Given that the studio's name is Kittens in Timespace, it's perhaps not too surprising that Clawpunk's heroes take a feline form. According to Creative Director Jamie Arron, there's a bit more to it than that.

"Cats are a reflection of the human psyche in animal form," he says. "We worship them, we love them, we hate them, they seem to dominate society. This game sort of acts as a tribute to everything that personifies a cat."

That's just one side of the equation because this 2D action game also carries the anarchic energy of over-the-top ‘80s action movies that captured his imagination as a kid, from the presentation of a brash cyberpunk world of crunchy pixel art to a soundtrack that combines hardware synth, metal, and industrial music. In a way, using cats as characters also offered an amusing contrast. "Sebastian Vasselbring, the artist who drew all of the level tiles, is a really big cat person," Arron adds. "So we decided to change it to be animals rather than humans because he wanted to keep it a little bit low on the age rating despite [it being] a game all about violence!"

There's also a considerably large roster of cat heroes you can unlock to join your squad. Collecting more heroes is essential, since Clawpunk's roguelite elements means a hero who dies is gone for the rest of a run. While you start with just one cat hero, you'll soon unlock more over the course of a few runs until you have up to nine cat heroes, because of course that means you have nine lives.

However, that design decision did present a challenge when it came to creating a meaningfully diverse lineup of cat heroes. "We decided that the first three or four are going to be quite similar in terms of how they behave, but the latter half we're going to make them quite extreme," Arron says.

Based on a recent demo with a third of the lineup available, there's certainly diversity in each cat’s design as well as how they play. Dash is quick with his sword but doesn’t do much damage, whereas Buck is slow but wields a sledgehammer that deals area of effect damage as heavy as his Scottish accent. Haxx, on the other hand, is completely different, using a wheelchair that can charge at enemies but also jet around in the air. Arron teases more of the final lineup, including Candy who uses a long-range whip, Jinx who fires psychic orbs while traversing on a hoverboard, and Larry who is constantly bouncing around on a pogo stick.

"You'll either like some of these characters, or you won't," he says. "And that's fine because that's kind of the point. And when you play those other characters, it will make sense."

That variety presented another dilemma: Do you start the run with your favorite cat only to be left scraping by on your last life with your least favorite? Or do you save the best until last? You also have to consider the environments of each of the game's five zones and how they complement each cat’s play styles. 

"You have the woodlands, the sewers, the construction [zone], and the junkyard to play right from the start, and the game difficulty scales with it," Arron explains. "So if you decide to play the junkyard first, that's the level one equivalent. If you were to play it last, you get the hardest version of it—more enemies, more trap placements, and also a few surprises that will only appear in higher difficulties."

If you want to stick with a favorite, however, in Ironcat mode, you play one cat hero with nine lives, but the difficulty is maxed out. To make this more manageable, there are more opportunities to recover health during a run, though ultimately you'll want to leverage the game's card system to give yourself more advantages. Unlocked with Chaos Coins (a persistent currency that can also unlock more cat heroes) or found from treasure chests and other means, these essentially grant modifiers. Since you can equip up to three cards, they can also stack to provide some intriguing possibilities.

"One card lets you use cluster bombs, splitting a grenade into five more, but combine that with a card to throw two grenades at once, and then a card that makes you immune to your own grenades, and that's a literal killer combo," Arron gives as an example. "It was really important to go into this exercise thinking how they could be stacked and synergized to create these unpredictable and really fun gameplay moments."

There are two core influences to Clawpunk's gameplay. From Minecraft, it borrows the freedom to plow through terrain, as your aim is to tear through fully destructible environments to reach the exit at the bottom to proceed to the next level. The other important inspiration was id Software's 2016 reboot of Doom.

"I grew up with the OG Doom, but when Doom 2016 launched, they came up with this idea of 'push forward' gameplay, and there was a talk from one of the lead designers at GDC many years ago who talked about this concept of wanting the player to feel powerful by charging right into the action without fear of consequence, leading to bigger and greater rewards," Arron says. "Later, I started to prototype an idea that sort of utilized that concept but in a very small and simpler setting."
Clawpunk's forward momentum is arguably more literal than Doom or other action games, which tend to lock you in a room until you've annihilated every spawning enemy. As you dig, smash, and blow up terrain, you can potentially drop through gaps, skip a lot of the threats, and just make a beeline for the exit. It's as feasible a strategy as it is to kill every enemy you encounter. You'll also be graded based on enemies killed, damage you received (or rather avoided), combos, and chaos caused.

From play tests, Arron observes that destroying everything in your path and speeding through are both play styles that he embraces, though there are also incentives to take a more balanced approach. Completing a stage with an overall S rank rewards you with more game-changing cards, and you’ll also want to be cautious about your notoriety meter.

"The gang is being tracked in the world by floating TVs and cameras, so by destroying these, the villain will lose their ability to track you, filling your chaos bar and lowering your notoriety," Arron explains. "If the notoriety increases because you're getting straight to the bottom too many times, the hellhounds will spawn. By the time you get to a five-star wanted rating, you'll want to start thinking of ways to bring that notoriety down."

Of course, the flip side is that you may also want to lure out these hellhounds, which almost act like mini-bosses and have a high chance of dropping a rare and powerful weapon. So there’s really no right or wrong way to approach a run. 

"I've seen play tests where I think, ‘You're using this cat wrong,’ but to the player, they're using them right, and I think that's the best way of looking at it," Arron says. "They pick their favorites, and they've been able to conquer certain aspects of the game using their own play style and the character that makes more sense to them. That unpredictability has just been fascinating, and it feels like players are taking ownership."

Clawpunk releases on the Epic Games Store on November 14.