Clawed is a horror survival shooter set in a dinosaur theme park. Learn more about the game’s plot, gameplay, release date, our first impressions, and more.
Overview
What is Clawed?
Clawed is a survival horror shooter that sends players into Prehistoria, an abandoned dinosaur theme park, to retrieve a flash drive before authorities take over. A massive containment breach two days prior has left the island overrun by loose reptilian predators.
Players take on the role of Hudson, a trained operative sent solo to navigate the dinosaur-infested park. His mission begins as he travels across the sea by ship, only for it to be wrecked in a massive Megalodon attack.
Washing ashore with barely any supplies, Hudson presses forward. Despite his vessel's destruction and the impossible odds, he remains determined to infiltrate the park and fulfill his objective.
Clawed features:
⚫︎ First-Person/Third-Person Shooter
⚫︎ Horror-Survival Mechanics
⚫︎ Dinosaur Theme Park Game World
⚫︎ Classic and Survival Modes
⚫︎ 1-4 Player Online and LAN Co-Op
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $19.99 |
Clawed Review: In Danger of Extinction
Not-So Dinosaur-y Theme Park
Live dinosaur theme parks were always a bad idea – just take a look at the Jurassic Park/World series. It’s cool and interesting in theory, and brings out the kid in us, but safety and ecological issues are always a concern. For Clawed, the problems don’t stop there.
A dinosaur theme park should, well, have dinosaurs in it, especially one that is supposed to be overrun by these creatures. Unfortunately for Prehistoria, encounters with these reptilian predators are too far and between. It certainly gives off an abandoned theme park feel, though it comes across less like a dinosaur sanctuary gone wild, and more like just a crime scene with bloodied floors and dead livestock.
The game is clearly an homage to classic dino movies in its overall setup and premise, but it seems to lack the fear factor of dinosaurs, action-packed sequences, and heart-pounding stealth scenarios that made films and other media of the genre popular and appealing. This took me away from that dino fantasy and focused more on just accomplishing the objectives.
Prehistoria Looks Nice and Massive, Maybe Too Massive
Prehistoria is a huge island divided into distinct zones, each featuring a different tourist attraction. The rides and setups are exactly what you'd expect from a proper dino theme park, and honestly, if this place existed in real life, I’d buy a ticket in a heartbeat.
Cruising on the monorail is a highlight, giving you an awesome sense of the map's scale. The dinosaurs look fantastic up close with highly detailed textures, and their roars hit just right. The environmental audio really brings the park to life, too: jungle tracks, rustling foliage, rain effects, and periodic PA announcements all build a great vibe.
As cool as those details are, Prehistoria’s massive size works against it. Exploring the park makes you feel like an actual tourist, but the lack of roaming dinosaurs and endless fetch quests makes getting around eventually feel like a chore.
Most structures, like the water slides in the resort area, are just for show. You can't actually interact with them, which is a total bummer. Honestly, I wish the devs had traded the massive map size and decorative set pieces for a more condensed world packed with actual things to do.
Unbalanced Pacing
Clawed opens with a well-crafted cutscene that sets a genuinely threatening tone, but that atmosphere quickly fades once actual gameplay begins. Although the initial objectives did well in introducing the various environments you’ll be exploring, virtually nothing happens during the first thirty minutes.
It wasn’t until about forty minutes in that I finally spotted a dinosaur in the wild, and even then, it was just running off in the distance, giving me a quick scare. By that point, I actually wanted to chase after it rather than run away. I was just desperate to get a good look at a dinosaur in a supposed dinosaur game.
After a while, I finally stumbled upon a save point that I hadn't even realized the game had. As I progressed, save points remained frustratingly sparse, which is especially concerning for the more difficult areas ahead.
Then, the game swung hard in the opposite direction and dumped a pile of repetitive objectives on me once I actually reached the main park. Without any clear markers or instructions on what to do next, I had no idea where to start. Even clearing a single task in this huge park took forever, and knowing that the last save point you saw was ages ago just makes you feel more and more anxious as the game went on.
Going straight from a slow, tutorial-paced crawl to a sudden overload of objectives threw me for a loop. There was zero buildup, and the core gameplay didn't evolve at all. It felt like the game just threw in a bunch of extra fetch quests, added a pinch of dinosaurs, and said, "Here, go have fun, I guess."
Horror Isn't Just Jump Scares and Dark Areas
Tagged as a survival-horror, Clawed relied more on jump scares rather than actual fear or tension. The sporadic (or lack thereof) appearances of dinosaurs did make each encounter shocking (more of a discovery, really), but it feels more like a sudden jolt than genuine dread.
The game also used its dark lighting to heighten this feeling, which I would say worked for the jump scares. However, it immediately became a nuisance, especially when doing objectives in these blacked-out sections.
I frequently had to pause the game and wait a few minutes to recover, as navigating these dimmed areas was so disorienting that it gave me headaches throughout my playthrough. I guess that’s where the true horror of the game lies.
While you have a flashlight to illuminate small spots of these rooms, it does little to help with navigation and hardly justifies why so much of the game is pitch-black. Scavenging for key items in the dark feels like a chore, which is a problem made worse by an interaction prompt that often fails to appear.
The interaction with the savage dinosaurs themselves should have been enough to inspire horror, but the overuse of dark areas as places where these predators lurk became predictable as the game went on.
Feels Unfinished
Despite launching as a full 1.0 release, Clawed feels unpolished due to janky controls, frequent bugs, and missing features. Movement is particularly restrictive, offering almost no verticality with short jumps and virtually no noticeable difference between walking and sprinting.
Combat is equally uninspired, relying on standard shooter gameplay with no alternative tactics for dealing with threats. Even the current mechanics are botched, as Tranquilizers that were supposed to be silenced still had the same SFX as a regular pistol, which also attracted the dinosaurs.
I frequently clipped through fences while hopping over them, and dinosaurs often phased through solid obstacles while chasing me. The enemy animations were just as clunky. Instead of sprinting, the raptors seemed to slide across the ground, making their turns look completely unnatural. Some of them will literally jump off a cliff, suddenly vanish, or just have their models glitch out entirely.
Furthermore, the settings menu feels incomplete, as the gameplay options tab literally states that these features will be added in a future update. Additionally, the developers also promised a Tourist Mode at launch, where players can explore Prehistoria before the outbreak, which currently isn’t in the game.
Is Clawed Worth It?
A Roaring No
While the developers' ambition is evident, Clawed feels like a project where the studio bit off more than it could chew. So much focus went into making Prehistoria look like an actual theme park that the gameplay took a huge backseat. The bare-bones combat, boring quests, and constant bugs just drag on, and Survival Mode honestly feels barely any different from Classic.
The horror elements don't really deliver as advertised, and the pitch-black areas (which were probably meant to add to the scary vibe) just end up being straight-up disorienting and a massive hassle to navigate.
Clawed just lacks any real excitement or intensity, which is a huge problem when that's usually what makes dino games, or dino media in general, so fun to play. Even with the devs promising future updates and more content down the line, the $19.99 price tag just isn't worth it, even for hardcore dinosaur fans.
FAQ
Does Clawed have difficulty options?
No, Clawed doesn’t have any difficulty options. However, the game has two game modes: Classic and Survival. The major difference is that Survival mode adds a hunger system and weather conditions.
How long does it take to beat Clawed?
Clawed's Classic mode takes about 10-12 hours to beat, and around 20-24 hours for a whole 100% completion.
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