Review: Dungeon Clawler
- Guilherme Ribeiro
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Are you good with a gripper machine?
THE GAME
Dungeon Clawler is a deck-building roguelike game with a claw machine developed by Stray Fawn Studio and published by Stray Fawn Publishing. After becoming indebted through gambling, your hand is ripped off as payment. Seeking revenge, you attach a claw to the place where your hand once was and venture through the dungeons to reclaim your lost hand. Using a claw machine mechanic, similar to those found in shopping malls with plush toys, you must grab whatever you can and face enemies until you reach your final objective.
MY IMPRESSIONS
If you've ever experienced the thrill of trying to grab a stuffed animal from a claw machine and clearly failed, Dungeon Clawler manages to replicate that experience in game form. Much less frustrating than in real life, your claw machine is filled with various items that can be used to attack, defend, or inflict advantages and disadvantages. You grab the items, which are pulled and sent into a hole. The claw physics are very well done, often failing to grab everything you want or dropping something grabbed on the way to the hole, which makes the dynamics correct and demands strategy when trying to grab what you want from the machine. The initial items in the machine will depend on which character you choose. Each one has a different mechanic, whether it's a different type of claw, like a magnetic claw, or how it interacts with the items. You unlock new characters as you fulfill specific requirements. Despite the playful name, Dungeon Clawler isn't really a dungeon crawler. While the idea of exploring a dungeon exists, choosing which way to go rarely makes a drastic change. However, the pun is so good that it doesn't matter.
The game is in Brazilian Portuguese, making it easier for Brazilians to understand the game's mechanics and item effects. Items inside the machine can always be altered, deleted, or added in various ways. By defeating enemies, you can choose a new item. To remove items, you must visit the shredder, which, for a fee, destroys the item you want to eliminate. You can also upgrade an item at the blacksmith, making it more powerful. Furthermore, items have material properties that interact differently with claws and environments. For example, metal items, when used with a magnet claw, are attracted to it. Finally, there are passive items that don't enter the machine but greatly aid your journey. In turn-based gameplay, you grab whatever you can, already knowing what your enemies' actions will be: attack, defend, inflict advantages and disadvantages, or place items on your machine to hinder you. There are also different rooms, such as luck rooms, where you play a game of chance like roulette, for example, or surprise rooms, where you use your claw to try to win prizes, although you might end up with a loss.
Whenever you defeat the final boss, in addition to unlocking modifiers and items for future attempts, you can also continue playing from there. Every time you start a new attempt, everything resets, but if you've already won with your chosen character, you can apply modifiers to them, as well as increase the difficulty level. Dungeon Clawler has a wide variety of possibilities, since many characters have different ways of playing, and therefore, an attempt can vary greatly depending on what you have to create synergy between items, but when you achieve that synergy, it's very satisfying. If you're looking for a game to play occasionally, whether it's a try before bed or to play until you're tired of it, Dungeon Clawler is a great option.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Dungeon Clawler features many characters, and therefore there's an achievement for winning on one attempt for each of them. This alone covers almost half of the game's achievements, meaning you should try all the characters, which will be challenging since the mechanics of some of them will be difficult to master. The remaining achievements will be linked to in-game interactions, such as winning a slot machine game or winning using modifiers. In addition, there's an achievement for winning on difficulty level 20, which will demand a lot from the player but will be a great challenge. Dungeon Clawler's achievements will be laborious to obtain, but satisfying to achieve 100% of them.
CONCLUSION
Never has a claw machine been so much fun. Creating item synergies and combos in Dungeon Clawler is very satisfying. Each character opens up a range of possibilities that makes everything very interesting. Some will be very annoying, like the character that gives you a short amount of time to act, others will have terrible claws, like the fan claw, but when you win an attempt with them, you already feel relieved and, theoretically, you'll never have to go through that again. However, the other characters compensate with fun dynamics that can potentially break the game, to the point where you're running over enemies, which is extremely fun. It's a great game to play occasionally, as a great pastime. For those who like roguelikes where you can create absurd strategies, Dungeon Clawler will offer you that and a lot of fun.
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