Crab Champions — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| The Future Of Crab Champions | 2026-03-18 | Hey!It's been a while since the last update and I wanted to let you know what the plans are for the game moving forward! Rather than a big wall of text I've made a mini FAQ to keep things easy to read. WHERE NEXT UPDATE?Great question! I've been hard at work on the next big update: it's still cooking and I like to make sure each update is really worth returning for rather than rushing things out too soon. My wife and I are expecting a baby in the next few weeks so I can't promise a definite timeline, but I'm still aiming for sometime this Spring. If you want to check out some of the new stuff as it gets added, I'm updating the beta branch wee |
| The Island Update Hotfix #3 / #4 | 2025-11-22 | After 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 difficulty that I could possibly muster up no matter how unfair it was I made the mistake of trying to satisfy both groups with a single medal so I have made a bunch of changes in this patch to make the game more enjoyable for both groups of players. Firstly, |
| The Island Update Hotfix #1 / #2 | 2025-11-03 | HOTFIX #1 PATCH NOTESChanged the Nightmare red difficulty modifier to be +4 difficulty level so this gives you an additional difficulty point to spend on either a green modifier or disabling another one of the 1 point red modifiers. This should give enough flexibility to still get Prismatic while running the least annoying modifiers to you personally (everyone seems to have different opinions on which they prefer / hate so this new modular system seems to be working well to allow people to have more agency)Greatly expanded out of bounds trigger zones on all islands so the out of bounds warning should pretty much never pop up accidentally when |
| The Island Update (Early Access Update 11) | 2025-11-02 | Patch HighlightsALL NEW ISLANDSNEW WEAPON: POISON CANNON DIFFICULTY SYSTEM REVAMP WITH NEW RANK: PRISMATICPatch Notes NEW ISLANDS + VISUALSAdded 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 islands but with a fresh coat of paintAdded completely new lighting setups for all biomes to give them a more distinct lookEnabled reflections (most noticeable on water) and added ripples to lavaThe static blue boundary walls seen in previous updates has been up |
| The Anvil Update Hotfix | 2025-04-03 | 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 Lightning Scepter. This should make it easier to air dodge Added a delay before the floating happens in the air with the Lightning Scepter. This should make your initial jump / launch feel much smoother instead of jankily losing all momentum as soon as you fired wh |
| The Anvil Update (Early Access Update 10) | 2025-03-24 | 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 have added an Anvil portal reward which spawns 3 enhancement choices after clearing an island. You can then choose to enhance a specific mod from your inventory, allowing for much more targeted builds centered around one main mod. The random enhancement to |
| The Elemental Update (Early Access Update 9) | 2024-09-01 | 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 often spawned outside the map bounds or far away. Turrets now lose health over time but there are ways to extend their lifetime with perks and create infinite turret builds! Added new infinite shop pedestal type: one can be found on every reroll and the loo |
| The Variety Update Part 2 Hotfix #2 | 2024-03-14 | 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 spawn in groups Shop prices have been decreased by 25% but scale a bit more sharply when looping (so building into economy becomes more important in the late game but shops are more accessible in the early game). Greed loot now is worth exactly the same as Epi |
| The Variety Update Part 2 Hotfix #1 | 2024-03-05 | 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 when looping while still being a challenge- looping is meant to be quite difficult Enemy spawn bonus when looping decreased from +33% to +20% Islands 1 and 2 of a biome no longer can spawn two waves of ranged enemies back to back These changes should make |
| The Variety Update Part 2 (Early Access Update 8) | 2024-03-04 | 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 were quite a few perk ideas that weren't fun to level up but were fun as a once off pickup so this loot category nicely fills in that gap. Added new mechanic: Enhancements: In Tony's shop you'll find an Enhancement totem which allows you to randomly roll po |
| The Variety Update Part 1 (Early Access Update 7) | 2023-12-25 | 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 New music New loot New island challenge modifiers and a blessing type BIG BALANCE CHANGES Reworked economy, enemy and health scaling for a more satisfying experience with less cheap ways to win or lose Patch Notes GENERAL Added new ability system with 5 abi |
| Nominate Crab Champions for the Steam Awards! | 2023-11-21 | 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 other news, the beta for the next big update has been live for the last week or so, bringing lots of new features such as: - Selectable Melee Weapons (Claw, Dagger and Hammer) and Abilities (Grenade, Grappling Hook, Black Hole, Ice Blast and Laser Blast) - |
| The Fire & Magic Update (Early Access Update 6) | 2023-09-01 | 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 inventory screen and not have to explain what each piece of loot is! BIG MECHANIC IMPROVEMENTS Universal Critical Hits: ANYTHING can now cause a critical hit including your secondary projectiles like Mace Shot or Dagger Arc. This means that there is a si |
| The Difficulty Update (Early Access Update 5) | 2023-06-17 | 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) then feel free to opt into that branch. There has been an amazing beta community growing on Discord and it's been fun to see the reactions to each element as I add them. With that said, lets get into all the changes! Patch Highlights DIFFICULTY MODIFIERS |
| Early Access Update 4 | 2023-04-25 | 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 perk: Iron Claws: Melee damage heavily increased but melee cooldowns are also increased Added new Greed perk: Brawler: Melee damage greatly increased but weapon damage is reduced Holding down the melee button will now melee automatically after each melee cooldow |
| Early Access Update 3 | 2023-04-15 | 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 weaker thing to fire potentially multiple times a second (scaling nicely with fire rate and chance build options). In order for this to be balanced and considering that a 20% chance to burn enemies would be constantly applied from the minigun (due to the fa |
| Early Access Update 2 | 2023-04-10 | 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 slots have returned with a few caveats. No slots are locked on Easy difficulty, 12 slots are locked on Normal difficulty and 16 slots are locked on Nightmare difficulty. The cost to unlock each slot has been reduced as it was one of the main issues with locke |
| Early Access Update 1 | 2023-04-05 | 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 limit so I've had to disable it for now while I work on a proper fix. Now, onto the changes 🦀 Patch Notes GENERAL Added backwards sliding and being able to slightly move right or left while sliding (I tested being able to slide left and right at full speed |
| Crab Champions Early Access Roadmap | 2023-03-30 | 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: https://discord.gg/crabchampions Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/ |
| Crab Champions Beta Is Live! | 2023-01-08 | 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 surreal to see after all this time in development! You can check out some random gameplay clips that have been captured from the current Beta build here! If you are interested in joining the beta you can click this button on the store page to have a ch |