Cupiclaw blends roguelike, deck-building gameplay with a claw machine for a chaotic good time

You ever lose your engagement ring in a claw machine? No? Me either. But in Cupiclaw, a “roguelike deck-building claw machine game” from French developer Julien Tran, you’ll play as a man named Morris who lost his engagement ring and needs to furiously play a very expensive claw machine to win it back.

Cupiclaw is not out just yet, but Tran has a demo available on Steam, where you’ll be able to play through five levels. Basically, the gist of Cupiclaw is that you’ve got to play the claw machine and win prizes to afford to move on to the next claw machine — then keep doing that until you’re able to find Morris’ ring. Simple, right? Well, Cupiclaw is actually pretty hard: The roguelike, deck-building aspects of the game mean there’s strategy both in what prizes you go after and in the new prizes you can choose in between each round, which are then added to the claw machine. Each prize has its own characteristic that changes how you’ll play. For instance, there’s a gem you can add to the machine that boosts the prize payout for all teddy bears you collect. But if you don’t collect any teddy bears, you’re effectively losing out on tons of coins.

There are also bad prizes to avoid, like a heck of a lot of soda cans that made it into the machine. You’ll lose an increasing amount of coins as you change claw machines. There are other items that take away points, too — so you need to balance the strategy of collecting good items with avoiding the bad ones, but sometimes you’ve got to sacrifice some points because of the speed of it all.

At the end of a round, which takes mere minutes, you’ll move on if you’ve amassed enough money to pay for the next button push. Otherwise, Morris drops to the ground in distress, and you’ve got to start over. Because of the roguelike nature of it all, Cupiclaw can be played endlessly — and it’s always different. I’ve had a blast trying different combinations to amass the most amount of coins. And, so far, I’ve not yet reached Morris’ engagement ring — or the end of the five levels.

Tran hasn’t said when Cupiclaw will be released, but the demo itself is enough fun for a while.