Info about Crawling Lab:

Official game description:
“Crawling Lab,” a secret laboratory built by Selen Industry deep in the mountains.  
Here, a new product using the newly developed artificial life form "Biodoll" was being researched.  
But one day, a web-crawling AI hijacks a new Biodoll and  
An incident occurs in which she calls herself the "Crawl Queen" and takes control of all the facilities in the laboratory.  
The protagonist is sent on a mission to retrieve research materials from the laboratory.  
However, the protagonist is left alone in the laboratory due to an unexpected accident during the retrieve operation...  
Will he be able to escape from the laboratory controlled by the Crawling Queen?  
Stock up on ammo, upgrade your guns, defeat the Crawling Queen's minions and escape the lab.  
\- Attractive enemy biodolls  
\- Combat using guns  
\- Various traits and upgrades  
\- Simple controls  
\- Extra contents unlocked after ending

Release date: Jun 16, 2024

Categories: First-Person Shooter, Roguelike, Survival, Resource Management, Character Progression, Weapon Customization, Single-player Story, Procedural Generation


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly enjoyable and great value (weight 0.93): Players consistently report the game as surprisingly fun, addictive, and a solid indie FPS/roguelite. Many feel it offers exceptional value for its low price, exceeding expectations and providing a worthwhile experience.
- Attractive female enemy models (weight 0.46): A major draw for many players is the game's visually appealing and 'sexy' female robot/biodoll enemy designs. This aesthetic is consistently praised and contributes significantly to the game's unique charm and player engagement.
- Engaging progression and upgrades (weight 0.44): The game's roguelite progression system, featuring both in-run and permanent upgrades, is highly satisfying. This encourages experimentation with weapon builds and personal attributes, greatly enhancing replayability and making subsequent runs more manageable.
- Excellent developer support (weight 0.34): The developer is highly praised for frequent updates, diligent bug fixes, and active engagement with player feedback. This commitment significantly improved the game's playability and potential, fostering a positive community perception.
- Effective weapon build strategies (weight 0.32): Players have identified specific powerful weapon builds, such as the knife, sniper rifle, or handgun, which can significantly ease progression. Upgrading these weapons with particular skills creates strong synergies, often becoming preferred meta strategies.
- Solid FPS roguelite combat (weight 0.19): Players find the core gunplay and first-person shooter controls fluid and well-executed for an indie title. The combination with roguelite elements, like perk systems and varied combat tactics, makes for an engaging and deep experience.
- Useful test room features (weight 0.16): The game includes a 'test room' or 'training room' that players find valuable for experimenting with weapon upgrades, viewing unlocked biodolls in various poses, and even practicing with unique items. This room enhances the game's replayability and provides additional content.
- Mixed enemy AI and level design (weight 0.09): Feedback on enemy AI is mixed, with some noting good pathfinding while others report occasional freezing bugs and predictable movement. The level design is generally straightforward, focusing on combat without complex gimmicks.
- Good FPS skill practice (weight 0.08): The game is recommended as a useful tool for practicing fundamental FPS skills such as quick target acquisition, tracking, recoil control, and resource management. Its non-stop action helps players hone their abilities.

Common complaints:
- Repetitive and Tedious Gameplay (weight 0.97): Players consistently find the core gameplay loop, level design, and enemy encounters to be highly repetitive and drawn out, leading to boredom and a lack of engagement. The roguelite elements fail to provide meaningful replayability, making progression feel like an unrewarding grind with limited depth or challenge.
- Harsh Ammo Scarcity & Flawed Knife (weight 0.39): Players report extreme scarcity of ammunition, particularly in early and late stages, making combat stressful and often impossible without excessive grinding. The knife weapon is deemed ineffective due to low damage, high risk, limited durability, and lack of specialized combat mechanics, further exacerbating resource management challenges.
- Significant Technical & Performance Issues (weight 0.35): The game suffers from frequent crashes, especially when applying mods, and severe performance degradation including frame drops. Players also experience numerous bugs such as getting stuck, clunky animations, mouse control issues outside the window, poor weapon balancing, and general optimization problems.
- Frustrating Enemy Design & AI (weight 0.27): Enemies are often criticized for being basic with poor AI, while specific enemy types like 'Temptation' and 'Sentinel' are excessively tough with shields and debuffs. This, combined with small, complex maps and enemy swarms, leads to chaotic and frustrating combat situations.
- Underutilized Character Models & Generic Biodolls (weight 0.18): While character models are generally praised for their quality, players feel they are underutilized within the game's content and lack variety. The 'biodolls' themselves are seen as uninteresting with stiff movements, conservative dressing, and generic sound effects, failing to contribute significantly to the game's appeal.
- Lack of Explicit Erotic Content (weight 0.18): Many players purchased the game expecting explicit R18 or hentai content, but found only suggestive visuals. This disconnect between marketing/expectations and actual game content led to disappointment for a significant portion of its target audience.

Gameplay feedback:
- Roguelite FPS with survival (weight 0.22): The game is a first-person roguelite shooter that incorporates survival elements like resource management. It features random maps, enemy placements, and permanent progression through perks and abilities after each run.
- Varied Enemy Types & Tactics (weight 0.21): The game features a diverse array of enemies, with new types appearing as players progress. These include fast-attacking 'Green Hair' enemies, tough 'Purple Hair' enemies, shielded foes, and enemies that can see through walls. Players must learn each enemy's specific behaviors and weaknesses, primarily headshots, to progress effectively.
- Progressive Difficulty & Unlocks (weight 0.17): The game features a structured difficulty progression, where harder modes like 'Hard' and 'Crawling Queen' are unlocked sequentially. Completing these difficulties and associated challenges reveals new content, in-run enhancements, and modifiers, often requiring over 10 hours of playtime for most content.
- Strategic Upgrade Prioritization (weight 0.17): Players frequently discuss optimal upgrade strategies, recommending prioritizing specific weapons like the pistol and sniper rifle early on. Key talent choices often include 'point acquisition', 'equipment recovery', 'round upgrade', and 'pistol-related' skills to maximize efficiency and progression.
- Post-Run Permanent Upgrades (weight 0.15): Upon dying, players earn points based on their performance, which can be spent on permanent talents and buffs. This system is crucial for strengthening character abilities and making subsequent runs progressively easier, defining the meta-progression.
- Repetitive Progression Loop (weight 0.14): The core gameplay loop involves clearing rounds, managing resources like ammo, and often dying. Players then restart, aiming to progress through higher difficulties and stages, utilizing improved abilities. After each completed level, players can choose between upgrades, healing, or ammo.
- Dedicated Players Achieve Completion (weight 0.13): Many players demonstrate significant dedication, having completed all available difficulties and unlocked nearly every achievement. Players reported varying completion times, with normal mode taking around 3-8 hours, indicating sustained engagement for those who delve deep.
- Ammo Conservation is Key (weight 0.11): Ammo is a severely limited resource, making careful management crucial for progression. Players must learn to conserve ammunition through aimed shots and strategic weapon use, as running out of bullets is a frequent cause of game overs.
- Players Request More Content (weight 0.1): There's a strong desire from players for expanded game content, including new modes, additional story elements, more weapon types, and unique enemies with varied mechanics. These additions are suggested to enhance replayability and overall game experience.
- Unique Shielded Enemies (weight 0.1): Certain enemies, such as 'Temptation' and 'Sentinel,' feature distinct shield mechanics that absorb multiple hits. These shields can reset if the player attacks from too far or if the enemy is passive, requiring specific strategies to overcome.
- Randomly Generated Levels (weight 0.1): The game features 40 randomly generated levels, ensuring varied enemy placements and stage layouts for each run. While environments are randomized, key boss encounters appear at fixed levels (35 and 40), and each level offers opportunities for upgrades, healing, or ammo acquisition.
- Test Room Content & Rewards (weight 0.09): The 'test room' serves as a post-game hub where players can unlock unique 'goodies' and interactions by defeating enemies and completing the game. These rewards include novelty weapons like the Dance Gun and Size Gun, as well as enhancements like increased jump and stronger grab.
- Headshot Critical Talents (weight 0.08): Specialized talents, such as 'Eagle Eye' and 'Head Hunter', significantly impact combat by focusing on headshots. 'Eagle Eye' converts all attacks into headshots, while 'Head Hunter' doubles sniper rifle damage exclusively for headshots, making precision critical for certain builds.
- Checkpoint-Based Progression (weight 0.08): The game utilizes a checkpoint system where progress is saved every 10 levels. Players can restart from rounds 10, 20, or 30 upon death or exiting a run, but there are no mid-run saves within these 10-level intervals, affecting session length.
- Varied Weapon Effectiveness (weight 0.08): Different weapon types prove more effective against specific enemy archetypes, encouraging tactical weapon switching. The knife and pistol are ideal for clearing common enemies, while the shotgun is highly effective against large groups, impacting combat strategy.

Performance notes:
- Widespread game crashes and instability (weight 0.15): A significant portion of the feedback highlights frequent game crashes, fatal errors, freezes, and unexpected switches to the desktop. This instability is exacerbated by poor optimization, particularly after recent patches, and specific mods were also identified as crash triggers. Some reports suggest faster frame rates might even increase crash probability.
- Specific frame rate and optimization issues (weight 0.12): Players consistently report severe frame drops and stuttering in particular scenarios, such as on large or crowded 'maze-like' maps, when many ragdolls are present, or during room transitions for lower-spec PCs. High GPU consumption and overheating were also noted, indicating broader optimization deficiencies affecting performance in demanding situations.
- Minor gameplay mechanics bugs (weight 0.05): Several specific gameplay bugs were identified, including hard mode not functioning correctly, issues with shooting recoil, and instances of enemies spawning in odd, non-moving positions. While these impact gameplay, they appear less critical than the widespread performance issues.
- Graphics settings reset and mod conflicts (weight 0.04): Some players encountered an inconvenience where graphics settings would reset after completing each level, requiring manual re-configuration. Additionally, specific mods (e.g., Levitation, Sentinel) were linked to crashes, with V-sync suggested as a potential partial workaround to mitigate instability.

Recommendations:
- Conditional purchase recommendation (weight 0.3): Players recommend buying the game, but often with caveats. These include waiting for sales, further updates, or only if one enjoys specific genres like roguelike shooters with fanservice. Some note good value for money but acknowledge potential frustrations, with one review giving a 7.5/10.
- Advise waiting for improvements (weight 0.27): Several players cannot recommend the game in its current state, suggesting waiting for balance adjustments, patches, or updates to make it completable or less frustrating. This indicates current issues with game balance or difficulty that need addressing.
- Appeals to niche audience (weight 0.17): The game is particularly recommended for players who enjoy FPS roguelikes, specific character models (biorobots/dolls), simple gameplay with fanservice, or a more sniper-like, less fast-paced FPS experience. It suits those looking for something unusual or lighthearted.
- Strategic gameplay is essential (weight 0.13): The game requires strategic planning, particularly regarding ammo conservation and upgrade paths, rather than just raw skill. Specific tips include using melee, prioritizing certain upgrades (handgun, sniper), and avoiding large enemy groups, with difficulty increasing significantly in higher modes.
- Manage erotic content expectations (weight 0.08): Players advise against purchasing solely for explicit erotic content, noting that it's limited to what's shown in promotional materials. The game is recommended for those who appreciate simple gameplay and character design rather than explicit R18 content.
- Comparisons to developer's other games (weight 0.06): Reviewers often compare this game to the developer's other titles like 'Vampire Mansion' or 'The Last Saint'. While some suggest others might be better for specific content, this game is still highly regarded within their catalog.
- Request for modding support (weight 0.05): Players suggest adding Steam Workshop integration or general modding capabilities to allow the community to create custom content like maps, characters, weapons, and interactions. This would greatly enhance replayability and extend the game's lifespan.
- Address technical issues (weight 0.04): Players report experiencing crashes and issues with mouse control, specifically when not manually setting fullscreen mode and adjusting resolution. Resolving these technical problems is crucial for a smoother gameplay experience.
- Improve resource acquisition (weight 0.02): Players suggest increasing the number of bullets acquired during play and the clear points rewarded to make the game more enjoyable. This could alleviate some of the grind or difficulty frustrations.

Other player notes:
- Appreciated developer's distinct niche (weight 0.26): Many players are familiar with eTIRUe, recognizing them as an independent studio known for specific types of low-cost titles. They often support the developer by buying multiple games, appreciating the consistent style despite the individual games' limited scope and short playtime, typically around 2-4 hours.
- Distinct erotic horror aesthetic (weight 0.24): The game strongly appeals to a niche audience with its blend of anime-inspired characters, 3D horror environments, and sexualized enemies, despite being rated 15+ with no explicit nudity. This suggestive content and unique visual style are a significant draw, often helping players overlook other design aspects like repetitive level layouts.
- Challenging 'Crawling Queen' mode (weight 0.17): The 'Crawling Queen' mode is perceived as excessively challenging and time-consuming, with some players spending over ten hours and feeling their effort was wasted. While other difficulty modes are balanced, this endgame mode's difficulty spike and lack of mid-progress saves are noted frustrations.
- Low inherent replay value (weight 0.17): Beyond the initial playthrough, which many complete in a few hours, the game offers limited intrinsic replayability. While this is often accepted by players given the game's low price and niche appeal, there is an expressed desire for future DLC to introduce new mechanics and extend the game's longevity.
- Sparse, atmospheric sound design (weight 0.05): The sound design is minimalist, relying primarily on ambient noise, low background hums, and occasional jump-scare cues to build suspense. Voice acting is largely absent, and music is used sparingly, focusing more on creating an unsettling atmosphere than complex auditory experiences.
- Positive player engagement (weight 0.04): Despite specific criticisms regarding game length or certain difficulty modes, a segment of players reported becoming deeply engrossed in the game for extended periods. This indicates a strong positive reception and appreciation for the game experience among its target audience.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.29): Players experienced satisfaction due to the game's solid and fun gameplay, well-balanced difficulty, and effective progression systems, especially within its roguelike and FPS elements. Positive feedback also highlighted good graphics, controls, value for money, and the developer's continuous improvements and responsive updates. Specific enjoyment came from satisfying combat, build strategies, and appealing character models.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration arose from frequent technical issues like crashes, mouse control problems, and game-breaking bugs, which often led to lost progress. Players also struggled with excessive grinding, low ammo drops, stingy resources, and unfair difficulty spikes, especially in early or later stages. Repetitive level design, getting stuck in geometry, and poor controller support further contributed to the negative experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.16): Many players expressed disappointment over the game's perceived lack of explicit erotic content, shallow story, and repetitive gameplay, which fell short of expectations for a "sexy shooter." Technical issues, poor optimization, and the absence of desired features like customization or infinite levels further detracted from the experience. Some found the gameplay itself boring or the rogue-lite elements weak, despite good character models.
- Excitement (weight 0.07): Excitement stemmed from the game's intense, challenging, and rewarding gameplay loop, particularly its roguelike shooter mechanics. Players were thrilled by overcoming difficult challenges, discovering powerful strategies, and the prospect of future updates and content from a favored developer. The visual appeal of the character models also generated enthusiasm.
- Joy (weight 0.04): Players felt joy primarily from finding the game genuinely fun, addictive, and engaging, often exceeding initial expectations. The appealing aesthetics of the character models and interactive elements within the test room also contributed to this positive emotion.
- Boredom (weight 0.03): Boredom was a common sentiment due to the game's repetitive room layouts, enemy types, and monotonous gameplay loop, which often felt drawn out with little reward. Some found that the erotic content alone was not enough to sustain interest, leading to a general lack of engagement.
- Hope (weight 0.03): Hope was expressed for future improvements and content additions, including more explicit features, customization options, and sequels. Players held expectations for continued developer support and updates to address current shortcomings and enhance the game's potential.
- Engagement (weight 0.02): Players were deeply engaged by the game's addictive nature, compelling gameplay loop, and the constant desire to experiment with different builds and strategies. The variety of enemies and upgrade systems kept the experience fresh, motivating players to continue playing even after achieving 100% completion.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.02): General enjoyment came from the game's decent and engaging gameplay, satisfying gunplay, and the effectiveness of weapon upgrades and combat strategies, such as successful knife builds. Its value for money and suitability for casual play also contributed to a positive experience.
- Desire (weight 0.02): Players expressed a strong desire for more variety in game elements, including music tracks, enemy movement, and interactive attack patterns. There was a particular wish for more explicit, interactive, and customizable doll features, and for the developer to create more adult versions of their games.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger arose from persistent, game-breaking bugs and design flaws that led to lost progress, unfair deaths, and an inability to complete levels. Players were particularly frustrated by mouse locking issues and perceived attempts by the developer to artificially prolong playtime with overpowered enemies or unfair mechanics.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief was experienced when the game performed well despite potential technical concerns, and when a simple or easy experience was provided. Players also felt relief from finding bug workarounds, bypassing tedious grind, or seeing significant game improvements and reduced difficulty through developer patches.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Players expressed confusion regarding technical issues like bouncing or crashing, unclear game objectives, and discrepancies between high ratings and apparent flaws. Some were also confused about whether certain anticipated content, like "super giant biodolls," actually existed in the game.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude was directed towards the developers for their diligence, hard work, and continuous efforts to improve the game through frequent updates. Players appreciated the fun experience and enjoyable content provided.
- Caution (weight 0.01): Caution was advised regarding expectations for the game's erotic content, emphasizing that it was often only suggestive rather than explicit. A minor gameplay quirk during aiming down sights was also noted as a point of caution.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Players experienced surprise from unexpectedly enjoying the roguelite genre or completing all achievements. The game's hitboxes were also noted to be surprisingly accurate for an FPS, exceeding initial expectations.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement was derived from experimenting with doll interaction and posing, observing their physics, and enjoying the somewhat "goofy zombie-like" gameplay.
- Suggestion (weight 0.01): Specific suggestions were made for improving the game, such as adding a mid-game start option for a particular mode or opening up modding capabilities to the community.
- Neutrality (weight 0.01): The emotion of neutrality stemmed from a detached, objective assessment of the game's features and shortcomings, concluding that the game "plays okay" and its difficulties were manageable.
- Acceptance (weight 0.01): Acceptance was expressed when players acknowledged the game for what it was, such as an "okay grinding game," indicating a resigned understanding of its nature.}