Mutations: Burrowing Claws, a [3]-point natural weapon

About this game

Developer: Freehold Games · Publisher: Kitfox Games · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Pixel art · Screen type: Character / Unit Detail

More Caves of Qud screens in the Gallery

What to study

Qud's mutations are bought, not rolled, and the screen makes the economy legible at a glance: every mutation carries its point cost in brackets inside the list itself, grouped under Morphotypes and Physical Mutations, while the detail panel states exactly what the points buy in rules prose, Burrowing Claws dig through walls (penetration +3, a wall falls after 4 penetrating hits) and double as a short-blade natural weapon dealing 1d2 to everything else. The design lesson is the fusion of fiction and function in one sentence each: the flavour line ('You bear spade-like claws…') and the mechanical lines use the same type, the same panel and the same voice, so a player evaluates a mutation the way they would read a contract. One disclosure: the trailer framing clips the left edge of the tab strip (the first tab reads '…d Human'); the two panels themselves are complete. Frame at about 0:36 in the Out Now Trailer (Steam; manual extraction from the 1 frame / 2s filmstrip pass).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

master-detail cost-list trait-list

Components

Parts on screen.

Tabs List Slots

Screen inventory

• the creation flow is a tab strip across the top, Human, Apostle, Mutations (active), Attributes, Summary, Customize, so a character is built as a sequence of named decisions, and this step's header states its job in the game's own syntax: 'character creation :choose mutations:'
• the left panel prices every choice in brackets: Morphotypes first ([1] Chimera, [1] Esper, [3] Unstable Genome), then Physical Mutations with their point costs, [4] Adrenal Control, [1] Beak [V], [3] Burrowing Claws under the cursor, [3] Carapace, [4] Flaming Ray (Hands) [V], [5] Freezing Ray (Hands) [V], [3] Horns [V], [4] Multiple Arms, [5] Multiple Legs, [1] Night Vision, cost and body slot are part of each row's name, never a separate column
• the right panel is the selected mutation written as rules prose beside its two pixel icons: 'You bear spade-like claws that can burrow through the earth.', then the mechanics in plain lines: 'Claw penetration vs. walls: +3', 'Claws destroy walls after 4 penetrating hits', and 'Claws are also a short-blade class natural weapon that deal 1d2 base damage to non-walls'
• nothing on the screen is decorative chrome: the list is the budget, the prose panel is the contract, and the [V] variant tags on rows like Beak and Horns mark mutations that come in more than one form

Top 3 colors

#092421 27%#08211f 24%#061b19 15%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Freehold Games / Kitfox Games, Caves of Qud screenshot: Steam trailers (Out Now Trailer / Spring Molting Update Trailer), Freehold Games, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Kitfox Games.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-25. verified 2026-10-25: manual extraction manual-mutations-36.png @ ~36s in the Out Now Trailer, MD5 e5cbff1d49a838983aa5c0f7ce5dca11, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (70,235,142 B, MD5 0002ff80d22592463855f2e0016a3966; full decode to null with -xerror exit 0, zero error lines, decode-steam-333640-Out-Now-Trailer.mp4.err), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); the Morphotypes / Physical Mutations cost list and the complete Burrowing Claws rules panel all legible; the trailer framing clips the left edge of the creation tab strip (first tab partly off-frame), disclosed in the study note; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-25); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.