of the game's biggest balance issues appears. The level-up system includes several upgrades that increase experience gained from specific food sources such as meat, fish, and fruit. Early on, this feels like an interesting incentive to specialise in a particular diet. However, after experimenting more, I discovered the Omnivore upgrade, which grants a blanket experience bonus regardless of food type. When paired with another upgrade that further boosts experience gains at the cost of movement speed, progression accelerates dramatically. The result is that these upgrades begin to feel less like interesting choices and more like mandatory picks if you want your build to come online before the run ends. That's a shame, because it reduces some of the experimentation the rest of the upgrade system encourages. Instead of choosing upgrades purely to support your intended playstyle, you're often incentivised to prioritise experience scaling first. Visually, the game leans into a cute, colourful, and minimalist art style that fits perfectly with its light-hearted premise. One feature I particularly enjoyed was seeing Darwin physically evolve as different upgrades were selected. It gives your decisions a satisfying sense of permanence rather than simply watching numbers increase. My favourite transformation was committing fully to carcinization, collecting every crab-themed evolution possible. Given the game's title, it almost feels like the developers intended every player to experience a full crab build at least once, and it's easily one of the highlights. The soundtrack, however, doesn't quite hold up over longer sessions. While it suits the game's relaxed atmosphere initially, it becomes repetitive after only a few hours and starts blending into background noise. Boss fights are similarly serviceable rather than memorable. At least on the difficulties I've completed so far, they're fairly straightforward encounters with clearly telegraphed attacks that are easy to predict. Success rarely comes from mastering complex mechanics, instead boiling down to using your abilities whenever they're available and dodging the obvious attacks. I've yet to tackle every higher difficulty, so it's possible this improves later on, but the early and mid-game bosses don't offer much of a challenge. Reading back over this review, it probably sounds more negative than I actually feel about the game. The reality is that I genuinely enjoyed my time with Everything is Crab. Its flaws are noticeable, particularly with the experience balancing, but the core gameplay loop is entertaining enough that I can absolutely see myself returning to complete the harder difficulties and experiment with more challenge runs. Ultimately, Everything is Crab is at its best in short bursts. It's not a game I'd personally spend an entire weekend playing, but it's perfect when I want something simple, relaxing, and mechanically satisfying for half an hour or so before moving on to something else.