Underwater soulslike Another Crab's Treasure launches to high critical praise today, but the game's developers suggest you shouldn't let that genre label put you off if you're not a FromSoftware fan.
In a Reddit AMA yesterday, Aggro Crab founder Nick Kaman was asked whether the game's development team were big soulslike fans before they started work on Another Crab's Treasure, and how that impacted game design and balance. In response, Kaman said that most of the team "are big Souls heads" and that he has personally "beaten or almost beaten most of the major ones."
But even with all that experience in mind, Kaman says that difficulty balancing remains difficult. "A lot of it comes down to how the specific mechanics in our game play out as opposed to other Souls titles. The closest FromSoftware title is certainly Sekiro since there's such an emphasis on block and parry, but there's nuance that innately makes our game easier - for example, timing repeated parries isn't as much of a thing in ACT."
That's certainly likely to be music to the ears of the haters of certain Sekiro bosses, but Kaman goes on to explain that it's not all about what feels good for him and his colleagues to play; "game designers will commonly make the mistake of making a game that is hard enough for themselves to enjoy - while not realizing that they're experts at the game compared to a brand-new players."
Soulslikes, however, have a bit more room to play, "since it's meant to be hard." With that in mind, Kaman says that Another Crab's Treasure was balanced around "whatever was appropriately challenging and engaging for our team to playtest."
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