Game file / ROGUE BY ROGUESculplings
A creature-collecting roguelike where every monster is sculpted in real clay and brought to life! Collect and battle a random assortment of hand-sculpted monsters in order to become the #1 Sculpling Champion!
Why this score?
Original text · Simplified Chinese
免练级的短流程让怪物组队更直接，胜负仍需要补强首领信息和规则实现可靠性。
Core gameplay
Weight 25%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：不用重复练级即可捕获并使用队伍，属性对抗与换人保留简洁战术节奏；常规对战在后续局容易重复。
Builds & strategy
Weight 25%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：换人后持续的增减益、招式和徽章让队伍搭配有价值，但生物与道具功能深度仍有局限。
Replayability
Weight 20%7.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：随机路线和可捕获生物改变组队取舍，熟悉主要对象后新局解法会收敛，手工造型本身不计复玩分。
Randomness & fairness
Weight 20%6.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：属性关系可用于计划，但首领机制预警不足和可重复瞬杀的反馈使初次失败难以合理预防。
Polish & usability
Weight 10%6.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：类型信息与界面总体清楚，设置不保留、能力和徽章异常及云存档问题降低了完成度。
- Reviewer
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Rogue by Rogue · AI 资料评测- Version reviewed
Original text · Simplified Chinese
具体构建未知；以所引资料描述的版本为准
Scope and limitations
Original text · Simplified Chinese
基于收录评论与官方产品说明的主观资料评测，未试玩；原始玩家评论及所有补丁未逐条重新核验。样本规模较小，能力和存档故障仅见于收录反馈，未作复现；不因手工制作投入额外加分。
Review sources 02
- 01Archived materialView archived external material ↓
Original text · Simplified Chinese
收录评论与社区资料（2026-10-01 快照）
使用 作者观点摘要 的具体玩法优缺点（Tier list Part 5 (2026)）以及 玩家好评与批评；只引用这些资料的具体反馈，不采纳旧等级或外部分数。
- 02Web sourceView original ↗
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Sculplings — Steam 官方商店页
2026-10-08 访问。确认了随机路线、随机怪物收集、类型招式对战与黏土扫描素材制作。该页不作为实测性能或缺陷已修复的证据。
Video reviews
Reviews and deep dives from YouTube and Bilibili, in every language. Open the original video to watch.
Other voices, for reference.
Archived third-party reviews and community material may refer to different versions. External opinions and ratings are presented separately; consult the original videos for their full context.
Community discussion
A turn-based creature-collecting roguelike where every monster, item and environment is a real clay sculpture that was scanned into the game; you catch a team each run and beat the Top 5 ranked trainers to become champion.
Sculplings is a small, solo-dev-plus-one indie (Conor Garity and Liam Kerrigan) that left Early Access (launched March 4, 2025) for a 1.0 on March 17, 2026. It holds Very Positive on Steam, about 191 positive vs 1 negative of 192 reviews (99.5%) at the time of the data pull, and players call it a charming, funny Pokemon-meets-Slay-the-Spire hybrid with no grind. The few reservations are polish, bugs, balance spikes and a shortish content pool. There is no Metacritic or OpenCritic critic coverage yet (the Metacritic page exists but has zero critic and zero user reviews), so reception is entirely player-driven. The developer is active, shipped a run of 1.0.x fixes and a 1.1.0 content patch on April 28, then said updates will stay small because of burnout; an unknown number of reviewers also mention being friends or community members of the dev, so read the near-perfect score with some salt.
What players praise
- Hand-sculpted clay art is the headline: creatures and even scenery with faces are real sculptures, giving the game a distinct identity that players say avoids the Temu-Pokemon look
- Humor and writing land well: silly creature names, on-the-nose jokes, a few swears, an edgy rival and cliche trainers played for laughs
- No grinding: each run you pick 1 of 3 starters, catch up to 4 creatures, collect items/pins and adapt, which players say removes the usual monster-tamer XP grind
- Roguelite structure gives real build variety and strong 'one more run' pull; some players report ways to break the game wide open with scaling attacks, though these are not mandatory
- Buffs and debuffs persisting through switches, plus a solid type chart and clean UI, make the simple turn-based combat feel more strategic than expected
- Meta-progression is mostly new options (pin slots, unlocked items, cosmetics, upgraded boss passives) rather than raw power
- Cheap at $10.99, runs well on Steam Deck in reviewers' reports, and the dev engages with the community
- Handmade, no-AI-art production is a recurring selling point for reviewers
What players criticize
- Lack of polish for a post-Early-Access release: settings not persisting, visual oddities, typos, ghost inventory slots, and boss/miniboss AI sometimes wasting a turn
- Bugs on the Steam forum: the Tank achievement and Pudduo passive misfiring, pins not working, a swap bug, revive behavior, Stoompy issues, and cloud backup/save problems
- Boss mechanics are not telegraphed, so you can lose a run learning a gimmick the hard way
- Occasional balance spikes such as an enemy move that instantly kills a creature and can be used repeatedly
- Content is on the short side with a limited creature and item pool compared to established monster-tamers
- Windows only (no Mac or Linux build); saves live in an obscure LocalLow folder and cloud sync has had problems
- Not deep by the standards of the genre, per some otherwise positive reviewers
Distinctive features
- Every monster, item and environment was physically sculpted in clay (300+ sculptures per the official site) and scanned into the game
- Roguelike run structure applied to Pokemon-style catching: a fresh team each run, pick 1 of 3 starters, randomized paths through 5 environments
- 100+ creatures, 30+ passive Pins and 15+ bosses, with Top 5 rank trainers each having unique mechanics
- Stat buffs and debuffs persist across switches, which is unusual for the genre
- Shiny variants and evolution guessing game, plus cosmetic collectibles, in a roguelite wrapper with a cheeky adult-ish humor tone
Divided opinions
- Depth: some praise 'decent depth and many viable builds', others say it is not the deepest game and feels like a vibe-out experience
- Humor: many love the on-the-nose silly writing, while one reviewer notes the swearing and adult themes make it unsuitable for young kids despite the cute visuals
- Balance: infinite-scaling attacks are called the strongest option by some, though others say the roguelike balance is well tuned
- Polish: several reviewers call the bugs forgivable at the price, others say they would suggest waiting
Repetition and friction
- Default-speed animations, text boxes and post-fight XP gain linger too long, which would wear over many runs
- Learning boss gimmicks by dying to them with no foreshadowing
- Hunting for the item you want among a bloated unlock pool with no chest reroll
- Minor jank and bugs interrupting flow, plus some mis-tracking achievements
- Repeating runs is required to see the story, so the run count needed to finish can feel long to some, even though there is no traditional grind
- The game reportedly pushes players to leave a Steam review (the sole negative review says it 'kinda forces you to make a review'), which feels naggy and may also inflate the near-perfect score
Hoped-for improvements
- Proper controller support (the top recurring request; the dev said it is nearly complete)
- Game speed or faster animation/text options, since battle animations and XP gain feel slow on long sessions
- Item bloat management: chests have no reroll and finding wanted items gets harder as unlocks accumulate (enemy-drop rerolls for coins were since added)
- More content: new creatures (a frog with a tongue is requested), legendaries, and paid DLC that some fans say they would buy
- Better save and quit feedback, persistent settings, working cloud saves, and an unlock-requirement menu for pins and emblems
- Ultrawide and GeForce Now compatibility were raised on the forum
Early Access launched March 4, 2025 and 1.0 shipped March 17, 2026, with reviews from Early Access playtests still on the page (some reviewers logged it months before 1.0). Post-launch patches 1.0.1 to 1.0.4 fixed softlocks, achievements, an infinite reroll exploit with the rabbit foot pin, music sliders and broken moves like Bloom and Hive Mind; 1.1.0 (April 28) added the capturable plant-type Stoompy, fixed a swap bug and rebalanced XP and evolution stats. The dev later announced lighter updates due to burnout, focusing on small additions and bug fixes and not big features like legendaries, with controller support nearly done. Steam-based ownership trackers show owners of 0 to 20,000 and a revenue calculator page reported $0 (an unreliable placeholder); with 192 reviews a rough Boxleiter-style guess would be single-digit thousands of copies, not a sourced figure. Windows only, priced $10.99.
Community sources
- Steam store page: description, Very Positive rating, review counts, release info ↗
- Local file of top helpful English Steam reviews (positive and one negative) read for player sentiment ↗
- Local Steam metadata: appid 3062680, developers, release date, review counts, SteamSpy owner range ↗
- Official site: 100+ monsters, 30+ pins, 15+ bosses, 300+ sculptures, Early Access date ↗
- Patch notes 1.0.1 to 1.1.0 and the developer's plans and burnout note ↗
- Steam forum thread titles: bugs, controller support, cloud backup, difficulty questions ↗
- Metacritic page exists but has no critic or user reviews yet ↗
- OpenCritic search: no entry found ↗
- Revenue estimate page returning $0 placeholder (not credible) ↗
Archived creator commentary 1
Third-party summaries based on automatic captions may contain transcription or interpretation errors.
Tier list Part 5 (2026)
Sculplings is a turn-based, Pokemon-style roguelike where you field a team of four creatures, each with four attacks and a passive, and counter elemental types. Its hook is that every asset is physically hand-sculpted by a single developer. He stresses that the gimmick alone would not be enough, but the game underneath is solid and truly adapted to a run-based format. He finds it very funny and content-rich, though he tires of Pokemon-style gameplay himself. He places it in A tier for its uniqueness and the sheer amount of work behind it.
What the creator praises
- Hand-sculpted-in-real-life art by one person is unique and impressive
- Pokemon formula reworked for roguelike: faster progression, quick evolutions, many abilities and items
- Surprising amount of content; each Elite Four is fought one at a time across a run, plus a fifth final boss
- Humor, NPC writing, attack and creature names are some of the funniest he has seen in a roguelike
- Meta-progression is unlocks and cosmetics rather than raw power, and handmade cosmetics are motivating
- Joy of discovering creatures, items, moves, jokes and evolutions
Issues raised by the creator
- Pokemon-style gameplay gets repetitive and tiring for him, so he has not finished it
- Runs are pretty hard and require understanding the systems
- Discovery value fades once you have seen all the sculplings, leaving just gameplay and humor
- Type system is a bit all over the place (food, spooky, etc.)
Design observations
- Every creature and cosmetic is actually sculpted by hand in real life by a solo developer
- Turns the Pokemon Elite Four structure into repeated roguelike run goals
- Discovery of handmade creatures is itself a core reward loop
Updated opinion
Previously featured in his video on five little-known interesting games; this is a re-feature, not a tier move.
