Game dev uses next-gen technology to create millions of dancing crabs

Crab Champions is a game in development where players take the role of competitive crabs, jousting to be the champion of one of three action modes. Since developer Noisestorm has a crab model on hand, and Unreal Engine 5 is now available in early access, it was time to answer a very important question: how many crabs can you render in Unreal Engine 5 at the same time?

The answer? Millions. At minimum, three million crabs can all be absolutely vibing out at the same time. According to Noisestorm, going from 100,000 crabs to 2 million crabs caused “very little difference in performance.” The developer gave up after adding 3 million crabs, which suggests that you could just keep adding dancing crabs. Nice!

Unreal Engine 5 is a powerful, accessible engine that can produce visuals that almost appear photorealistic. But the power of the engine doesn’t have to be used to create a convincing human face, complete with pores and wrinkles. It can also be used to generate endless waves of dancing crabs. Now that’s next-generation.