DuneCrawl Review - A Crabby Road Trip That Runs Out of Gas
There is a special kind of heartbreak reserved for games that look this incredible but feel this miserable to actually play.
I am a sucker for a high-concept indie game. When Alientrap showed off a game about riding a giant crab fortress through a vast desert, fighting ceramic golems and looting islands, I was ready to sign my life away. It screams "cult classic." But after sinking fifteen hours into this sandy wasteland, both alone and with friends, I realized that DuneCrawl is the video game equivalent of a mirage. It looks beautiful on the horizon, but the closer you get, the more you realize there is nothing there but sand and frustration.
It Looks Good on the Postcard
Let’s start with the positives because I am a fair man. This game is stunning.
The developers utilized Unreal Engine 5 to create a world that pops with vibrant colors and fantastic lighting. The character designs have that weird, charming indie aesthetic, and the sheer scale of the crab walkers is impressive to behold.
The audio department also deserves a raise. The soundtrack is a banger, mixing western-style twang with pulsing synths and hand drumming that fits the vibe perfectly. If I was rating this purely on "vibes," it would be a solid 9. Sadly, I have to rate it on how it plays.
The Solo Experience is a Nightmare
The store page says this is playable solo. That is technically true, in the same way it is technically possible to eat soup with a fork.
If you play alone, you are given an AI "spirit companion" to help manage your giant crab. This ghost is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. It struggles to repair the ship, it barely helps with combat, and it leaves you overwhelmed the second things get heated.
The gameplay loop burns out fast when you are by yourself. You roam, you shoot, you loot, you upgrade. Without the chaos of friends screaming at each other, the hollowness of the world becomes impossible to ignore.
Combat: Floaty and Frustrating
Whether you are on foot or manning the crab, the combat feels like you are fighting underwater.
On foot, the aiming is floaty and imprecise, especially if you are using a controller. You swing your sword, you miss. You shoot your gun, it feels weak. The enemy hitboxes feel like suggestions rather than rules. I found myself constantly getting hit by attacks I swore I dodged, or whiffing strikes that visually connected.
Then there is the crab combat. In co-op, this is meant to be a "swashbuckling" affair where one person steers and others load cannons. In practice, it feels like manual labor. You have to manually load the cannonball, aim the slow turret, fire, and repeat. It’s tedious. Worse yet, the physics are wonky; I was frequently blasted off my own driver's seat just by trying to position the crab.
A Technical Disaster Class
I played a significant portion of my review period on the Steam Deck, and it was rough.
When walking around small islands, it ran okay. But the moment I hopped on the crab to traverse the open world, the main selling point of the game, the framerate tanked. I saw drops down to 8 frames per second. That is not cinematic. That is a slideshow.
It’s not just performance, either. The bugs are plentiful. I fell through the map multiple times. I got stuck on geometry and had to force respawn. I had quests that refused to update after I completed the objective. It feels like this game needed another six months in the oven to bake properly.
The Verdict
DuneCrawl breaks my heart. It has the art direction, the music, and the core concept of a fantastic game, but the execution trips over its own legs. The combat is unsatisfying, the solo experience is tedious, and the technical state of the game is currently unacceptable. If you have three patient friends and high-end PCs, you might squeeze some fun out of the chaos. For everyone else, this crab is undercooked.
Score: 5.5 A beautiful shell with a hollow center.
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