Everything Is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite - Room To Evolve (Review)

Everything is Crab: The Animal Evolution Roguelite

Released: May 8th, 2026

Developer: Odd Dreams Digital

Publisher: Secret Mode

Systems: PC

The playable creature at the heart of Everything is Crab represents pure evolutionary potential. It starts life as a rudimentary blob and grows ever more complex until it barely resembles the amorphous thing it once was. Like its central figure, the game too starts out as a simple thing, ripe for exponential growth… but here’s where the two diverge. 

Everything is Crab is a good game, I want to make that quite clear. Compared to the promise of its idea, however, it appears far closer to the humble blob than the tentacled, winged, weirdo animal it would have ideally become. 

I adore the core conceit - a roguelite with elements taken from an ecological simulator is just brilliant, really. You start each run as that little blob, then you eat and grow to survive an evolving, ever dangerous environment. The map is full of predators and prey alike, competing over food and adapting alongside you. There are shades of the classic game Feeding Frenzy, the suggestion of big fish eating little fish, but the clever part is that a predatory lifestyle is just one approach. You can focus only on eating fruit, scavenging carcasses left by others, gambling on mystery mushrooms, gaining XP as an explorer, whatever lets you stay alive. 

There are four terrain types on the map - regular grass, desert, snowfield, and water - each with their own properties and endemic animals. Aside from grass, each environment can hinder your movement, and they’ll intermittently feature weather effects that’ll harm you unless you take shelter under trees. As you might expect, there are options to adapt to one or more of these environments, negating speed penalties and resisting adverse status effects. 

Progression runs along the usual roguelite track - as you eat, you gain experience and level up to unlock new randomly selected abilities. The various attacks, stat boosts, and passive effects are represented as physical adaptations, so your dodge percentage might be increased by gaining more eyes, you negate terrain penalties with wings or a serpentine body, stuff like that. Weaponry works the same way, with up to two basic attacks determined by such things as stabby beaks, thrusty horns, and gobby spit. Your initially humdrum dash move can similarly evolve into a frequent scuttle, a full sprint, or you can trade out evasion entirely for other defensive methods 

Specialized abilities exist to help focus your build, offering increased XP for different food types or taking specific actions. Some of the cooler skills revolve around charming other creatures to protect you, which will create a small army with enough dedicated evolution. In theory, you can grow into one of any number of curious chimera, be it a giant shelled tank, a social manipulator, a speedy carrion feeder, or a tiny little guy who’s too elusive to hit. This is the theory, anyway. 

As the run timer progresses, you’ll encounter boss fights in the form of apex predators who really have it out for you. One’s lifespan hinges in no small part on preparing for these encounters, which are again theoretically tackled in passive as well as aggressive ways. While you can indeed beef up and fight the monsters, you might consider hiding in burrows that spawn on the map, outpacing their attacks, and generally running out the clock. Bosses give up trying to kill you after a period of failure, and while you won’t get to feast on their meat, they’ll still drop the boss food that lets you pick a major mutation.  

This is all grand stuff on paper. In practice, Everything is Crab manages to be starkly repetitive in relation to the very concept it portrays. It’s a game that constantly evokes thoughts of biodiversity but every single run goes pretty much the same way in terms of your environment and the creatures living in it. Rival animals upgrade along a linear track rather than randomly evolve, there’s a very small pool of bosses who fight the same way each time, and the map doesn’t change beyond its base terrain types. 

It must also be said that, while you can spec your build away from aggression, there’s just no substitute for being able to dish out hits and take them in turn. The ratio of useful combat abilities to more passive options makes the bias inherently clear - unless you get very lucky early on, trying to remain herbivorous or play the scavenger is going to be dangerous and possibly even boring. Burrows are a perfect example of how skewed things are - unlike other animals, you can only use one for a few seconds before it’s destroyed, and some bosses have single attacks that last longer than your burrowing allowance. Every boss outruns you unless you hit the jackpot with speed upgrades, and relying on defensive traits or allies will always be less effective than goring stuff to death. 

If I grab a strong weapon like the horns, build up a lot of poison and reflection damage, then maybe throw in some charm traits as a backup, I can reliably make it through a run. These traits are easy to acquire and can compliment almost any build, so it becomes very common to fall into a habit and just do the same thing every time. While it’s absolutely possible to beat a run with only passive traits, I’m yet to find an approach that’s anywhere near as practical as embracing butchery. 

Everything is Crab is a fun game. It’s well presented, the roguelite elements create an enjoyable loop, and it nails that Feeding Frenzy feeling of getting stronger by gobbling stuff up. I also really enjoy the visual component of the various adaptations - as a Binding of Isaac fan, it’s always nice to see how freaky a character can look when their upgrades are reflected physically. For what the game does well, however, it just doesn’t do all that much.

Your ability pool isn’t exactly deep, and new permanent unlocks can take a lot of replaying to acquire. After only a few goes, you’ll start seeing the same old upgrades, the same old attacks, all to use against the same old enemies. When you complete a run, your reward is an extra difficulty modifier that’ll make bosses beefier or evolve rival creatures faster, and while they do stack up to make subsequent games tougher overall, it doesn’t make them different, at least not in a way that refreshes the experience. 

I’m cognizant of the fact that Everything is Crab will always be a partial victim of unfair expectation. In order to make full use of this concept, you’d need a budget far in excess of anything that qualifies as “indie.” This game should feel like it’s alive, as unpredictable as nature itself, each run presenting wildly unique variants of mix-and-match freaks. The simple creatures you see at the start ought to be borderline unrecognizable by the end, and no two boss fights should ever be the same. Basically, not even major publishers would want to spend the money required to make the game live up to its promise. 

That said, the victimization is only partial. By average genre standards, Crab’s still a fairly limited experience. Given the true scale of its potential, this is the last game that should be in such a position, but it does itself no favors in the face of those inflated expectations. 

There’s a roadmap with the promise of further updates, but given that it’s not in Early Access, I can only judge what’s being sold. My judgment still isn’t particularly harsh even with all my criticisms, because it is a good time with plenty of charm. In short bursts, a few runs now and then, it’s got plenty of merit and I think a more casual Roguelite fan will dig what it does. One thing I want to keep emphasizing is that, disregarding what isn’t in the game, what is there is quality stuff. 

Simplistic pixel graphics have a hard time standing out these days, and the visuals on offer here very much tow the line - pleasant, if not entirely remarkable. Creature designs are nonetheless appealing, recognizable and cute in their simplicity, and late game evolutions can be really fun to look at. The fact that every animal, bosses included, exhibit traits and skills that the player can also acquire is a nice touch, creating the sense that everyone's playing by the same rules even when it’s not always true. 

Everything is Crab is brimming with so much potential and I genuinely hope it keeps evolving alongside its menagerie of critters. The concept is wonderfully flexible but it’s been realized with such rigidity as to trap it in the shadow of its own immense promise. Still, it manages to provide plenty of fun even if it does get predictable, and the premise alone is clever enough to make it a worthwhile genre entry. 

The blobfish are cute.

7/10