DuneCrawl Review - Indie Gem or Total Crab?

DuneCrawl

Steam/PC

1/5/26

Alientrap

Is this ambitious open world indie worth your time?

We love indie games for many reasons. They often explore themes that resonate deeply with us, are typically budget‑friendly, and above all, are brought to us by developers who are still willing to take creative risks. Sure, there’s been an overabundance of roguelites, roguelikes, and Metroidvanias in the last few years, but despite this, plenty of indie dreamers still exist, bringing us games with fresh ideas or, at the very least, unique spins on familiar formulas. Just look at DuneCrawl, coming to us from Alientrap. It’s an open‑world action‑adventure title set across an endless desert where players become crab keepers controlling massive crab crawlers equipped with deadly weapons. Making an open‑world game is no small feat for a small indie crew, so is Alientrap up to the task — or does DuneCrawl sink into quicksand? Let’s find out in our full review!

DuneCrawl is an open‑world action‑adventure title that blends exploration, combat, and upgrade systems into one strange, ambitious package. Its massive desert world is genuinely impressive in scope for an indie crew, offering no shortage of deadly foes to defeat, resources to gather, upgrades and weapons for both crab crawlers and keepers, and side quests for completionists. It’s a bit of an odd duck conceptually that manages to stand out from other open‑world games, and while it’s fully playable solo, it feels built around co‑op, supporting up to four players in total either online or off.

DuneCrawl doesn’t feature a ton of visual options, covering the basics such as resolution, V‑Sync, anti‑aliasing, shadows, and not much else. Audio options are equally minimal. There are a few interface settings, players can rebind controls, and several difficulty options are available — which, thankfully, can be changed at any time during gameplay if you find yourself struggling. All told, the game’s options are about as familiar as the menu at McDonald’s, with no major surprises.

The game opens on a beautifully animated, albeit short, cutscene which introduces us to a small village known as Sandy Hill, because, desert — I mean, what else are you gonna call it, right? Ok, there’s probably a million desert‑themed puns out there, but this also isn’t the only village in the game, so expect more of those. Our lovable crab keepers seem to be enjoying the day like any other when suddenly the village comes under attack by a massive enemy clay crawler which wants to overtake the territory, amongst others which are strewn across the lands. Basically, they are playing some sort of sicko version of Monopoly — or maybe Risk makes more sense — one of those conquest games. Now you must defend your people, who are known as Polloi, setting off our greater adventure that has you trying to bring peace back to the world and stop evil no‑gooders from doing even more not-so‑nice things.

I’m simplifying things a bit, but the truth is that while DuneCrawl presents an interesting world, it doesn’t fill it with that many characters worth caring about. We’re introduced to our crawler through an Old Keeper, we name our crawler — hopefully something appropriate, you sickos — and then it’s more or less off to fight the clay crawler and save the day. DuneCrawl’s dialogue is actually decently written, but generally speaking, there’s just not a whole lot of interesting story presented. The game scatters a bit of lore, gives you some backstory on the occasional side objective, and that’s about that. So all told, the narrative isn’t offensively bad; it just feels a bit underdeveloped for what is a pretty interesting‑looking world that could have made for a compelling tale.

Gameplay takes place either on foot or on your crawler. While on foot, you’ll have a basic set of actions such as swinging weapons to bust through crates and defeat enemies. Expect a good amount of weapon variety, whether ranged or close melee. There are all sorts of bows, guns, swords, and axes that each feel fairly distinct from one another. Unfortunately, aiming — especially on a controller — doesn’t feel as good as you would like, and some of the close‑range weapons feel like they were designed to fail, leaving you open to attacks. While I did enjoy the weapon variety, especially bombs which can bust down cracked walls or explode groups of foes, combat on foot is often just downright frustrating and not as enjoyable as one would have liked, despite a lock‑on system that alleviates just a bit of the aggravation. At the least, being able to ride on smaller creatures does offer some fun and amusement, as they feature wobbly controls, and other players are able to ride along with you should a seat be available. The second player can then fire off shots freely as you dart across the screen.

Players should also expect to gather no shortage of loot. This loot can be equipped or sold at the many vendor shops you encounter. Equipping weapons, sorting loot and equipment, and triggering potions is easy peasy, with the game offering a nice built‑in menu for each character that can be pulled up at any time during gameplay. There’s also a hotbar that allows for quick switching between equipped items and weapons. Waypoints are well presented on‑screen, and the map offers a solid indication of where you should be headed next. It does a nice job of labeling key areas and displaying your current location, so I never felt like I was aimlessly wandering as I have in so many other games — my goals were clear.

When you aren’t simply completing objectives, expect to come across the occasional dungeon that hosts not only helpful treasures but tricky puzzles to solve. One example of these areas was a dark cave I encountered that had me carefully placing glowing orbs and dodging spikes. These sections of the game were welcome, though having two players try to solve puzzles at once could prove a bit frustrating, especially if one player got ahead of the other. That said, co‑op mostly works well enough throughout gameplay and feels downright necessary when traversing areas via your crawler.

Yes, now we’re finally going to talk about controlling the crawler — which, let’s be honest, if you’ve seen a trailer for this game, was the coolest‑looking aspect of the whole damn thing. Sadly, manning a crawler isn’t as awesome as it looks. While one player steers this massive creature, the other fires off rounds at enemies, a slow process that involves loading a cannon with a cannonball and then manually aiming each shot. All the while, the crawler can sustain damage and often needs to be healed with green goop. I love the idea of working together this way in practice, but the execution feels off.

Even more frustrating, I would often be blasted off the driver’s seat when trying to position myself. Maybe this all works better with three or four players, but with two, I can’t say I was having all that much fun. Players can also toss up a shield for a limited amount of time to deflect bullets back towards foes, but it doesn’t make things all that much more enjoyable. If playing solo, you’ll get a spirit companion to help out, and while I spent most of my game in co‑op, when testing this out single‑player I found the AI partner to be pretty useless, unfortunately. The one aspect I did enjoy about crawlers was being able to purchase new upgrades for them — mainly plated shields that attach to their legs and make them stronger.

And that’s pretty much how DuneCrawl plays out. There are 15 hours of this, and if I am being completely honest, I felt tired of it all around 5 or 6 of those. The quests just aren’t all that interesting, the combat is lackluster, and worse yet, it's riddled with awkward bugs and massive, random framerate hitches, mainly when traveling via a crawler. On Steam Deck, the on‑foot sections ran decently enough, though when exploring with the crawler those nasty framerate spikes were even worse, dropping as low as 8 frames per second during my testing. Nothing I came across performance‑wise was completely game‑breaking, mind you, and I am sure patches will be deployed in short order, but less‑than‑stellar performance is just another knock against the entire package.

On a positive note, there is no denying that DuneCrawl is very pretty for an indie release. Its maps and menus look sleek, I enjoyed the character and creature designs, and the colors are lush and vibrant throughout. Sound design is also excellent, whether it be massive explosions, whistling bullets, or a lovely orchestrated soundtrack that features some nice pulsing synths at times amongst the strings, with a bit of western flair. Some sections even include some beautiful hand drumming that fits the vibe of the game perfectly. All told, I did greatly enjoy the visual and audio design of the game.

While I admire the ambition behind DuneCrawl, its biggest flaw is that it just wasn’t all that fun to play. The combat doesn’t feel as fluid as one would like on or off the crawler, its story isn’t interesting enough to maintain a 15‑plus‑hour runtime, and while it has some neat ideas, it’s not enough to make up for the many shortcomings. If you really need a game to play with friends, there are simply better, less frustrating options available. It’s pretty and sounds lovely, but ultimately, DuneCrawl, much like its sandy world, left me feeling a bit parched. With all of that said, I very much look forward to seeing what Alientrap comes out with next, as I feel there are lessons to be learned here and their next indie endeavor could be exceptional — here’s to hoping.

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