Fight Crab

If you are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have buddies who would be into crab battles, Fight Crab offers a few different ways to get it on, including online co-op. It also supports most of the community features offered by Steamworks integration, such as achievements, leaderboards, and the ever-awesome remote play support. Objectively, this is barely a game but the events occurring within are preposterous enough that its $20 entry fee can be justified by interested parties. Equal parts fever dream and time-waster, Fight Crab may find a way to sidestep into your Steam library.

PLAYISM has cornered the market on crab battles with Fight Crab, and while they currently hold the title, uncontested, Fight Crabs cumbersome controls and awkward battle physics my lose its luster quickly for those that aren't enjoying the novelty of crabbiness.

Fight Crab is one of the more ridiculous games of 2020. The level of ridiculousness works to its advantage, as the game mechanics themselves are rather mediocre the absurdity makes it interesting. It’s not the deepest fighting experience by far, as the gameplay didn’t hold my interest so much as wanting to see what the next bizarre arena would look like. A game this ridiculous is best enjoyed with the company of friends to revel in the absurdity or may even be one of those rare games that might be more entertaining to watch a streamer play it. Fight Crab is a novelty title, and while it’s an amusing one, the gameplay doesn’t do much to prolong the enjoyment after the novelty wears off, but prior to that the game does provide many authentic chuckles.

Fight Crab is an awful game that you’ll fall in love with. The controls are terrible, the physics are laughable, the graphics are outdated. But there is so much fun to be had with the brave crustacean gladiators.

Like the crab combatants themselves, Fight Crab feels like it smashed its ridiculous concept into a clunky, physics-based fighting system with gusto and didn't let up until something kind of worked. And a lot of the time, it does work. There's magic here--it's impossible not to be charmed by the silly, uproarious dynamic of watching two crabs having a knife fight. It's sloppy and ugly at times, but so is life. Fight Crab taught me that sometimes you just need to stop, take a minute to appreciate the beauty that lies within those colliding carapaces, and let yourself smile.

Bottom line: Fight Crab offers an entertaining, and refreshingly unique experience and is certainly worth a look for that. But the game feels very rough around the edges and I think it needs some more time to have its flaws ironed out. If you don’t expect too much from it, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth of entertainment. But the game is at times sloppy and unprofessional, even for an indie title, which does harm the experience to a noticeable degree.

Fight Crab certainly holds an appealing concept but, like many good ideas, gets let down by in the execution. Multiplayer is easily its strongest component and arming yourselves with a ludicrous weapon to floor opponents has a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the quest to become Supreme Crab gets bogged down in repetition, not made easier by janky controls. There’s an enjoyable game at FC’s core but ultimately, its best experienced in small doses.