AggroCrab KNOWS Best!

Shout out to AggroCrab Studios, I hope you’re reading this!

When this game was first announced, I wrote it off entirely. I’m sorry, guys, I can't lie to y’all, I was just not sold on the game. The idea of Sebastian from The Little Mermaid fighting all these little sea creatures with microplastics in a cute soulslike game just did not register in my brain as “fun”. It looked interesting, sure, but to shove out $29.99 on release date was just not in the cards for me.

Normally, what I like to do when it comes to a game that I’m interested in, but not entirely sold on, is wait for the YouTubers that I follow to release their review video of the game and then see if they, basically, convinced me to pay full price for it, or if |I should wait for a sale. Then, the first review came out from IGN...

Sentiment: pretty solid score at an 8 out of 10, but I’m going to be playing this game on the Nintendo Switch. Now, I need to hop on over to Switch Up’s review for the game...

This is where my customer journey came to a screeching halt.

The image quality and performance of this game was nowhere near where I, as a consumer, would be comfortable paying $30 for. No purchase from me this time around and, if I did feel inclined to buy it later on, the game would have to be on sale in order for me to buy it.

Now, for most customers in the video game market, that’s all it takes for them to completely abandon their customer journey for a potential purchase of a video game and, especially for games that don’t have a physical release such as Another Crab’s Treasure, have them fall into the ether of their respective eShops. It’s sad, and for many small indie developers, that can be how the cookie crumbles. For these small indeed developers it SEEMS like they only have one shot to make a good impression on their target audience of gamers and, if it doesn’t click, they fall into obscurity.

But can we prevent that? Let’s find out!

Now, for many indie developers, they don’t have all that Microsoft money to throw at Google ads, billboards, and the promotional content that you’d find at a brick and mortar store like GameStop or Best Buy. Y’all need to go through social media to pull customers into your journey and, for AggroCrab Studios, they caught me on a post from their X profile:

I’m not even kidding you...they put Spongebob’s house IN THE GAME. Mic drop.

From there, I went down a deep, dark rabbit hole full of hilarious content that they had posted on their X profile and I absolutely fell in love with the developer. And, to my surprise, something happened in those moments as I scrolled through the most ridiculous content I’ve ever seen from an actual video game developer (seriously, check it out here). I found their content so compelling that I bought the game on completely different gaming hardware.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “Javier, why would you spend your money on a game that you didn’t think was going to be good from a performance standpoint.” And you’re correct, this game did, and still does, have performance issues when playing the game. HOWEVER, I am a firm believer that, at any and every touchpoint on any platform, indie developers have the capacity to change a customer’s mind and give them a reason to purchase their game. It’s not enough to just put your game on Steam and just say, “Well, that’s it, the game is released. I hope we do well in sales.” and call it a night. Absolutely not! They took an angle that people in the market were sleeping on and leaned into it. Heavy.

It was in one of those posts on X that I saw that the game was on Steam. Immediately, I pulled out my ROG Ally, because I wanted to play the game portably, and downloaded the game on Steam without a second to think about it. Why? Because it is apparent, in their content, that these developers love their game. They poured everything they had into this game and it shows

from the main story to the little bits of randomness they placed in the world. One of the developers goldfish died and they put his goldfish in the game with an actual grave that you can visit. Not a joke, check it out here! If they care enough about their own employees to do something like this, they will do everything they can to give us a reason to buy their game and to continue to talk about their game in a positive light.

The customer journey, for all indie developers, shouldn’t start when they announce the game. The customer journey starts when the game is in development because showing your audience the passion you have for your games is the best way to hook us into buying your game. AggroCrab Studios, you all are in incredible team and, for all of you who are struggling, take some notes from this tiny, yet mighty, team because AggroCrab knows best! 100,000 units sold in one week...just wow.

And that’s it from me, thank you all so much for reading! What do you think about customer journeys and what are some other ways that indie developers can reach us gamers through the various touchpoints that are available to them? Just remember, you don’t need a huge budget to implement these touchpoints and attain great results, you just need to be engaging. But let me know what you think down below! And, if you're interested in our other articles, like this one here where I talk about Square Enix and the fact that they LOST money on one of the greatest video game franchises of all time...you’ll have to read it to believe it. And, if you like your content more in the video variety, you can always check out our YouTube channel at Not for Normies where, every week, we bring you all the video game news, rumors, and opinions you need to know!

So have a great rest of your week, play some video games and, as always, don’t be a normie!