I love PICO-8 games, they are so whimsical and I'm always amazed how good people make them look given the small resolution. Yours is no exception. I really dig the graphics, especially the bomb animation.

Gameplay-wise I think the game needs a bit of tweaking. It starts fairly slow so in the beginning I was hoping for a little bit more juice. After I got the first weapon upgrade the game became fairly easy and by the time I upgraded all my stuff I could actually run it on auto:


I also had no sound at all. It would have been nice to have at least some sound effects to go with the great visuals.

All in all a fun little pico-8 game that kept me motivated enough to max out all my stats.

A relaxing crab life sim very cool. :)

Really though it was nice, I played till I got all the upgrades (health and energy seemed to be endless), just a bit sad the giant enemy crab never came back.

@cerno-b
Yeah, adding more enemy types and difficulty balancing were still on my todo list when time ran out lol
@balgorode
Oh no, he's supposed to come back! I'll try to release a bug fix version later today lol

@balgorode one-character bug lol. I had a * instead of a + when calculating how long for him to return... so he comes back but it might take an hour or three lol. I'll post the fix shortly.

Noooo the game crashed on me when I almost had everything upgraded. I accidentally selected a fully upgraded item and it crashed.

@tengusheath This bug has already been corrected in the Bug Fix version; sorry about that!

@luthwyhn Oh my bad! Didn't notice the bug fix version.

Loved it! I gave up at 20k points I think he got the message and ran away :')

Nicely done. I really like these "retro" style pixel graphic games. Fun game play, nice power ups, a good effor!

Was fun. loved the art work

I do love retro-style games and seeing a game made with pico-8 is great!.


I think the playfield is a bit crowded after a while and I found very difficult to move without crashing but maybe I should have improved the cannons when i could.

I really loved this, although after the first weapon upgrade, there was never any danger afterward, and by the time I got most of the upgrades, I barely ever moved except to grab urchins and could have done the can of nuts playstyle shown above. I expected the big baddie to come back, too, but he didn't, but I now see that was a bug. Not sure I have it in me to play again, after 15 minutes. Very fun idea, well executed, especially with the complexity of weapons and shots. Would have liked some sounds and a little more challenge. Not quite sure how it reflects the compo theme. Nice work!

I got 15458 points, then I quit the game. I was expecting some ending after upgrading everything to the maximum level, but it seems like there's no end to upgrading health and energy. I love the merchant even though he didn't show up so long at one point that I almost lost hope and I thought he was gone. I wanted to quit the game right then, but then he showed up. The game has a reversed difficulty curve, i.e. it's the hardest at the beginning and later becomes more trivial and trivial. It was a simple game but nevertheless fun and immersive.

Crab is indeed inevitable! Took a while to get used to the controls, but once I figured it out I had a good time. Would have been nice to have some sound effects.

The graphics are cute and I enjoyed that the upgrades changed the design of your crab. I upgraded the weapons to max but then the sea urchin stopped showing up :(

This game looks so nice!! I had a lot of fun playing this. Played the fixed version and won on 4th attempt. With a soundtrack and few sound effects, this could easily be a 5/5. Well done :) . #CrabGang

Great game, the upgrades feel great to collect! I too had the crash with upgrading and didn't see the fixed version, I'd consider replacing the Jam version with the fixed one by default (and having a buggy version if you want to :D), at least my interpretation of the rules is that _fixes_ are acceptable to have in the main version, but new features should have a separate post-jam download. Also love the fact that you're morphing to a evil crab and the sea urchin is a great merchant "NPC" :D

I really like the visual representation of where you're moving to, either with mouse or arrows, it's an elegant way to restrict the move speed but still allow mouse control. Fun to play, difficult, and replayable with all the different upgrades.

This game has a lot of variety: from the different enemy sprites to the upgrades.
I enjoyed playing through it.

My first time at the Urchin Merchant I had trouble figuring out how to buy upgrades, but I got it quickly enough.

I like the story's interpretation of the theme.

The game looks nice, and it is quite fun, but since there are only 3 types of enemies, it gets repetitive quite fast. Obviously, sound effects would be a nice addition too. Anyway, good job with the game.

I loved the Urchin Merchand and his dealer ways. Psst, Kid!

You should expand this game with particles, sound and improved balance, it can become something big!

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Was tempted to just post that, but I should probably do some commentary as well. Great job with this entry.

Gameplay was great. It felt a little awkward when I was using my keyboard for movement, but when I switched over to mouse controls (and knocked my mouse sensitivity down just a bit), it handled really well. I felt like I had a good deal of control over my positioning and it always felt like taking damage was entirely in my own hands. It took me a while to remember to try out the "bomb" attack as I was just having a blast taking out enemies with the basic attack option.

Graphics are charmingly retro in their design. Great leverage of PICO-8's limited graphical options to make a colorful world full of critters. Everything was clear as to what was going on, even when the screen was getting absolutely flooded with enemies during the final conflict. I would have love to have some cheery or zany music to go along with the feel of the game and its world, but it's understandable that you may not have had time to do sounds.

I do wish that there was a bit more lean into the inevitability part of the theme (or the delaying of such). If there was a way to delay the boss crab's inevitable return, I am unsure of it (though I unfortunately did not have time to test out if delaying upgrades and such impacted it). And the implication in the description that I may become what I am setting out to destroy made me expect that the ending was going to have me explicitly be taking the boss crab's place to wreak havoc (though, thinking on it while writing this feedback, I suppose that I did destroy an entire ocean's worth of critters to take on the evil crab... am I the baddie? O___O).

But in all seriousness, really great job with this one. You did a great job on all accounts and it was just a really fun game to play.

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