Cupiclaw combines roguelike, deck-building gameplay with a claw machine for a chaotic, fun time

Have you ever lost your engagement ring in a claw machine? No? Me neither. But in Cupa “roguelike deck-building claw machine game” from French developer Julien Tran, you play as a man named Morris who has lost his engagement ring and is furiously terribly expensive claw machine to retrieve it.

Cup isn’t out yet, but Tran has a demo available on Steam, where you can play five levels. Basically, the core of Cup is that you have to play the claw machine and win prizes to move on to the next claw machine — and then keep doing that until you find Morris’ ring. Simple, right? Well, Cup is actually quite difficult: the roguelike, deck-building aspects of the game mean there is strategy involved, both in which prizes you pursue And in the new prizes that you can choose between each round, they are then added to the claw machine. Each prize has its own feature that changes how you play. For example, there is a gem that you can add to the machine that increases the prize payout for all the teddy bears that you collect. But if you don’t collect any teddy bears, you are effectively losing tons of coins.

There are also bad prizes to avoid, like a lot of soda cans that ended up in the machine. You lose more and more coins when you switch claw machines. There are also other items that cost points, so you have to balance the strategy of collecting good items with avoiding the bad ones, but sometimes you have to sacrifice some points for the speed of the whole thing.

At the end of a round, which only lasts a few minutes, you move on if you have collected enough money to pay for the next button press. Otherwise, Morris falls to the ground in distress and you have to start over. Due to the roguelike nature of it all, Cup can be played endlessly — and it’s always different. I had a blast trying out different combinations to collect the most coins. And so far I haven’t reached Morris’ engagement ring — or the end of the five levels.

Tran did not say when Cup will be released, but the demo itself is fun enough for now.