Game update22 Nov 2025The Island Update Hotfix #3 / #4After spending the last few weeks reading as much feedback as possible on the new update, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of players when it comes to the feedback I was getting of “I’m bored, make the game harder!” A) Players that were finding Diamond runs too easy and wanted a fun (but still attainable) new challenge to grind B) Players that want the most overtuned difficu…
Patch Highlights ALL NEW ISLANDS NEW WEAPON: POISON CANNON DIFFICULTY SYSTEM REVAMP WITH NEW RANK: PRISMATIC Patch Notes NEW ISLANDS + VISUALS · Added all new visuals and brand new islands to the game. These have all been designed with much more consistent enemy spawns in mind so less enemies sneaking up from behind you! Many of the islands have been designed to keep the spirit of the older isl…
Thank you all for the amazing feedback on the last update- I have spent the last while absorbing it and made this hotfix to smooth out the most common pain points 🦀 Lightning Scepter / Arcane Wand Changes · Lightning Scepter now only makes you fly while already in the air so you can fire it while on the ground without getting lifted up · Removed the velocity cap when floating with the Lightnin…
Patch Highlights NEW WEAPON: LIGHTNING SCEPTER NEW ABILITY: AIR STRIKE NEW MELEE WEAPON: KATANA ARCANE WAND REWORK ANVILS NEW ENEMIES Patch Notes Anvil Portal (Enhancements 2.0) · I think enhancements were a good addition to the game but they had a few issues: there wasn’t enough control over which enhancements you got and you weren’t able to target a specific mod to enhance. In this update I h…
Patch Highlights NEW WEAPON: ICE STAFF NEW ABILITY: ELECTRO GLOBE NEW MELEE WEAPON: PICKAXE TURRET REVAMP INFINITE PEDESTAL NEW ISLANDS NEW ENEMY: HORNET XL TOTEM NEW ABILITY VISUALS Patch Notes GENERAL · Turrets have been reworked, all turret spawning turret perks have been all moved to Ability mods in order to give you agency over when and where to spawn them as in the previous system they of…
Hotfix #2 (Version 2003) Thanks for all the community feedback on the last update- I've made some fixes and improvements based on it! 🦀 General · Added cactus destructibles to the Desert biome Balance Changes · Double destructibles (both combat and reward) spawn in the Desert as most islands there are quite open and bare · Totems are both more likely to initially spawn AND are more likely to s…
Hotfix #1 (Version 1999) Difficulty scaling improvements · Enemy damage bonus when looping has been removed. There was previously a whopping +100% damage multiplier to all enemy attacks when looping from island 33 onwards which created very unfair situations where enemies would melt your entire health bar in a second, especially with fire. Enemy damage should feel much more fair and consistent…
Patch Highlights RELICS ENHANCEMENTS SNIPER REVAMP NEW WEAPON: MARKSMAN RIFLE DESERT BIOME NEW ISLAND TYPE: DEMOLITION INVENTORY STATS Patch Notes GENERAL · Added 30 Relics to the game. Relics are a new loot category that are found under Perks in your inventory. They can only be picked up once (can't be leveled up like perks) and have powerful effects such as being able to rocket jump. There we…
Patch Highlights ABILITIES: GRENADE, GRAPPLING HOOK, LASER BEAM, BLACK HOLE & ICE BLAST MELEE WEAPONS: CLAW, DAGGER & HAMMER NEW WEAPONS: LASER CANNONS & SEAGLE MINIGAMES: ARCADE, HOLDOUT & DUEL QUICKPLAY Matchmake for other players at any of the three main difficulties and communicate via an improved text chat! SIDE SLIDING NEW CONTENT · New island type: Waves · New enemies: Starfish & Limpet…
If you are enjoying Crab Champions so far, it'd mean a lot to me if you could nominate it for a Steam Award (after polling the community, it looks like either the "Best Soundtrack" or the "Better With Friends" categories are the most suitable for this game). There's still so much to add but I've been blown away by the response to the game since it launched only a few months ago in April! In oth…
Patch Highlights NEW WEAPONS: FLAMETHROWER & ARCANE WAND VFX OVERHAUL ULTRA CHAOS: NEW EXTREME DIFFICULTY UNIQUE LOOT VISUALS + ICONS (A START) Loot is finally getting some identity! While there's a lot of loot to make unique visuals for, I'm happy with the way the first few are turning out. It makes a big difference to be able to start recognizing loot at distance or being able to share your i…
It's been quite a while since the last update- this will most likely be the pace moving forward: larger updates every 1-2 months delivering a nice chunk of new content to explore! As mentioned in previous patch notes, I have been continually updating the Beta branch with changes every few days so if you feel like trying out every little addition (with the possibility of them being unbalanced) t…
Patch Notes GENERAL · Added 5 new Volcanic arena islands and removed the re-used tropical islands from the Volcanic biome · You can now interact with key totems even after unlocking everything to start a run off with a random piece of loot (minimum rarity is Epic) · Added new perk: Critical Claws: Melee critical hit chance increased · Added new perk: Blender: Melee cooldowns reduced · Added new…
Patch Notes GENERAL · Elemental weapon mods are now chance based instead of cooldown based. This has been a heavily requested feature and I will be moving from cooldowns to chance based on many other mods in upcoming updates to allow for even more insane build scaling! The general idea is that it’s boring for a powerful thing to fire only once every 5 seconds max and it’s much more fun for a we…
It's been just over a week since Crab Champions released into Early Access and I still can't believe how amazing the community is already! Since the last update, I've been trying to focus on the most commonly reported bugs and quality of life features to try and get the game into solid shape before starting on any major updates. Patch Notes GENERAL · Due to popular demand, locked inventory slot…
Thank you all for an absolutely incredible launch! I'm blown away by the amount of people enjoying the game and have been working hard to improve as much as possible. This update adds a few new features as well a bunch of bug fixes. Quickplay was initially working in this build but there were issues where players were loading into previously started lobbies and were going past the 4 player limi…
As the Early Access release drops on April 1st, I thought it would be a good time to share the Early Access Roadmap for those interested! As always, I'll be very active in the Crab Champions Discord server and will do my best to address as much feedback as possible 🦀 I can't wait to see what everyone thinks of the game! Join the Crab Champions Discord server: Follow Crab Champions on Twitter:…
The first Crab Champions beta weekend launched a few days ago and I've been blown away by the amazing response! Things are just getting started with new beta updates dropping every weekend until the April 1st release date. I really didn't expect people to drop so much time into the game in only 2 days and have such positive reactions, especially as the game still has plenty to be improved. Very…
This will be the last development update (at least until after the beta launches) as I’ve added the last of the remaining features planned for the beta and am hard at work swapping out all placeholder visuals with final assets. This work doesn’t make for very entertaining updates (this old rock is now a new rock!) and I’d like to keep any more additions as a surprise for players checking out th…
Another month zooms by in the blink of an eye! Here's what I worked on in July- really getting into improving the visuals now but there's still work being done tweaking design elements after each playtest, fixing bugs and adding plenty of quality of life features. This is a long one, let's get into it! New Visuals · New FX / More Vibrant Colors · Visual Style + Level Design Since there's so muc…
Please note that all visuals shown in this update WILL be improved / replaced, this is the last feature heavy update and I expect to show much more polished and refined visuals in future updates. It's been frustrating to have to stick with placeholder everything while designing how the game works but that's just part of development. I wanted to cram as many pending and quality of life features…
The update this month is a little less beefy than usual as most of my time was spent working through the backlog of remaining tasks needed to ship the beta. While a lot of these tasks are technical and boring, there are a few new interesting additions. I'll keep it short and sweet and then get back to finishing the game- that's where my time is best spent at the moment! Final Grenade Mods Last…
Loot Overhaul As I playtest Crab Champions daily to get it ready for the upcoming beta, one thing that really needed improving was how loot system worked. Previously when you cleared an island, a loot chest would appear near the exit portal: It could be a chest of any type, meaning that you often got a health chest while already at full health which was frustrating. Players also ended up with t…
Animation Overhaul Animation is by far my weakest area in game development so this overhaul was badly needed. The clunky placeholder animations that have been used for literally years now are finally gone! New Grenade Throw Animation New Slide Animation New Melee Animation More Fluid Jumping Have a look at some comparisons of the old terrible animations compared to the new ones! Note that the n…
At this point, the game is in great shape: the scope and gameplay loop are locked down and I'm playtesting daily to get it where it needs to be for release. The main things that I'll be focusing on moving forward are presentation and content: 3D assets, audio (including the soundtrack), animations, lighting, FX, levels and generally making the game feel polished (finally I'll be replacing these…
This month a lot of work has gone into increasing the replay value and variation of each Survival mode run. It's really important in any game with roguelike elements to have the potential for wildly different builds with a lot of difficult decisions to be made on each run. I felt that the game was lacking some of this depth so a big portion of the month was spent adding content and mechanics to…
Triangle Biome Sneak Peek In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred! Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and w…
Work continues on every aspect of the game this month: I'm playtesting daily and making thousands of small changes that are adding up to create a satisfying game loop. Epic MegaGrant I'm very pleased to announce that Crab Champions has received a MegaGrant from the amazing folks at Epic Games (creators of Unreal Engine which I use to make this game). Huge thanks to them for their generosity, I'…
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