In mid-May, I boarded an Atlantic flight from Paris to New York City. I put on my podcasts, opened my phone, and started playing Dungeon Clawler for about seven hours straight.
This is a recommendation.
Dungeon Clawler is basically Kill the Tower with a claw machine. In the deck-slinging/clawing game, you play as Sir Bunalot, a hapless gambling rabbit who lost his hand to a card shark—literally. The shark in question is the dungeon’s boss, and his hand (well, paw) is replaced by a mechanical claw.
As you progress through the dungeon, you’ll fight off baddies by pulling items from the claw machine. It starts out simple, with daggers and shields, and climbs in complexity as you can choose from a random selection of rewards to add to the machine after each battle. A run takes around 40 minutes to complete, but death sends you back to the start, your upgrades wiped and your claw machine reset.
The synergies don’t quite rise to the level of insanity you can achieve in Slay the Tower , but they’re generally satisfying and tactile. For example, you might get a power-up that fills the claw machine with water. This causes wooden or plastic items to float and metal items to sink. You might be randomly rewarded with a bath bomb that turns water into poison, or lava that deals damage from shots. Or maybe you’ll stop by the transmutation room to turn your metal items into plastic—or your plastic items into metal so you can take advantage of a magnet that attracts metal items. And so on, and so on.
You can also unlock additional characters with their own unique claws and abilities.
Having played a ton of Dungeon Clawler conservatively, I can say that the game’s opening levels can feel like a bit of a sketch, depending on the character you’re playing and the rewards you get. I particularly struggled with a character named Felina, who has a pet cat that essentially acts as spikes, dealing back damage whenever Felina gets hurt. It felt like I wasn’t building up strength quickly enough to get through the battles.
On the other hand doing damage. I managed to do a crazy strength move with Clawcula that had me (I think literally) chewing my way through enemies.
Count Clawcula visits the alchemist
Image: Sty Fawn Studio
For the most part, I enjoyed the process of filling my machine and finding the right balance of items so I could safely grab what I wanted without getting a claw full of junk. I kept playing after escaping the plane, despite the siren call of endless games like Warframe or my beloved Sawayama Solitaire . I’m still unlocking characters and claws.
One thing I appreciate is that Dungeon Clawler allows you to unlock new characters even if you haven’t completed your initial run as the starting character, Sir Bunalot. After a few failed initial runs with Sir Bunalot, I was able to explore some of the more unusual characters and continue to get a feel for the game. I got my first win and returned to Sir Bunalot later.
Also worth noting: Dungeon Clawler is a one-time $4.99 purchase on Steam, iOS, or Google Play with no microtransactions or ads. The synergies are fun, the art style is delightful, and I think my playtime speaks for itself.
