I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.

Who is delivering these letters? How are you still getting letters when everyone is dead? Where do you go to the bathroom? Other than nitpicks like this the game was definitely an experience and a vibe. Being cooped up in a prison with nothing to do but play unfair gameboy games really made time feel longer than it actually was and the twist was kind of interesting if not a bit forced. RIP Mr. Smiley. Also RIP to the Dev. This really shows how much potential they (and by extension all of us) have.

Less of a horror game (which I was expecting) and more of a shock game if that makes sense. Some of the content in here is pretty typical banter that you'd see in an MMO regardless of whether the MMO is about to die or not which was fun but it quickly evolves into some of the most shocking stuff you could possibly run into. Particularly neo-nazi death cults, people worshipping real life murders, people talking about their fetishes, explicit cyber sex, etc. I applaud the dev for going this far with the subject material but it was kind of hard to get through and almost a bit cheesy and unrealistic feeling at times. In the end the vibe is definitely worth experiencing and there's a streamer mode to help make it a bit less explicit.