no game this pretty should have to suffer from writing THIS bad. i don't like to be too hyperbolic, i love video games and i just wanna be chill about em, but Solar Ash has some of the most aggravating writing i've experienced in a game. the core appeal here, to me, is getting to effortlessly glide around gorgeous landscapes and soak in the atmosphere - but your protagonist NEVER shuts the fuck up!!!! you'll see a glowing red eye on a goop obstacle and she'll blurt out "that must be its weak point! i should attack it!". the game constantly patronizes the player with obnoxious hand-holding quips, the tone of which never really matches the world's. there's an area with hazardous green acid that causes a vignette and a warning indicator to appear on screen - obviously, that isn't obvious enough of an indicator of danger so she says "Even the water here is hazardous, because... of course it is."

Hyper Light Drifter managed to have an interesting world without any dialogue. it's strange to see how much of an emphasis this game places on story, with a fair amount of sidequest NPCs and text logs that no human being has ever read. a lot of its meat ends up being exposition and a stream of meaningless sci-fi proper nouns. the back end of its narrative has that YA-fiction blatant stating of themes in an attempt to be about 'something.' the final boss is the manifestation of the protagonists' self-hatred and guilt that gets defeated by reaching out to others, i couldn't help but groan.

part of me thinks this game's focus on story is more a reflection of how empty the rest of it is. a lot of its systems seem entirely superfluous - health points never matter (why can you even take damage?), the only thing you can spend currency on is on getting more health, you can collect more suits but they have a negligible effect on gameplay. there's a lot of time spent on boss fights but all of them play the exact same way - you home in on a bit, glide around hitting little needle things, and then home in on their eye. it's fun the first couple of times but gets repetitive. for a roughly 5-6 hour game, a lot of it feels like filler. it never stops looking gorgeous, it never stops being fun to skate around in its world (tho i disagree with how its momentum is so easy to lose & never really builds in a tactile sense), but i wish it was designed tighter. and that whoever wrote it is never allowed to communicate in any language ever again.

the jump button was the best part of Elden Ring, Another Crab's Treasure very clearly proves that soulslikes were meant to be 3D platformers all along - and that stamina bars are overrated. i enjoyed Aggro Crab's debut title Going Under a fair bit, it had a great sense of humour and perfectly committed to its corporate satire but ended up let down a bit by being a roguelike (with the inherently sloppy area/encounter design that follows) and having combat that needed a lil more extra to it. Another Crab's Treasure has the same bitter hatred for the structure of society and scavenge-heavy gameplay as Going Under but with way more depth in every aspect. i'm a sucker for exploring colourful, cute areas and collecting stuff. its got intricate levels, a healthy variety of enemies, a very appealing artstyle, a final boss who would own a tesla, and a really adorable crabtagonist. it has some issues with balancing (the tentacle adaptation is busted) and boss design depth but i liked it a lot!!! enough that i played about 20 hours of it in four days, it's really meaty for an indie of its size. felt very well-realized, extremely charming but a lot more sincere and sad than i expected. very clever with its allegories in how it uses Souls tropes. it was kinda like the crab version of Char's Counterattack, in a way.