Dungeon Crawler from Stray Fawn Studio and Ateo brings us a roguelike claw machine deckbuilder. Yes, really. Check out our Dungeon Crawler review!

 

Dungeon Crawler from Stray Fawn Studio and Ateo brings us a roguelike claw machine deckbuilder. Yes, really. You’ll be going on a new adventure as you make the most of the claw machine at your disposal, which you can use to increase your odds of survival. How did you find yourself on this journey? It turns out that the evil dungeon lord chopped off your left rabbit paw… and now wears it as a charm! Instead of your left paw, you now have a claw, which you will have to use to fight your way through the dungeon so that you can hopefully reclaim your missing paw. The claw machine is the one you’ll be using to collect items so that you can then use these as your actions during your turn. Larger items are better, but sometimes going for smaller items can be a good strategy.

I’ve previously had a chance to cover a pair of other games from this indie studio, both of them on the Nintendo Switch as well. The first one was Niche, a colorful genetic survival sim in which you must breed and evolve a species of creatures so that they can manage to survive against the harsh climate changes, deadly predators, diseases, and more. The other one is The Wandering Village, a cozy city-building experience in a post-apocalyptic world in which mysterious plants are spreading all over the planet, all while emitting some very toxic spores.

Once you dive in and start a run, you’ll get to pick which character you’ll be playing as. At first, there are only four characters unlocked for you to check out, but you can end up adding 18 more characters for you to pick from. The starting lineup includes Sir Bunalot, the character who lost his paw. Sir Burnalot has a 10-point boost in health and will start each turn with 5 points of block to defend against incoming attacks. Next up is Scrappy, Sir Bunalot’s strange cousin, who has an obsession with metal. For Scrappy, the second claw is always a magnet claw, and he will get a single point of strength if you collect at least 5 metal items at once.

 

Next up is Felina, a peculiar character who is made fun of due to her love of carnivores. While she’s sworn she’ll one day tame a tiger, so far her efforts have allowed her to tame a small house cat. Felina has Cream Puff permanently fighting by her side, and she starts the fight with 1 extra point of strength. The last one of the characters that are unlocked from the start is Count Clawcula, who ended up being evicted from his castle since he spent all of his money on bat races instead of paying rent. Count Clawcula cannot block, but it can heal itself for 10% of all damage dealt to enemies.

Once you’ve chosen a character, you’ll get to pick your debt level. A higher debt level will mean that you’ll owe more money to the dungeon lord, with each debt level adding an extra modifier that will bump up the challenge. Manage to complete a run while playing at a specific debt level, and you’ll get to unlock the next debt level. To keep things simple, the game won’t allow you to go any higher than debt level 0, so that you can get the hang of things. You’ll also get to pick a lucky paw to make you stronger… once you unlock some! Winning runs with different characters will unlock more lucky paws for you to try out.

The gameplay loop is as follows. You’ll be moving your character around each dungeon floor as you interact with the different icons that represent what would be referred to as nodes in other roguelike deckbuilders. These include icons where you can remove items from your decks, others where you can gain extra items for your deck, icons where you can buy upgrades, and even icons on which you’ll be thrown into a battle.

 

When in combat, each turn you’ll be using the claw machine to try and collect as many items as possible, all while focusing on specific types of items so that you establish a proper strategy. Getting a bunch of items to attack could certainly seem useful… unless you don’t manage to defeat your opponent, and then the enemy deals fatal damage to you because you didn’t grab some defense items to block incoming damage.

Each turn, more items from your current deck will be dropped into the claw machine, so that you can use your available claws to grab more. Going back to the characters you can play as, one example of a deck would be the one for Sir Bunalot. He will start with 10 regular attack items, 10 regular defense items, one large sword that deals a good chunk of damage, and a large shield that blocks a solid amount of incoming damage.

When you manage to win a fight, you’ll get to choose a reward. These can include, for instance, the Piggy Bank, which will instantly reward you with 2-5 coins when collected. Another one is Hot Sauce, which will increase your strength by 3 while also applying 5 fire points to yourself. Or you could grab an antidote so that you can use it to remove all stacks of poison on you. These items will then be added to your deck, which means they’ll be added to your deck so that you can grab them with the claw machine in subsequent fights.

 

You’ll be collecting gold coins along the way, which will allow you to upgrade or modify the items that you can collect with the claw machine. To keep with the overall arcade theme for Dungeon Crawler, you’ll be spending your hard-earned gold coins in the dungeon’s pachinko machines, as well as on other machines and contraptions, so that you can grab some extra bonuses to aid you during your current run. There’s also the option of spending some gold coins at the blacksmith to upgrade your items. Say you want to upgrade a small shield that increases block by 5 points. Upgrading it to a Small Shield+ will increase block from 5 to 10 points!

Other uses for your gold coins include interacting with the trashcan icon so that you can pay to have one of your items shredded into pieces in case you need some extra space for other items or want to increase the rate at which the rest of the items in your deck are placed into the claw machine in each turn.

Dungeon Crawler brings us a roguelike claw machine deckbuilder. Yes, really. You’ll be going on a new adventure as you make the most of the claw machine at your disposal, which you can use to increase your odds of survival. How did you find yourself on this journey? It turns out that the evil dungeon lord chopped off your left rabbit paw… and now wears it as a charm! Instead of your left paw, you now have a claw, which you will have to use to fight your way through the dungeon so that you can hopefully reclaim your missing paw.

The claw machine is the one you’ll be using to collect items so that you can then use these as your actions during your turn. Larger items are better, but sometimes going for smaller items can be a good strategy. Balance things out by grabbing enough attack items to deal consistent damage to enemies, while also considering grabbing some defense items to try to reduce or nullify incoming attacks. Dungeon Crawler is out on Nintendo Switch with a $14.99 price tag.

Disclaimer
This Dungeon Crawler review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Stray Fawn Studio.