Image credit: Em Stonham for Kyusai/Nicholas McDonnell/Mitchell Pasmans/Searching Interactive
Crabmeat is one of the more unique indie horror games to scuttle across my desk in recent weeks. Taking place in an ice-swamped penal colony and forcing players to fish for crabs to work off their prison sentence, it’s a strangely compelling experience.
Developed by Nicholas McDonnell and Mitchell Pasmans, Crabmeat is a bite-sized survival horror that’s worth taking a look at. Below, you’ll find Kyusai’s full, spoiler-free review of Crabmeat, reviewed on PC.
Isolation and icebergs
In Crabmeat, you’re playing a prisoner who’s been sentenced to the Southern Fisheries Penal Colony for a period of brutal work. The work in question is crab fishing; you’ll need to steer your way through icy waters, looking for exceedingly valuable King Crabs to pay your debt off within a week.
There’s a week-long timer that hangs over your character’s head on the crabbing vessel, marking how long you have left to complete the task at hand. If you don’t hit the crab target, you’ll be killed instantly, via a lethal capsule that’s been embedded in your neck. Tasty.
The core gameplay revolves around steering a crabbing vessel through iceberg-laden waters, dodging obstacles, and heading towards crab-rich areas to set down traps.
As you might imagine from the survival horror tag on the game’s Steam page, you’re not going to be the only soul on board the vessel for long. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t say what exactly emerges, but there are some great visuals tucked away under the main deck.
Horror that plays into mundane, work-focused experiences seems to have shot up in popularity, and this game is part of the wider genre that I’d affectionately dub “retail horror.”
Retail horror games focus on doing a regular job, like working in a boba tea shop or supermarket, and gradually ramp up the horror. They lull players into a sense of security with recognizable locations and focuses, then use this sense of familiarity and safety to unnerve them.
While crab-fishing in the Arctic to work off a prison sentence isn’t quite the same as a cozy ice cream parlour gig, it has the same style of play. You complete tasks on the ship – moving the trap arm, baiting traps, steering to target zones – and the horrific elements are ramped up as the week progresses.
Slow-burning, slow-paced
Crabmeat is a shorter game – it’ll likely take most players around 2-3 hours, based on my time with the game. I found it to be the perfect runtime for the game’s story and style of play; if it’d stuck around too long, it might not’ve been as fun.
Keeping the game short but sweet kept me on my toes. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the get-go and was walking around the ship cautiously from the first day. This sense of anxiety was amplified when I realised I had two weapons at my disposal and that I could run. What on earth would I need a shotgun and an axe for?
Despite being a shorter game, I would describe Crabmeat’s style of horror as slow-burning and dread-inducing. It didn’t rely on cheap jump scares or loud noises, which I was pleased about, and instead used its dark art style and isolated location to build tension.
The soundscape added nicely to the tension, too. The sound design was subtle but ominous, with an almost retro feel.
The controls warrant more detail. Crabmeat is a point-and-click game, and the movement style didn’t quite feel like a good match for the gameplay.
You click on the deck to move your character, as you would in a classic point-and-click adventure, causing them to walk or run slowly. I found this to be clunky due to the amount of time you spend going back and forth across the ship in the game.
If it’d been more of a static game, it might’ve worked nicely, but WASD controls would’ve felt more intuitive to me. It would be nice to see this implemented as an option down the line, so players can choose how they want to approach the game.
Aside from this, I don’t have any major complaints about Crabmeat. The game looked fantastic, with a dark, strangely surreal art style, and its premise was unique. I did encounter one instance where my progress didn’t seem to save after quitting, but it wasn’t reproducible.
As someone who’s a big fan of the retail horror niche and point-and-click games, I found this to be a memorable, bite-sized experience. It’s well worth your time if you’re an indie horror lover looking for something new to sink your pincers into.
FAQs
Crabmeat was developed by Nicholas McDonnell and Mitchell Pasmans and published by Searching Interactive.
Crabmeat is a survival horror point-and-click where players must fish up crabs in a penal colony to work off a prison sentence.
I’d describe Crabmeat as being tense and unsettling, rather than intensely scary like ROUTINE. It builds suspense nicely, with a few unnerving visuals.
A full Crabmeat playthrough will likely take players between 2-3 hours, with a 100% achievement run taking a little longer.
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