Is there an arcade claw machine game?

Claw Grabber puts an arcade claw machine on your PC, as part of Games by Zaweba. You get ten credits in a machine full of cuddly toys, a claw that swings and a grip that never feels the same twice. Drop a toy into the prize chute to score its points. It is free and works offline.

Unlike the real thing, it costs nothing to play, and you can have as many goes as you like.

Steering and dropping

Steer the claw along the rail, wait for it to stop swinging over a toy, then drop it. With the mouse, move to steer and click to drop. With the keyboard, Left and Right steer and Space or Down drops.

Patience is the first skill. A claw that is still swinging when you drop will miss, or catch the toy at an awkward angle. Wait until it hangs still, then drop.

The grip and the prizes

The claw closes with a different grip every go. A strong grip on a light toy holds, but heavy prizes often slip on the way to the chute. So the toys are not equal: some are easy to win, some are hard, and their points reflect that.

The gold star is worth the most and is the hardest to hold. Going for it is a gamble. With ten credits, you have to decide whether to spend them on the gold star or on lighter toys that you are more likely to win.

A sensible way to spend ten credits

Start with a light toy near the chute, to get points on the board and to get used to the swing. Then, if you have credits to spare, try for the bigger prizes. A heavy toy close to the chute has less distance to slip on the way.

Keep an eye on what happens after each grab. If a toy slips, note how heavy it seemed and whether a different prize might suit the next credit better. Over ten credits, those small choices make the difference between a good score and a frustrating one.

Your best score is kept on the game's tile in Games by Zaweba, in a scores file on your own PC.

Claw Grabber is a game of small decisions rather than big skills, which makes it a nice one for younger players or for a quick break. Every credit takes only a moment, and the whole machine is played out in a few minutes. The changing grip keeps it unpredictable, so even a good player loses a prize now and then, and even a beginner can get lucky with the gold star. That mix of judgement and luck is what makes a real claw machine hard to walk past, and it works just as well here.

Finding Claw Grabber

Claw Grabber is on the Skill & sport shelf. Press Ctrl+F and type claw to jump to it. The title card explains how to play, F1 explains it again, Esc pauses and F11 fills the screen with the machine.

There are no adverts and no accounts, and nothing goes online. The cuddly toys and every clunk of the claw are drawn and synthesised in code. If you like the arcade feel, the Retro arcade shelf has 26 more games in the style of 8-bit and 16-bit home computers.