Clawpunk is a cat-centric roguelike where everything comes in nines

A city is under siege, taken over by hooligans and street toughs. Only a group of brave heroes stands a chance against these villains. Oh, it's probably worth mentioning that these heroes are cats. Publisher Megabit has been on the lookout for new games to publish and it recently came across Clawpunk, a 2D action roguelite from the team at Kittens in Timespace. Shacknews recently took a trip to this year's Game Developers Conference to check it out.

Clawpunk may be all about high-octane action and its 80s/90s heavy metal soundtrack, but Kittens in Timespace isn't about to let the player forget that this is about cats before anything else. The number nine is prevalent throughout this game. There are nine heroes that players control over the course of their run. Each of them can take nine hits before they die and pass the figurative baton on to the next character. When added up, that means every run totals up to nine lives. There are nine stages for each of the game's various zones. Players can tackle the first four zones in any order, but there are five more that await those who survive, which adds up to, yes, nine playable zones total.

A handful of Clawpunk's characters were available for this early demo and they certainly offered a good idea of what to expect. There's a lighter cat with a katana, a badass female at with a chain, and a bulky feline with a sledgehammer just to name a few examples. Their weapons can take out a variety of animal foes (mostly mice and rats), but players will mainly be looking to plow through the game's destructible environments. Since each stage has players fighting vertically from top to bottom, they'll inevitably get the urge to create shortcuts to descend as quickly as possible. Kittens in Timespace is aware of the optics of its stages, encouraging players to take an aggressive speedrunning approach to the game and wrap things up as quickly as possible. While stages are procedurally generated, the principle of plowing through the environment remains the same.

The attitude doesn't just come through Clawpunk's heroes. Kittens in Timespace is also injecting a sense of menace into its villains, many of whom will be hulking brutes that significantly outsize the main characters. The main one that I encountered over the course of my brief time with the game was a giant female rat hailing from the world of 1980s professional wrestling. While her gimmick was fun, she quickly proved she wasn't someone to take lightly, as her attacks quickly wrecked my roster of heroes.

Hands-on time with Clawpunk was fairly short, so there wasn't much time to look into the game's roguelite elements. A full upgrade system will be in place, as will customization elements that allow players to utilize different weapons for the game's various characters. A card system is also expected to be added later on in the development cycle, but no further details on that were provided.

With over-the-top action matched only by over-the-top puns, Clawpunk felt reminiscent of another adrenaline-injected low-resolution 2D action game: Broforce. Kittens in Timespace did indeed cite its love for Free Lives' classic 2D run-and-gunner, utilizing several elements of that game's formula while also infusing its own distinct flavor. There's no release date for Clawpunk just yet, but publisher Megabit hopes to have news on that front soon. Clawpunk is coming soon to PC.

This preview is based on a Steam beta key played on-site at a private meeting during the 2025 Game Developers Conference. The final product is subject to change.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?