Horseshoe Crab Rescue

Genre: Arcade / Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Horseshoe Crab Rescue, released on Nintendo 3DS in late 2021, is one of the final games to see release on the Nintendo 3DS eShop, and it is… a very odd game. In this game, players walk around a beach filled with the titular horseshoe crabs, tapping on the screen to flip over any that have been flipped onto their backside.

Looking this up, this is apparently a problem for horseshoe crabs in real life – the waves flip them over, and they are often unable to right themselves and can even die because of this. If you should encounter a horseshoe crab in this state, know that they cannot hurt you, but you should avoid touching their tail because you can hurt them – pick them up by their sides instead and place them with their legs toward the ground if you want to help them out.

Anyway, this game has the player doing much the same, with 3D visuals depicting a beach and some detailed 3D models representing the crabs themselves, with some lighthearted music playing in the background. It’s nothing impressive, but it’s still far more than one expects from a $1 game.

As for the gameplay, well… there’s not really much to it. You walk around in first person, and if an upside-down crab appears on your touchscreen, you can tap on it to flip it. You can’t do anything with crabs that are already rightside-up, so… that’s pretty much all there is. Walk around, look for crabs, flip them over, and try to do enough of them to fit a quota within a time limit. That’s it.

I suppose, as a PSA about horseshoe crabs, Horseshoe Crab Rescue is reasonably effective – I learned more about horseshoe crabs playing this game than I ever have before. But as a game, this is pretty dull, even for the low $1 price tag. Unless you’re looking to add one more oddity to your Nintendo 3DS library, skip this one.

tl;dr – Horseshoe Crab Rescue is a bizarre game with Arcade-style elements where players search a beach for upside-down horseshoe crabs to flip back onto their feet. As a cute tribute game to horseshoe crabs, I suppose this is at least interesting, but as a videogame it’s simple and dull. Unless you want to spend $1 on something bizarre, skip this.

Grade: D

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