Part 5 (Jul 2026) · #8 of 9 in that tierWatch the moment (2:19:29)
Sculplings
- Developed by
- Conor Garity, Liam Kerrigan
- Published by
- Conor Garity
$10.99
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!
Consensus
A78.6/100
Steam players99.5% positiveVery Positive192 reviews
VG Insights estimate ↗≈1.2K copies · ≈$9.1K gross
What creators say
What players say
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.
Players love
- 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
Common complaints
- 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
Can feel tedious
- 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
What's unique
- 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
Players want
- 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
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
Action RoguelikeRogue-likeTurn-Based StrategyRogue-lite3DColorfulHand-drawnStylizedFantasyPerma Death
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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.
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