The Nerdy Type

Seaside holidays and claw grabbers are a staple of any self-respecting British child, and those memories are among some of my favorites from my own childhood. Cupiclaw is a game from developer Typin, and it invokes those memories while my real-life bank account remains blissfully untouched. 

I would estimate that I’ve spent hundreds of hours standing in front of various claw grabber machines through the years. Like Sid in Toy Story, I get absorbed in the excitement every time a toy makes it halfway up the rise of the claw, and impossibly disappointed whenever the claw loses grip and releases my would-be new plushie.

Thankfully, Cupiclaw is less rigged than its real-life inspiration, and it somehow manages to hide its true roguelike nature, even though it’s staring you in the face.

A barely hidden roguelike

The aim of Cupiclaw is to grab things, and to do so for as long as possible before you run out of money, just like real-life hours spent down at the arcade. You put in your money, the amount of which changes with every round, and you then get 30 seconds to continuously drop down into the pool of items and earn as many points as possible. 

After each round, you can unlock additional items that will then get added to the pool that you can potentially grab from. That’s the roguelike element, because your choice after each round greatly impacts how much money you will make for the following round. These choices stack over time, allowing you to create a lucrative mixture of items and rake in the cash. Certain items also boost the prices of others, so it’s worth paying attention to what you pick. 

However, there are also traps within the pool that cannot be removed. Crushed soda cans will cost you money rather than reward it if you happen to grab them, and other items such as Rockets will do the same. It’s hard to avoid picking them up sometimes, but you need to try and keep away from them while also managing to pick up the things around them. It’s harder than it seems. 

Every few rounds, the machine will be upgraded to one that costs more money to play. If you don’t have enough money at the end of a round to play the next one, it’s game over, and you start all over again. The price per turn starts out at 20 coins per turn, increasing to 900 coins per turn with the final machine.

The cute outweighs the bad

With the roguelike experience of Cupiclaw, things do tend to get a little frustrating, but that just comes with the territory. Every run is different, and you’re just as likely to have a machine overfilled with soda cans are you are to get one that has a bunch of legendary orbs in it. That’s par for the course. 

However, Cupiclaw manages to be far more enjoyable than it is frustrating, and it will always keep you coming back for more, because you’re always going to want to do better than you did the time before. Making money is not easy, and maneuvering your claw around the soda cans and bombs is particularly difficult, but pulling up some plushies and then watching their price climb because you pulled up some gems is endlessly satisfying, especially when a chain starts going off. 

The undeniable star of the show, at least in terms of cuteness, is the claw itself. Depending on how many things you manage to grab, it seems to struggle more when it comes to lifting it to the top of the machine, and beads of sweat fly off it. It’s also a good claw, because it isn’t designed to drop things halfway, and remains firmly closed right to the top.

Cupiclaw is one of those games where you say “just one more turn”, then you blink and suddenly three hours have passed, the dinners burned beyond recognition, it’s dark outside, and you have no idea what happened. You probably would have read this a week ago if I didn’t keep getting distracted every time I tried to take screenshots…

A full release date for Cupiclaw has yet to be announced, but there is a demo available to download and try right now through Steam. With the situation changing each time, you can replay the demo as many times as you like and try to beat all five of the demo machines.