There is a particular kind of thrill that comes from hearing something massive move through the undergrowth just beyond your flashlight beam. It is a primal, gut-level fear that no amount of gaming experience can fully inoculate you against, and it is exactly the feeling that Clawed is chasing. Developed by the Australian indie studio Flatrock Games, this action-adventure survival horror drops you into Prehistoria, a sprawling dinosaur theme park that has gone catastrophically wrong, and asks you to navigate its increasingly dangerous grounds while shooting, scavenging, and solving your way to an exit that may not even exist.
The game launched on August 13, 2026 at $19.99 USD, currently discounted to $17.99 USD with a 10% introductory offer running through August 27. It arrived to a split reception on Steam, landing squarely in Mixed territory with roughly 166 positive and 165 negative reviews from 331 total. That near-perfect split tells you something important: Clawed is a game with genuine ambition and genuine problems, and understanding where each lands is the difference between a refund and a rewarding time.
Game Overview
Clawed positions itself at the intersection of several genres: survival horror, action-adventure, and light survival mechanics. You play as an operative sent on a covert mission to infiltrate Prehistoria, a dinosaur theme park that has clearly seen far better days. The park is a fully explorable open world with distinct biomes, underground tunnels, aquatic environments, and themed areas ranging from a fossil resort to a water park. Two gameplay modes are available: Classic Mode, which strips things back to the core survival horror experience, and Survival Mode, which layers on hunger, thirst, dynamic weather, a full day/night cycle, and random dinosaur encounters.
The game supports both single-player and online co-op for up to four players. You can switch between first-person and third-person perspectives at will, and the park is designed to reward thorough exploration with collectibles, lore entries, and hidden paths. The scope is genuinely ambitious for a small studio: multiple dinosaur species each with distinct behaviors, puzzle sequences woven through the environments, and a narrative that unfolds through environmental storytelling and scattered audio logs.
World, Story, and Central Premise
Prehistoria is the star here, and Flatrock has clearly poured real love into its design. The park is laid out like a plausible theme park might be, with a central plaza featuring dinosaur statues, paved walkways, and information boards giving way to increasingly wild enclosures as you push outward. The aquarium section, with its massive glass walls looking into deep-water exhibits housing Mosasaurs and Styxosaurs, is a particular highlight. The Fossil Ridge Resort area, with its damaged geodesic domes and overgrown paths, tells a story of sudden catastrophe without needing a single line of dialogue.
The narrative unfolds through environmental storytelling rather than cutscenes. Audio logs, scattered documents, and the state of the park itself fill in the backstory of what happened at Prehistoria. It is a classic survival horror setup, and it works precisely because the world feels lived-in. The devs have even included a monument to the actor who played Dr. Grant in the original Jurassic Park — a small, respectful touch that signals how deeply this team cares about the genre they are working in.
Gameplay and Combat
The moment-to-moment gameplay loop in Clawed revolves around three pillars: exploration, combat, and puzzle-solving. Exploration is the strongest element. The park is large and densely packed with areas to discover, and the lack of objective waypoints in Classic Mode means you are genuinely figuring things out for yourself. For players who enjoy that kind of hands-off design, it is refreshing. For everyone else, it can occasionally tip into confusion.
Combat is functional but unrefined. You have access to firearms with limited ammunition, and the gunplay involves managing recoil, iron sights that do not always align with where you think you are aiming, and ammo scarcity that forces you to pick your battles. The iron sight issue is one of the most commonly cited frustrations in negative reviews: lining up a shot with a dinosaur charging at you often means aiming lower than feels natural, and in fast-paced encounters this can get you killed. Tranquilizer darts offer a non-lethal alternative, but gunpowder is scarce enough that every bullet matters.
The dinosaur AI is a mixed bag. Raptors call for backup when injured and hunt in packs, which creates genuinely tense encounters. But predator behavior in general can feel inconsistent — some dinosaurs aggro on sight regardless of context, while others seem to wander aimlessly. The stealth system exists but is minimal, which makes sense given that sneaking past a T-Rex in dense jungle is not exactly realistic. The puzzles, when they appear, are traditional survival-horror fare: find the right item, figure out the sequence, progress. They are not particularly challenging, but they break up the exploration and combat nicely.
Progression and Replayability
Progression in Clawed is tied to story advancement and resource accumulation rather than character upgrades or skill trees. As you explore further into the park, you unlock new areas and encounter new dinosaur species. The two game modes — Classic and Survival — offer meaningfully different experiences. Survival Mode adds survival mechanics that fundamentally change how you approach each encounter, forcing you to manage hunger and thirst alongside ammo and health.
Co-op adds significant replay value. Running through the park with friends changes the dynamic considerably — you can split up to cover more ground, revive each other, and share resources. However, co-op is also where many of the game’s most severe technical issues surface. Save state synchronization between players is unreliable, inventory can desync, and the host-pause mechanic (where the host pausing freezes all other players) is universally despised. If Flatrock can iron out the co-op problems, this mode has the potential to be the game’s strongest selling point.
Visuals, Audio, and Atmosphere
Running on Unreal Engine 5, Clawed is a visually impressive game when it wants to be. The park environments are richly detailed, with dense foliage, atmospheric lighting, and weather effects that genuinely sell the feeling of being stranded in a dangerous place. Lumen lighting creates dramatic shadows in nighttime sequences, and the underwater environments are surprisingly gorgeous. The dinosaur models are well-realized, with detailed textures and animations that convey real weight and menace.
The audio design, however, is one of the game’s most frequently cited weaknesses. Volume levels are inconsistent — some sounds are deafeningly loud while others are barely audible. Music cues trigger at odd times, robbing key moments of the tension they are clearly designed to create. The ambient soundscape, when it works, is effective: rain pattering on foliage, distant dinosaur calls echoing through the park, the muffled thud of footsteps on different terrain types. But the technical execution undermines the atmosphere at critical moments.
Performance and Technical Problems
This is where Clawed faces its toughest challenge. The game launched with a substantial list of technical issues that have defined much of the negative reception. On the single-player side, save points are spaced too far apart for the difficulty curve, save slots do not always overwrite correctly, and there are no automatic backup saves — meaning a bad reload can lock you into an unwinnable state. Map collision is inconsistent, with numerous spots where players report getting permanently stuck in geometry, requiring a game restart.
Co-op issues are more severe. Inviting friends to games frequently fails, players who disconnect get sent back to the start of the game with no way to catch up, and inventory desync between players is common. The host-pause mechanic, where one player pausing freezes everyone, has been universally panned. Shader compilation stutters plague early gameplay sessions, though these do settle after roughly 20 minutes. Frame rates are generally acceptable on recommended-spec hardware, but Lumen lighting needs optimization — turning it off is the single most common piece of advice in community forums.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- A genuinely expansive, well-designed dinosaur theme park with distinct biomes and hidden areas
- First and third-person perspectives both work well with solid animations
- Dinosaur encounters feel dangerous and unpredictable, with pack behavior and roaming AI
- The world tells its story without hand-holding — no waypoints, no hand-holding
- Strong atmosphere when the audio cooperates
- Co-op has enormous potential once technical issues are resolved
- Deep lore and environmental storytelling reward thorough exploration
- Atmospheric lighting and detailed UE5 environments
Cons:
- Severe co-op bugs: broken invites, inventory desync, host-pause freezing all players
- Save system is unreliable with no backup mechanism
- Map collision issues can permanently trap players
- Audio levels are inconsistent and music cues fire at wrong times
- Gunplay feels imprecise, especially iron sights
- Unquestionably should have launched in Early Access
- No key binding customization in 2026
- Water slides cannot be used despite being climbable
- Performance demands are high for the visual payoff
SteamGamer Verdict
Clawed is a game that is easy to root for and hard to recommend in its current state. The vision is clear and compelling: a sprawling dinosaur theme park survival horror with co-op, deep exploration, and genuine atmosphere. Flatrock Games clearly love dinosaurs, they love survival horror, and they have built a world worth exploring. The park design is excellent, the dinosaur encounters deliver real tension, and the environmental storytelling shows genuine craft.
But launching a game in this state is a mistake that the community has not forgiven. The co-op is functionally broken for many players, the save system is unreliable, the audio design undermines key moments, and the technical issues range from frustrating to game-breaking. The near-50/50 review split on Steam is not the result of a bad game — it is the result of a good game that was not ready for release. If Flatrock commits to meaningful post-launch support and addresses the core technical problems, Clawed could become something genuinely special. For now, it is a cautious recommendation for single-player enthusiasts with a high tolerance for rough edges, and a hard pass for anyone primarily interested in co-op.
Score: 6.0 / 10 — Promising vision undermined by a premature launch. Wait for patches.
Jordan Hayes covers PC gaming news, hardware, and the ever-changing Steam ecosystem for SteamGamer.net. He believes some of gaming’s biggest stories are hiding in patch notes, performance charts, and suspiciously quiet price changes. When he isn’t investigating what developers or GPU manufacturers are doing, he is probably starting another roguelike run he insists will be his last.
Comment here