Side-scuttling strategy game Crab God will let you amass a crustacean congregation

The biological phenomenon of carcinization has struck again and now it's strategy games that are evolving into crabs. Newly announced Crab God is a side scrolling (side crawling?) strategy and management game that puts a group of underwater followers into your omnipotent pinchers.

"With an army of adorable Crablings under your claw, you must lead The Great Migration to birth a new Crab God deep in the ocean depths," Chaos Theory Games says. And it is a glorious crab god indeed. I know I'm supposed to be paying attention to the little crablings in the foreground of the trailer above—that's the point of the game—but I just can't turn my gaze from the presiding crustacean deity. It's definitely already making a case for a place on our ranking of crabs in games.

In a side-on underwater setting, a giant crab looks out over small crabs worshipping it — (Image credit: Chaos Theory Games)

"We wanted something undeniably a big a** crab but also grand and godly," Crab God's creative lead says in its announcement post. "Unearthly and eldritch, but more like an approachable, loving matriarch than something tentacly that crawled out of R'lyeh. There was a lot of googling of cool crabs and temples—we included elements of religious architecture in her design and leaned into symmetry to emphasise divinity."

Crab God's developers cite classic god games like Creatures, Majesty, and Black and White as inspiration. You'll be able to name and upgrade your tiny crablings as they develop and assign them important duties like scavenging, building, hunting, or standing around worshipping your monolithic crab body to generate godly powers.

Chaos Theory says it's contributing to underwater activism as well. Not only will you learn facts about the likes of clownfish and mantis shrimp by tailoring habitats to attract certain species to your reef, but playing will contribute to actual conservation efforts as well.

"In Crab God, in-game achievements translate into real-world conservation actions." Chaos Theory explains that through a partnership with Dots.eco, "players can be directly responsible for cleaning ocean plastic, preserving ocean habitat, and saving baby sea turtles!"

Crab God has not announced a specific release date, but plans to launch sometime in 2024. You can find and wishlist it on Steam until then.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.