Oh, claw machines. Those playful, enticing toy bins we've fairly recently learned are definitely rigged to routinely thwart your desire for a new fluffy friend. Even if you study this wonderful WikiHow guide to winning crane games ("if you haven't won, repeat the process to try again"), the claw machine seems fundamentally destined to break your heart.
Until now. Plenty of video games cast you as the cool young arcade champion on the block, but never before has the cool arcade been a claw machine. In Claw Champion Earth, you battle other kids in a game of frantic, duelling prize-grabs that manage to capture everything you like about claw machines, and also everything you don't like about them, except it's still fun.
It's simple to play: You and another Claw Kid, played by the computer, swing your spindly claw arms in frantic, urgent competiton, trying to grab the most prizes from the machine. What makes it really fun is that your prize, or your opponent's, can get stuck in the PRIZE AREA, meaning if you're fast enough you can swing over and pluck something right out of their winner's chute. You end up grasping hopefully for toys, whispering the same kind of no-no-no-come-on-rrgh-yes-yes-yes mantra you might mutter at the shrine of a real machine.
Claw Champion Earth, by From Smiling, was made in 72 hours for a jam called #indiesvsgamers and is free to download.
