How is Crab God a strategy game?

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.

Inspirations and goal

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.

What makes Crab God a strategic game?

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.

Threats loom in the dark

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 -