The fun of claw machines is the luck. That thrill of not knowing if the claw will even latch onto a prize. The elation as it comes up with one. The frustration as it’s dropped again. I bring this up as a Tiny Teams game has given me such feelings. A roguelike deckbuilder based on a claw machine, Cupiclaw is full of prizes, surprises, and plenty of strategic planning that can easily be ruined by randomness. Developer Typin has certainly clawed a victory with this one.

The demo for Cupiclaw holds five of the machines encountered in the game, with each being visited after five rounds on the previous machine. There’s the basic machine, one with a sloping floor, and a third with a bouncy floor. I couldn’t tell you what the final two machines are like, as I failed to get more than two rounds on that third machine before failing out.

Being a roguelike, the prizes each have a value attached. When collected, they contribute to the overall sum of money I have. Some of that money has to be paid into the machine to get my 30 seconds of prize-grabbing, with the amount needed increasing upon moving to the next machine. To make sure things aren’t just about quickly diving the claw into the prizes repeatedly, there’s negative items such as trash to be found among them.

Each prize has a value attached to it, with some having other benefits. At the end of each round, a choice of three new prizes can be added to the prize pool. There’s only room for ten prizes, with five of the slots already being filled to start with. Thinking about combinations is essential to survive later machines. There’s a teddy bear prize that awards a small amount of money, with a white version of that bear adding extra value to the regular ones. A certain gem can also increase the value of both.

Prizes can stack to provide extra benefits. The duck plush has a good value to it, but stacked with one extra duck doubles that value. A flower turns into grass or a tree after four turns, but if an extra is added onto it, the tree is guaranteed. The same also applies to the negative items, with an extra addition to them on moving to a new machine. If stacked, the money they take away is doubled.

Cupiclaw also tries to make things a bit fairer by having large items in the machine, too. These larger variants of prizes triple their value, making them worthwhile trying for. Unless there’s too many negative value prizes near to them. Prizes in the shop can also be rerolled, with current prizes in the pool able to be removed with delete tokens. Even the negative ones, though the amount for doing so is high.

From the store page on Steam, Cupiclaw is going to have even more chaotic machines to grab prizes from. Adding even more chaos and randomness to the hunt for prizes. Such a simple premise, yet just like the best arcade games, the one-more-go factor is too much to resist. No release date for it yet, but Cupiclaw is certainly one fans of roguelike deckbuilders shouldn’t ignore.

Images Taken From:
Cupiclaw | PC