The indie studio behind recent soulslike Another Crab's Treasure, a bizarre underwater ode to FromSoftware, wanted competitive speedrunners to stop using a popular strategy to win.
Much like other Soulslike games, Another Crab's Treasure has inspired all sorts of whacky worldwide speedruns. These caught the eye of streamer and YouTuber Charlie White,r better known online as 'MoistCr1TiKaL' or 'penguinz0.' As part of his latest charity speedrunning event, White is rewarding 10 skilled Another Crab's Treasure players with money. While he set the first-place prize to a whopping $10,000 initially, a response from developer Aggro Crab has upped the contest's top reward to $15,000 - but there's a catch.
"Yo," Aggro Crab addresses White on Twitter. "We have beef. Your speedrun contest is very cool but the ruleset allows a LAME ASS strategy called 'uppies' which lets you fly over the map." Attached is a video showcasing said strategy in which a speedrunner makes use of the 'uppies' glitch to zoom through the game. The dev's post continues, explaining that the team wants to "make things more interesting" by having White's contest swap from the unrestricted ruleset that allows for the exploit to a restricted one that doesn't.
Yo @MoistCr1TiKaL we have beef.your speedrun contest is very cool but the ruleset allows a LAME ASS strategy called "uppies" which lets you fly over the map. let's make things more interesting. Change it to the "restricted ruleset" and we'll add 5k to the pot 😎 pic.twitter.com/dimLjdUcjAMay 26, 2024
"Change it to the 'restricted ruleset' and we'll add 5k to the pot," Aggro Crab declares. This initial tweet spurred various comments from fans, with many claiming that the dev shouldn't try to limit speedrunners' strategies. Despite the backlash, White himself chimed in and left a response confirming that the new proposed rules from Aggro Crab were live. The Soulslike's dev then followed up, revealing that "the rule change was approved" while apologising for "calling the tech lame ass."
"Ultimately," Aggro Crab explains, "this change will let runners showcase a ton of other great glitches and strats." Thankfully, it looks like the ruleset switch hasn't affected the contest's speedrunners too much as the current world record is still held by spicee - the same player who was leading the competition's ranks both before and after White chose to swap to the restricted ruleset. The challenge is set to end on June 2, giving other fans just four days to beat the impressive 30:52 time heading the crab-tastic Soulslike's leaderboards.
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