DuneCrawl’s ground combat pales in comparison to its thrilling crab walker battles.

A question, readers. What sounds more fun: doddering about on your own two feet – like an idiot – or storming through deserts on a cannon-packing megacrab? I only make such a clearly self-answering inquiry because for some reason DuneCrawl, or at least the Steam Next Fest demo that shows off its isometric action, seems to think both sides have valid points.

They do not. I’ve played solo and with licensed crustacean pilot Brendy in co-op, and on neither occasion did the on-foot combat sections click. There are rare moments of comedy chaos, where one teammate accidentally detonates another in the midst of blasting an enemy or breaking open a cracked wall, but ultimately it feels less like a swashbuckling Magicka and more like a kind of multiplayer Death’s Door where everyone’s on their fifth G&T. All awkward swordfighting, sluggish shooting, and constant rolling in place of positioning nous.

Then you get on the big crab, and it fuckin’ rocks. Beyond the simple, base pleasures of duelling other battle walkers on a manor-sized shellfish, this is where DuneCrawl finally starts feeling like a proper co-op game. With one player at the helm, others will scurry hurriedly around the deck, loading and firing cannons while slathering on goop to heal the crab’s damaged legs. The demo only contains one crawler-versus-crawler duel, but it’s easily the highlight: a delightfully shambolic spectacle that, like a Guns of Icarus dogfight or Sea of Thieves naval clash, manages to feel pacey and urgent in spite of the inherent unwieldiness of the craft involved.

I’d say that DuneCrawl would be better if you never left the crab, but then that would deny it two of its funniest quirks. One: it’s possible to be blown off the deck entirely by enemy fire, a detail I could appreciate from the vantage point of thirty feet in the air after a cannonball flung me clear of Crawl McCartney (Brendy let me name the crab) and into the sand below. Two: it’s possible, if not outright encouraged, to fire yourself out of friendly or captured cannons, which is perfect for countering landbound defences or boarding a hostile walker in a hurry. I know I said the on-foot battles aren’t as good, but I’ll make a temporary exception for whenever I want to aerially deliver myself face-first onto the bad guys’ main deck.

There is some non-endearing jank that needs addressing. Performance is weirdly ropey for a game that thinks photorealism is how plants eat sunlight, my RTX 3090 stuttering heavily at 1440p. And the demo’s invisible boundary, an otherwise understandable roadblock to just sauntering off and exploring the entire game’s desert for free, forced mine and Brendy’s adventure into an ignominious end. While searching for more crawlers to fight, the barrier bumped us clean off ol’ McCartney, while letting our crab stumble further into the forbidden zone on his own momentum and making him impossible to retrieve, forcing a long, dusty walk back to base.

A shame, as we were well up for more stompy crab fights at that point. I for one still am, provided the full game doesn’t keep me on land for too long in exchange.