Claw Machine Sim Reviews

Quite possibly the best conference call game for those with idle hands when other people are demonstrating their idiocy in front of their colleagues. In all seriousness, the game is exactly what it says it is, but it's not quite so realistic because the machine doesn't appear to be rigged and the claw can actually hang onto things. There's a 'realistic' mode that you can enable to make it closer to the frustrating experience that is the real deal, but it's still more forgiving than real machines. There's no credits system so it's a free-play machine that you can refill manually after nabbing up 5 prizes. The physics are pretty dang good and yes, sometimes prizes can get wedged and the claw slips right off, but it's not stuffed like real machines so you have a pretty good chance at nabbing several in a row. There's no point to this game other than to complete your collection of prizes which number over two hundred-something-or-other, but oddly the prizes are varied and pretty well-detailed models. Whether they're just bought from the asset store or the devs have a great eye for detail is not something I can comment on, but some of the more whimsical things you can pull from the machine are amusingly-odd like tetris pieces, a massive milk can, various alien blasters, etc. That said, it's made well enough that it can theoretically scratch that itch if you're prone to spending all of your money on rigged machines hoping to get that elusive prize and probably will cost you far less. Then again, one of the big charms of these machines is the tangible prize you scoop out from it so there's obvious no equivalent to that part. However, as a simple time waster while you multitask, it's great fun. Just know that in my particular case, it had a tendency to run my GPU super hot until I capped the frames at 60fps. Couldn't tell you why, but that's how my experience went when I noticed I was getting blasts of hot air in my face; even powerhouses like Stellar Blade didn't cause that kind of temp.

I really like claw machine games, as it brings out my inner child/teenager in me. I bought this game in the "Games Forged in Germany" sale, and it is cool to see that others around the world had experienced similar arcade culture -- late 1990's/early 2000's Midwest USA here. The stuffed animals are not exactly accurate in the squish, it's still a fun enough game. The bouncy club music almost makes me feel like I was at a dying mall and the arcade is one of the last five stores. I wish I could get some of these toys in a real claw machine, hahaha! The realistic feel of the bobbing of the claw is really fun! I wish there was a "reset item positions" button. I couldn't find an option in the settings, or I'm just blind. I had a Tetris "I" block stuck against the glass and front of the machine, and I could not for the life of me get that to move. I saw in the Steam forums that items reset upon restarting the game, so I'll update my review upon next launch if that doesn't work. Edit: Resetting the game does reset the positions. Easy 100% achievements.