No, like, think about claw machines. They’re fun to try, and a neat distraction and you usually expect to get nothing for your efforts. Dungeon Clawer makes a claw machine the core of how you “draw” your attacks and defenses for the round. It’s a bit of a deckbuilder in the sense that you can pick what you fill your machine with, ignoring attacks from your foes that can complicate that. Different items have different attributes, and some characters can lean into that, such as one with a magnet claw who can pick up metal objects better than others.
As you go through the game, you’ll fight and pick up different weapons, or upgrade the ones you have. There are a ton of other minigames like a gumball machine for buffs, a pachinko machine for buying weapons. It’s a game that leans hard into RNG and somehow FEELS GOOD while doing it. Everything is just a little bit forgiving enough to make it a good play experience. You have plenty of options to craft the play experience you want for the run.
I played a ton of Dungeon Clawer during the Next Fest, it was a blast, and I’m looking forward to it’s Q4 release. You can still play it’s demo and I highly recommend it.