The Crab is Walking Builds a Roguelite City on the Back of a Giant Creature

The Crab is Walking has been revealed as the next game from Hypnohead, the studio behind The King is Watching. Published by tinyBuild, the newly announced PC strategy game trades a stationary throne room for a city built across the shell of an enormous creature wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Described as a roguelite city-builder and autobattler, The Crab is Walking asks players to construct an entire capital in a space where every tile matters. Buildings come in different shapes, so expanding a settlement is partly an exercise in fitting a very awkward puzzle together without sacrificing the military, production or support structures needed to survive the journey.

Those buildings will not necessarily remain in their original form. Structures can be merged and upgraded during a run, allowing the settlement to be reshaped as new problems emerge. Players will also choose different creatures and riders, with each combination intended to support a distinct approach to building and combat.

The moving city is more than an unusual backdrop. Hypnohead says the game is being designed around short, replayable runs in which players construct a settlement, fight, learn from whatever went wrong and push farther on the next attempt. The limited surface of each creature means there will never be enough room to pursue every possible upgrade at once.

Combat brings the city’s population into the equation. More than 100 unit types are planned, and players will be able to assemble armies before sending them into battles that play out automatically. The challenge lies in building a force whose abilities work together, while maintaining the production chain and city infrastructure required to support it.

That places The Crab is Walking somewhere between a compact city-builder, a roguelite deckbuilder and an autobattler. It is also a natural follow-up to The King is Watching, which squeezed kingdom management into a deliberately restricted play area and forced players to decide which parts of their economy deserved attention at any given moment.

The new game keeps that pressure but turns the settlement itself into a travelling machine. A productive layout may not be the one that survives an attack, while a heavily militarised shell could struggle to generate the resources needed to keep moving. Finding combinations that bend or break those constraints appears to be a central part of the appeal.

tinyBuild announced The Crab is Walking during its 2026 Connect showcase alongside a first trailer and a newly opened Steam page. No release window has been confirmed yet.

The Crab is Walking is in development for PC and can now be wishlisted on Steam.