BGaming Publishing and independent studio Clawbusters have shared the full story behind their collaboration on Aztec’s Claw Wild Dice, a slot combining claw machine gameplay with D20 mechanics.
Clawbusters CEO Tim Lipsky explained that the studio is now three years old and spent its first year and a half focused almost entirely on developing the claw-machine mechanic for the iGaming market.
The studio’s early work even involved physical hardware, with a real-time setup allowing players to bet on whether a claw would successfully grab an object during a live stream.
Over time, Clawbusters evolved from instant games into Plinko and then into slots, building a product culture grounded in analytics and measurable player behaviour rather than intuition.
Lipsky described the creative inspiration behind Aztec’s Claw Wild Dice as a desire to treat a familiar theme differently, framing the Aztec world as an adventure closer in feeling to a board-game journey.
“That is where the D20 idea became interesting. A twenty-sided die immediately creates the feeling of a game inside the game,” Lipsky said, explaining how the signature claw mechanic was used to connect narrative with gameplay.
Lipsky identified distribution and market access as the biggest challenges for an independent studio, noting that BGaming Publishing provided exactly the commercial reach Clawbusters needed at that stage.
“BGaming helped us see another side of the business: that there are market feelings, positioning, packaging and communication, and that these things matter when you want to bring a good product to a wider audience,” Lipsky added.
BGaming product owner Igor Bondarenko noted that Aztec’s Claw Wild Dice stands out because it combines the Claw mini-game, D20 quests, randomised rewards, and an interactive bonus flow that creates a different gameplay rhythm from traditional slots.
Bondarenko said that when BGaming first encountered the Clawbusters team, what stood out immediately was their product mindset and expertise in developing engaging claw machine-inspired mechanics across game pacing and player engagement.
He described the publishing model as one where each side focuses on its strengths, with Clawbusters handling game creation while BGaming managed integration, certification, distribution, marketing, and launch activities.
According to Bondarenko, Aztec’s Claw Wild Dice reached the Top 3 in several niche markets and delivered particularly strong results across Europe and LatAm, maintaining a consistent position within the BGaming Publishing portfolio.
Looking beyond the game’s performance, Bondarenko revealed that the two companies are now jointly building a predictive tool that uses analytics from previous releases to estimate the potential success of a future game before it goes live.
The tool remains in development, with a dedicated announcement planned separately, but Bondarenko described it as a natural extension of Clawbusters’ data-driven culture and a reflection of the trust built through this partnership.
