u/MythicMoonStudios

Me and my husband are currently making Claw and Conjure, an async PvP autobattler. Wishlists are slower than we were hoping, so we're hoping to get some fresh feedback or just hear from people who have been in similar spots and how it worked out.

On announce day we had a lot of feedback that it looked too prototype-like. We have been revamping art and combat and cutting slightly better trailers and updating screenshots and stuff. Current trailer is somewhat temporary, we're working on a more polished one with professional voice acting.

We have been trying to post shorts on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram but nothing seems to catch anyone's attention.

We spent some money promoting a post on instagram which converted horribly, probably got like 5 extra wishlists from 40 dollar post promotion.

I'm not sure if we need to keep iterating art until it looks more professional or just re-focus on the development and getting a really fun demo out.

Claw and Conjure is an autobattler inspired mostly by The Bazaar, WoW/Fantasy Tropes, and Wyrmspan (board game). It's being made by me (Andy) and my husband Chris. The first prototype was created in August of 2025 and we've been working on it ever since.

It follows the typical autobattler loop of shop for your build, then watch it fight. It's asynchronous so there's no time pressure. While The Bazaar has you choose between various events or shops sequentially, in Claw and Conjure you build and improve your town throughout a run, and those decisions impact which builds you're able to pull off. It's somewhat of an "engine building" mechanic that was inspired by Wyrmspan.

The battle phase was originally inspired by Arathi Basin in WoW. There are POIs evenly spread on the map which are worth various amounts of victory points, and which offer different buffs for your team if you capture them. In practice, this hasn't been playtesting well and introduces more RNG and complexity than we'd like, so we're pivoting slightly to a racing mechanic.

In the racing iteration, the buffs and victory points are the same but instead of complex paths, the POIs are always in the middle of the map and parties race to be the first to arrive. The first party to arrive gets a defense buff which favors them slightly in the battle. Additionally, some mechanics like trap builds require arriving first to trigger.

Once both parties meet at the POI, battle begins. A party typically has a tank, healer, and two DPS, each with an item and ability slot. We're still working out all the build ideas. Currently we have traps, thorns, lifesteal/sustain, burst/explosives, assassins (triggers pre-combat) and spy/counter builds which let you preview the next opponent and attempt to counter them.

That's the main loop. Your run health is called "favor" and each battle risks various amounts. There are two checkpoints where you get favor refills and get to choose one faction to go extinct. If you lose your favor before completing 12 rounds you lose.

The factions are all pretty interesting to me which isn't a surprise since I designed them, though you'll see a lot of WoW inspiration there too:

• Grove Guardians: Elves, Druids and Forest Animals that excel in health/healing/sustain.
• Deepdelve Accord: Dwarves and Dogs that love ale and digging/mining. Econ focused.
• Ravens Reach: Rogues, Thieves, and Birds focused on assassin and spy mechanics.
• Primal Cabal: Orcs, Goblins, and tribal humans. Focus on witchcraft, resurrections, and magic damage
• Clockwork Dominion: Gnomes, engineers, and steampunks focused on explosives, contraptions, and time economy/efficiency.

If you read this far, you must be a little interested, so check out the steam page and drop a wishlist. I'll also attach some screenshots here.

Leave any questions in the comments!

Not super ground breaking, just uses standard formulas for wishlist and revenue estimates and embeds directly into steam. It's something I've wanted for a while and decided to make. Also includes links to sites that put more effort into correct estimates if you want to dig in more. Hope its useful!

In response to this post, I thought it would be good to start some conversation about fun autobattlers but with no self promo allowed. If you are a dev, surely its because you love playing autobattlers.

So, what is everyone playing or looking forward to playing?

I try to keep up with the genre as much as possible. The most interesting one I tried recently was the open playtest of Alchemortis.

It's single player and uses an inventory management mechanic similar to backpack battles. It offers a tree no navigate like slay the spire, and has a cool alchemy mechanic where you mix things together and they either improve or get cursed. I didn't get too deep into it but it definitely left an impression and left me wanting to learn and play more.

The one I've been keeping an eye on and want to try soon is batomon showdown. I was watching retromation play it a lot and its high on my list of things to try next.

How about you all?

That's pretty much it! We're making a fantasy auto-battler with RPG vibes called "Claw and Conjure." Currently on Godot 4.4.

I was playing/testing and capturing new screenshots for steam tonight and really felt like I was having fun with the game and was proud of how it's coming along, and wanted to share with someone!

I was feeling a bit more optimistic about the appeal of the game last night and took some screenshots. What do you all think? Is it appealing? These are the UI/town phase, still got a ton of work to do on the battle visuals and readability.

We got tons of feedback when announcing our game last week. Overall it was being interpreted as cheap/amateur and we really want it to seem polished and professional. Are we headed in the right direction here?

We're currently on Godot 4.4 BTW and the old lock icons were always placeholder. Overall we're adding texture, details, shadows, depth, etc as opposed to the old more vector style.

Any tips are welcome. Does the new screenshot look like something you'd expect to appeal more widely?

Wishlist here to keep with development

We're pretty new to producing marketing materials that make the game understandable. While we work on better videos and stuff, this description explains things a bit better:

>It has the core autobattler loop where you buy stuff from shops then watch it fight. But after each fight you decide what to build/upgrade in your town which is the engine that enables builds. You can lean into spells, units, items, economy, or hybrid buildings. Then in battle phase there's a map with 4 POIs that you fight for, and each one gives your army different buffs.

>So the archery range buffs physical DPS damage. So you could put together a party of 4 physical DPS with a trap build. For trap builds, you have units, items, and abilities that do a ton of burst, but only if they arrive first to the POI (so they need decent speed stats).

>And/or you could put a tank, healer, and two DPS with lifesteal on the tank and some sustain abilities on the healer, and send them to the castle. If you win that battle, your army gets a 5% all stats buff for next round.

>And that's pretty much it. There are lots of different builds and we're still figuring out how to balance the complexity and simplicity and stuff but its coming together nicely. For example, one of my favorite factions is raven's reach who are kinda rogue-ish. They have assassin and spy abilities, so if you want advance knowledge of the next enemy or if you want a chance to just assassinate enough units before battle begins to tip things in your favor, those are the specialties of raven's reach.