Before we wrote a single line of CLAWDER, we wrote down what we'd never do. No ads. No pay-to-win. No loot boxes. Most of the studio was up for debate. Those weren't.
Free the way a free puppy is free
Most free mobile games are free the way a free puppy is free — adorable until the costs arrive. You know the shape of it. The game pauses to show you a thirty-second video about a different game. The leaderboard quietly belongs to whoever spent the most. The good stuff hides behind a loot box you pay to pull and hope.
It works. People build large businesses on it. It also quietly assumes you won't notice you're the product. You noticed. So did we.
"No ads, ever" is not a launch promotion
Here's the part most "no ads!" badges leave out: the ever.
No ads in CLAWDER isn't a setting we can flip, a limited-time thing, or a perk for early players. It's written into the studio's founding documents, and it binds every game we make — not just the first one. Same with no pay-to-win and no loot boxes. We can't quietly slip them into a later update, because the rule isn't a toggle. It's the studio.
If that sounds like a low bar, you have been playing the wrong games.
What we do instead
We make the game good, then get out of your way.
CLAWDER is a block puzzle that happens to be mostly cats. Drop the pieces. Clear the row. Feel the snap when a shape lands exactly where you meant it to. Watch the cat regard your high score with the warmth of a tax auditor. Put the phone down when you're done — nothing pings you to come back. The fun isn't held hostage, so there's no ransom.
That's the whole loop. We'd rather it be a clean one than an interrupted one.
"So what's the catch?"
No catch — which is, admittedly, the catch.
CLAWDER is free, and generous about it — a real amount of play every day, and everything that affects play is earnable by playing it. There are optional things you can buy if the mood strikes: cosmetics (a hat for a cat, that sort of dignity-reducing exercise), or a shortcut past a grind, or a few extra lives on a day you're on a roll. All of it is optional, none of it is random — no loot boxes, no surprise mechanics, and nothing you can pay to win. If you ever spend a cent, it's because you wanted to support a one-person studio or skip ahead — never because the game cornered you. If we ever can't keep the lights on this way, we'll find something else that still honors those rules. We'll never honor them less.
Who does this?
One person who likes cats and clean lines. The cats are designed by the same person who runs the studio. No growth team, no monetization team, no team — which is precisely why there's nobody here whose job is to figure out how to interrupt you. More about the studio →
CLAWDER is free on iOS. No ads, no pay-to-win, no loot boxes — generous all the way down. Get it on the App Store.
Come for the puzzle, stay for the cat. Or skip the puzzle and stay for the cat. We're not picky. The cat is, but that's between you and the cat.