Medium Crab
Core Role: The first enemy that has to be fought rather than walked into. It cannot be stood on, it cannot be hit whenever you like, and it closes distance faster than the player can. Beating it is a rhythm: bait the roll, survive it, punish the dizzy.
🎮 Combat Design
Behaviour loop:
Idle or Patrol → Chase → Roll Windup → Homing Roll → Dizzy → Chase| Phase | Duration | What the player does |
|---|---|---|
| Chase | until within roll range (~15m) | Keeps distance, positions. |
| Roll windup | 0.7s telegraph | Reads the tell and starts dodging. Vulnerable. |
| Homing roll | ~1.5s armoured charge | Dodges. Hits are refunded here. |
| Dizzy | 5s | The punish window. Everything lands. |
The armour rule
The crab is damageable during the roll windup and while dizzy, and nowhere else. The charge itself is armoured: hits are refunded, not merely ineffective.
This is the enemy's entire design. It converts a chase into a read: the player has to let the crab commit, get out of the way, and cash in on the recovery.
Kiko's air dash loses the exchange against a rolling crab: he takes the hit instead of pogoing off. This is deliberate: the roll must be dodged by both characters, or the armour window means nothing. His tornado does still sweep a rolling crab.
Stomp: the spikes
The Medium Crab uses the Spike Damage stomp response. Landing on it hurts, and, critically, perching on it hurts too, re-spiking the player every time their i-frames lift. It is never a platform.
Spikes are switched off while the damage gate is open, so the dizzy window stays winnable for a slamming Koopa or a diving Kiko.
Feedback
- A dizzy visual (stars/swirl) switches on for the punish window.
- A dizzy audio one-shot fires the moment the window opens; the audio cue is the "hit me now" signal, and should carry over combat noise.
- The roll drags a particle trail so its path is readable from the side of the arena.
🗺️ Placement Guidance
- Give it room. The homing roll needs a clear run-up. In a corridor it becomes unavoidable rather than dodgeable.
- Never introduce it mid-platforming. The first one should be on flat, safe ground with no fall risk while the player learns the rhythm.
- One at a time, at first. Two overlapping roll cycles is a much harder fight than two crabs implies.
- Appears in Area 1 Level 1 - Sandy Shores - Sunwash Beach; "rolling crabs" patrol the underwater lagoon channels Koopa must swim through.
🔗 Related
- Systems - Enemy AI Framework: armour windows, stomp responses, shared tuning
- Systems - Kiko Abilities and States: the air-dash exception
- Area 1 - Sandy Shores