Cupiclaw wants to do for claw machines what Balatro did for poker

Gamescom is exploding around us, but there's still time to sift through the pile of Steam indie game announcements and collect the occasional treasure. In this case, it's a demo for Cupiclaw, arguably the first “roguelike deck-building claw machine game.” You know how Balatro makes you feel about Joker cards? Well, this game wants to make you feel the same way about claw machines. Frankly, it's a terrible turn of events. Sorry to make you go through yet another potential over-the-top situation. Here's a trailer.

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The plot is that your character, Morris, drops his wedding ring into a claw machine, the classic act one twist in any Shakespearean tragedy. More specifically, he drops it into the arcade's most expensive claw machine. In order to earn the means to operate said ultra-expensive claw machine and retrieve the ring, he will need to play all the other claw machines and cash out his winnings.

Why Morris didn't just ask the arcade manager to open the first claw machine and bring the ring directly is a question for the soon-to-be-developed Cupiclaw subreddit. Maybe the arcade manager is a calculating Lothario who wants to seduce Morris's wife while she plays the claw machines. Maybe Morris's wife is the manager. The moral of the story is: Never let your wife use the claw machine.

Anyway, in order to collect enough money to scale the claw machine hierarchy, you'll need to “level up” each machine by spending a portion of your earnings to fill it with new rewards, which is the deck-building part of the game. The rewards range from larger, more luxurious stuffed animals to puzzle pieces that earn a bigger payout per piece the more you collect.

The actual operation of each machine is simple – use A and D to move the claw left and right, press spacebar to lower it. There's a timer to worry about, but if you rush, you might accidentally bag objects like crumpled soda cans, which will reduce your final score. Like the rising falcon, you'll need to be selective, and fast too.

This is all based on five minutes spent with Cupiclaw's demo. I can't say how complex it gets later on, but I'm hoping for a complex reward economy with plenty of variables and modifiers. My only dislike is the overly repetitive music. At least, it's not Balatro in that regard. Learn more on Steam.

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