Crabs on the Island

Collect resources, replicate yourself, claim supremacy for you and your line of robot crabs!
Inspired by the short story “Crabs on the Island” by Anatoly Dneprov (1958) and produced for Ludum Dare 56 game jam for the theme "Tiny Creatures".

Controls:
WASD - Movement
Shift - Dash
Spacebar - Harvest
HOLD Q - Replicate
Tab + A/D - Swap control to other crabs in your line
Mouse wheel - Zoom view

BEWARE: Crabs that collect sufficient quantities of cobalt become hostile, and can “harvest” other crabs!

Updates:

2024-10-09: We were able to resolve the two end state bugs, so you can now win or lose the game without any errors!

Known Issues:

• HTML5 VERSION TENDS TO HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES AT HIGHER POPULATIONS. Recommend running the win/mac versions if you encounter this!
• Game end states do not trigger (refresh the page to start a new game)
• Death of your controlled crab causes a soft-lock (requires game restart)

Planned Features:

• Dash attack (once cobalt is obtained)
• Sufficiently large/strong crabs can pick up and carry ingots or even smaller crabs
• Wrestle for items held by other crabs
• Choose one of a few random mutation options on replication
• New/procedural maps with togglable sandbox settings