Riders,
We’ve just revealed our next game during the tinyBuild Connect Showcase: The Crab is Walking, a roguelite city builder where your capital sits atop a giant creature hauling it across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Watch the announcement trailer below:
Build a city on the creature’s shell, merge and upgrade your buildings, raise an army, and pick your route through the wasteland. Every road offers its own dangers and rewards. How much trouble are you willing to crab into?
From Watching to Walking
After releasing The King is Watching, we wanted to push its central ideas further and give players more ways to bend its systems to their advantage.
The Crab is Walking began with the gameplay rather than the setting. We spent several months hammering out the core mechanic before deciding what kind of world to build around it.
Eventually, we landed on a mobile base. Instead of defending the same kingdom, you would build a settlement on the back of a living creature and drag civilization through the apocalypse one run at a time.
As for why that creature became a giant crab?
Well, everything will eventually evolve into a crab.
A City on Eight Legs
Space management was already important in The King is Watching. In The Crab is Walking, the shape of that space (and everything you cram into it) matters even more.
Every building has its own form, turning the creature’s shell into a puzzle that keeps changing as your city grows. Merge buildings, unlock upgrades, tear up your old plans, and hunt for combinations powerful enough to break the game.
There’s just one problem: there’s never enough room for everything.
Do you grow your army, push production, or keep your Ride moving? Sooner or later, something has to take priority. Choose badly, and the wasteland will make the decision for you.
Your journey also depends on the creature carrying your city — The Ride, and the Rider guiding it. Different pairings demand different approaches. Some thrive on aggression. Others favour defence, production, or making ruthless use of their abilities.
Pick your Ride. Pick your Rider. Try not to get them both killed.
Why Not The King is Watching 2?
Because we’re not finished with the first game.
We’re still working on The King is Watching and releasing new content for it, so this isn’t the time for a sequel. Our next update will focus more heavily on gameplay variety, and we already have a rather large folder full of ideas for where its central mechanic could go next.
We also understand much better what players enjoy about the game, and we’ll be carrying those lessons into everything we make from here.
So, who knows? Perhaps one day that folder will become something more…
What Are We Doing Differently?
The Crab is Walking gives us room to attempt things that weren’t possible or practical in The King is Watching.
We’re working with a different resolution, allowing for more detailed pixel art and more elaborate animations. We’re also introducing more sophisticated unit behaviour, combat statistics, and a more convenient, polished interface.
The setting has changed completely, too. We’ve traded medieval fantasy for post-apocalyptic punk, but our fondness for hiding pop-culture references everywhere survived the apocalypse just fine. The King Is Watching gave us plenty of fantasy stories to play with. Now the entire wasteland is fair game.
Underneath the rust, gasoline, and giant crustaceans, The Crab is Walking is an evolution of the design players enjoyed in The King is Watching: deep strategy packed into short roguelite runs, difficult choices that refuse to leave you alone, and combinations we fully expect players to abuse in ways we never intended.
Most importantly, we want it to be just as fun and addictive as The King is Watching. Preferably more. After all, it is every creator’s goal (and curse) to try and make the next thing bigger.
Join Us Early
The King is Watching became a much better game because players got their hands on it early, told us what worked, and weren’t shy about telling us what didn’t.
We’re taking The Crab is Walking down the same road.
Our first playtest is planned for next year, and we intend to involve players as early as possible. There’s still plenty to build, test, balance, dismantle, and put back together. Your feedback will help shape what this game becomes before its systems are set in steel.
For now, you can help us out by wishlisting The Crab is Walking, following us on social media and telling us what you think!
See you in the wastelands,
— Hypnohead Team