Let me tell you something, dear reader — I am not a lucky person. When I play roguelikes, Ttrpg, or TCGs, I always get thrown into the grinder by fate itself. A bad card draw, a low RNG roll, and a tendency to roll natural 20s into something that doesn't always matter before stumbling into dinky4 when the world is at stake.

So when I took Dungeon Clawler —"claw machine rougelike" — for a spin after appearing on Steam's next festival last week, I was expecting to be frustrated, and I, however, came that frustration and the inevitable desire to keep pushing nickel to the proverbial machine.

Dungeon Clawler plays the same way as most deckbuilding roguelikes, but instead of building a deck, it adds to the pool of items that are dropped on the claw machine. Your actions at any turn are determined by the items that the nails pick up.

If you are wondering if this means that it is possible for your intended action to have a brutally slippery turn from a clumsy metal finger, you will be absolutely right. But you can also have a turn that, if you're lucky, gets a deluge of sword swings. The pure, unashamed RNG you're playing here is a major cause of frustration, and dopamine hits the central nervous system straight. In other words, it's a solid concept for roguelike.

Similarly, there are counter-plays that have had. The size of the item, for example, determines how annoying it is to pick up — on the one hand, it will give you a lot to chew on your nails. The strength-based build I used was focused on daggers and paper clips, sometimes hooking up enough winnings to bite the enemy, but I watched as often as my claws inexplicably leak shibs and shanks, earning 5 blocks, like some kind of champ.

Really, the main thing that keeps the Dungeon Crawler back is the feel of the game. There's a pretty bouncing soundtrack, but the demo really fleshed out sound to sell the mechanical ups and downs going under the hood

I'm willing to give it a pass, but as long as it's a "super early alpha" demo and the proof of concept goes, it's a good idea that I'm going to give it a try. Show enough novelty that soon you will be back in the arcade for another pull.