CLAWPUNK

My first run ended on floor three. A boss floor. I hadn't broken enough cameras, my rage meter was empty, and Dash - the fast sword-cat who starts every run - folded in seconds. Then I hit the airfield hub, spent a few purple coins on a card that doubles explosion radius, and went back in. That loop is the honest center of CLAWPUNK, and once it clicks, it is genuinely hard to stop. Kittens in Timespace built something that sits at a specific crossroads of inspirations: the destructible, chain-reaction mayhem of Broforce, the push-forward aggression philosophy of classic Doom, and the vertical stage design of old arcade brawlers. Levels drop you at the top of a pixelated neon arena and ask you to fight your way down to a pair of giant saw blades at the exit. Almost everything in between can be blown apart. Barrels create craters, walls collapse into shortcuts, and chained explosions generate the kind of screen-filling spectacle that makes you laugh and die simultaneously. The game tracks your notoriety through floating cameras and TV screens scattered across each zone; destroy them to reduce villain awareness, or let it spike and trigger hellhound mini-boss spawns that drop rare weapons. It is a small systemic layer that meaningfully changes how you read a stage. The roster of nine cats is where the build variety lives. Dash is quick with a katana and punishing if you misread enemy patterns. Banshee is slower but flings a scythe with satisfying arc. Buck hauls a sledgehammer and turns walls into dust faster than anyone else. Cards - collected across runs and permanently saved to your airfield hub - stack passive bonuses like extra jump height, larger blast radii, and ammo replenishment onto your chosen cat, creating build permutations that reward repeat play. Equipping up to three cards at once means even a short session produces a genuinely different feel. Gold coins mid-run buy guns, grenades, health, or rage refills; purple coins bank back at the hub for unlocking the deeper roster slots and card slots. The dual-currency loop is clean and never feels exploitative. Where CLAWPUNK earns honest criticism is in its readability. The neon pixel aesthetic is lovingly crafted, but smaller enemies can blend into destructible backgrounds during the most chaotic moments, and a handful of the nine characters have traversal quirks - one bounces perpetually on a pogo stick - that feel too unwieldy to use comfortably given how speed-punishing the game is. Boss fights occasionally fill the screen with overlapping explosion markers to the point where identifying a safe window requires as much luck as reading. And the card unlock pool can occasionally feel repetitive before you have enough depth to build meaningfully diverse runs. None of these issues are fatal, but they are real friction points in the early hours. The soundtrack deserves its own sentence. Hardware synth, industrial metal, and punk riffs tuned specifically to the 80s action-film DNA the developers were chasing - it is loud, it is in-your-face, and it is exactly right. Multiple reviewers singled it out as a highlight independent of everything else the game does, and they are correct. Hardcore and Iron Cat modes unlock after clearing the main run, for players who need the scoring stakes raised further. For a certain player - arcade-hardened, build-curious, not allergic to dying on boss floor three - CLAWPUNK is a small game that knows exactly what it wants to be and executes with conviction. It is not asking you to settle in for a long narrative. It is asking you to go back in one more time and break more things.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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