Dungeon Clawler is a roguelike claw-machine deckbuilder, from Stray Fawn Studio. Released on Steam as Early Access, on Linux and Steam Deck with a native client.

You are a bunny addicted to gambling who lost your pawn in a bet, now it is on the keychain of a loan shark, Squalo (Shark). With a metal claw replacing your lost limb, you will fight through a dungeon to get your lucky pawn back.

The novelty this game brings to the table is the combat in the shape of a claw game. Your deck is composed of the items you collect through the dungeon. During the fight, some items are dropped in the claw-machine container at every turn, and you try to pick the most useful for each situation.

Claws and Decks

This claw-machine mechanic feels like a breath of fresh air to the deckbuilders roguelikes by ditching the drawing and discarding of cards so common nowadays.

The combat is less punitive than real life arcades claw-games. But don’t get fooled because all those frustrating moments are there: the claw will grab nothing, or some item you need will fall from the claw before reaching the drop zone, and some items will get stuck at the edge of the drop zone and refuse to fall. It can be bad sometimes, but they just add contrast for that moment when you grab the things you need just right.

Dungeon Clawler demands some level of strategy and planing with your deck, it is not just accumulate items and try to grab them in the container. If you have too much, it will be hard to cycle to get the item that you need. Because it adds more items at every turn, something you need will just become too hard to grab without the right tools. That said, hoarding can also be a valid strategy.

For your dungeon run, you first get to pick one of the rabbits missing a paw. Each offer some different starting point to your game, like starting items and passive bonuses. Some add new mechanics like changing your claw into a big magnet, or sticky octopus limbs that spread on water, or a precise hook that doubles the usage of the items it grabs.

As you navigate the levels of the dungeon, you will find rooms with enemies, or allies. Most will use claw-mechanics. During combat, you will use your deck, and defeating them will give you a choice between 3 new items.

Enemies are varied, and you can fight multiple that help each other during the fight. They can do basic actions like attack and defend, buff and debuff, and some add harmful items to your machine. There is one that fills your machine with a dark liquid, so you will not be able to see items that sink.

For allied rooms, it can be a unique challenge. For example, there is one that your container is an aquarium full of piranhas with a single chest, and you need to use the harpoon to get that chest containing an item.

You will have a choice between two bosses to fight after beating some levels, that also helps with your strategy, as some bosses will counter single heavy damage builds, while others will punish you for having too many items.

During the boss level, there is one interesting ally: your grandma, in her room you can collect money and health from the container.

The “no-claw” rooms are rooms that you can pay to upgrade items, delete them, or change their material: wood will float if you fill your container with water, while metal will attach easily to a magnet. There are other mini-games, like a pachinko machine that you spend coins to try to get an item - that I found quite wasteful. And a “gatcha” machine that provides you with more passives.

To build your deck, you have a significant assortment of items: swords that cause damage, shields to block the next incoming attack, buff, debuff. Those items also have a material type attribute that changes how they behave in some situations: metal will attach to magnets, wood will float in the water.

The passives are even more important than the items, as they help dictate your strategy. If you plan to do multiple small attacks, it might be useful to get a passive that steals 1 coin per attack, or add 1 stack of poison debuff. There are also passives not related to combat: giving you a discount in the stores, or helping you with other mini-games.

On the 20th level, you will face Squalo, the shark that has your paw. Defeating him will unlock your paw and a harder mode for that bunny, it also asks if you want to continue into the endless mode.

You can use the paw you unlocked in harder difficulties to add the passives bonuses to a different character. For example, there is a Count Clawcula that starting items are all metal, and you can add the paw that changes the claw into a magnet to make sure you grab everything.

Still Needs Polish

Dungeon Clawler just came out in Early Access and it shows. The game still needs a lot of love and hard work. The fun claw mechanic is the main thing going on, and everything else lacks a bit. There is not much of a story during the gameplay than your grandma’s room, the paw keychain with the boss, and a character you unlock. They added an intro to show your paw getting cut, and each character has a brief description. There is still much to do about balance, while most builds will allow you to defeat the 20 levels, some are just not suited for hard difficulties or endless mode. Some characters are just not fun to play with, or their starting point and passives do not work right with the current items’ availability.

Items lack proper descriptions of what they really do, and how. For example, there are some items that damage you, some will damage your life directly, even with a shield, or others will take the shield out first. But both are described similarly.

It also lacks proper visual clues. All items become golden when you upgrade them, changing material does not change its appearance, and not always you know the amount of damage an item will do. You can hover the mouse over them to see their type, or more description, but it is not all items that show their current damage amount.

From what I played so far, only gold coin-based items are scaling well into the late game: items that damage based on your gold, or passives that increase your life based on gold. Everything else fails to catch up with the monsters’ difficulty scaling. But doing the same thing again and again gets boring fast.

That said, the devs have been constantly adding updates since the game was announced in March 2024.

Gameplay Gems

In one of my favourite run I played as Garbarage Greg, a trash collector bunny with interesting passive: at every turn 50% of items are removed from the container, making it easier to pick the item you want, and you get 2% more damage for each item in your deck, and decided to hoard every plastic item that I could get my hands on (or convert them to plastic).

My initial plan was to use another item, the trash can, to cause damage. It collects every plastic item in the vicinity and increases the damage you cause when you pick it. And stack passives that increase the items dropped in the container. My claw-machine is now a landfill. It worked well, but it worked even better when I picked a passive that would damage enemies every time new items would be dropped in the container. The enemies that were not defeated by the trash can, would be cleaned by the refresh of the container or vice versa.

I really enjoy when I find new combos beyond my initial plan, and it what kept me playing to try new characters and item combinations.

Steam Deck: What to Expect

It works well on Steam Deck, and the TDP without changes is around 7W.

The game gets a Steam Deck Verified status, but I had a few problems with controller support and asset sizes. The game has some parts where you will need a mouse, like inspecting the items during combat. You can change your controller settings to emulate a mouse when needed or click on the screen until the item description shows - but tapping does not always work. The level map felt tiny on Deck. The same with some of the texts. I was constantly bringing the screen close to my face to read items descriptions and other notifications.

If you enjoy deckbuilders and want to try new mechanics while supporting development, Dungeon Crawler is out on Steam in Early Access.

Note: We were provided a game key by the developers