There are more than 100 creatures to collect in Sculplings, and every single one of them started life as a lump of clay. Not digital clay, either. Actual, get-your-hands-dirty, spend-hours-at-a-table sculpting clay.
In fact, developers Conor Garity and Liam Kerrigan used more than 300 handmade sculptures to build their monster-collecting roguelike, from the creatures themselves to the items and even the grass you wander through. Each model was then digitally scanned and brought into the game, giving Sculplings a wonderfully homemade look that you don’t see very often.
Underneath all that pottery is a rather clever idea, too. Take the creature collecting and turn-based battles of Pokémon, throw in the unpredictable runs of a roguelike, and squeeze the whole adventure into roughly an hour.
Sculplings left Early Access back in March and was updated just a couple of months ago. Yet despite an impressive 99% positive rating from just over 180 Steam reviews at the time of writing, it seems to have slipped past an awful lot of monster-collecting fans. We reckon these little clay creatures deserve a lot more attention.
Gotta Sculpt ‘Em All
The appeal of Sculplings is familiar to anyone who’s ever spent far too long hunting for one particular Pokémon. You explore, discover new creatures, catch them, and gradually put together a team capable of taking on tougher opponents. The difference is that you won’t be spending 40 hours assembling your dream squad.
Each run gives you a fresh adventure through randomly generated paths, with more than 100 Sculplings available to discover across five different environments. Different areas are home to different creatures, so choosing where to go has a direct impact on the team you’ll end up with. As you’re working with whatever turns up, you could find yourself relying on a creature you’d normally overlook. That little clay oddball you picked up because there was nothing better available? It could end up being the most useful member of your team.
Battles are turn-based, with different creature types and moves to consider. You’ll need to pay attention to which monsters work well together, which opponents they’re effective against, and where your team might be lacking.
There are more than 15 bosses standing between you and the Champion’s Arena, so simply collecting the strongest-looking creatures isn’t necessarily going to get you very far. The fun comes from putting together a team on the fly, discovering combinations you hadn’t planned for, and seeing whether your latest collection of handmade monsters can survive whatever the next encounter throws at them.
A Few Pins Can Change Everything
Of course, a good monster-collecting roguelike needs more than a collection of adorable creatures to keep its runs interesting. Sculplings also has over 30 passive items called Pins, which provide additional benefits and help shape how your team performs in battle.
Finding the right Pins for your current creatures can give you a useful advantage, especially if you’ve already got a particular strategy taking shape. The challenge is making those bonuses work with the team you’ve actually managed to collect, rather than the one you were hoping to find.
That ties into the game’s branching paths. With different creatures waiting across its five environments, deciding which direction to travel becomes part of building your team. Do you head somewhere that might offer a better selection of monsters, or stick with a route that suits the creatures you’ve already caught?
It’s a neat way of bringing roguelike decision-making into the monster-collecting formula without burying everything under complicated systems. With runs designed to take around an hour, experimenting with different teams doesn’t mean sacrificing an entire weekend. You can try a new approach, see how far it gets you, and start another adventure with a completely different collection.
For anyone who loves the team-building side of Pokémon but doesn’t always fancy spending hours levelling up creatures, that’s a pretty appealing arrangement.
A Little Clay Goes a Long Way
The artwork deserves another mention because it’s easily one of the most unique things about Sculplings. Every creature has been physically sculpted before making its way into the game, and that handmade approach extends to the environments and objects around them. It’s a huge amount of work for a small indie project, especially when you consider that more than 300 individual sculptures were needed to bring everything together.
It also gives the game its own identity, but the clay models aren’t doing all the heavy lifting. With over 100 monsters, more than 30 Pins, branching routes, and 15-plus bosses, there’s a proper little roguelike underneath the handmade presentation.
Sculplings reached its full 1.0 release on March 17, 2026, following just over a year in Early Access, and its Steam reception suggests the players who’ve discovered it are having a great time. If you’re a fan of creature collectors, turn-based battles, or roguelikes that let you experiment with a different team every run, this is one worth adding to your radar.
Besides, when someone goes to the trouble of sculpting more than 300 little pieces of clay just to make a video game, the least we can do is give it a look.