What Claymore video games are there?
One. A single Japan-only Nintendo DS game, released 28 May 2009.
For a series with a built-in action engine, ranked warriors, monster hunts, a power gauge with a point of no return, Claymore received exactly one video game. Claymore: Gingan no Majo (The Witch of the Silver Eyes) brought Clare to the Nintendo DS in 2009, two years after the anime, and never left Japan.
THE GAME
Digital Works Entertainment · 2009
Gingan no Majo
The Japanese box: Clare flanked by Teresa and Ophelia, the CERO B rating in the corner, and a banner announcing that the Jump Square series had become a game.
The facts
Claymore: Gingan no Majo. Nintendo DS. Developed and published by Digital Works Entertainment, a studio better known for support work and mobile games, publishing here for the first time. Released in Japan on 28 May 2009, cartridge code NTR-C3YJ-JPN, rated CERO B. No overseas edition was ever announced.
Shown at Jump Festa
The game was presented at Jump Festa in December 2008, months ahead of release, with Clare hunting yoma across 2D stages. Famitsu's reviewers scored it 21 out of 40: a licensed curiosity, not a classic, and now the only playable Claymore there is.
HOW IT PLAYS
The series' rules, translatedSide-scrolling hunts
The game is a 2D side-scrolling action title in the Castlevania and Metroid mould: Clare crosses stages, reads the yoma hidden among humans, and fights. The bottom screen works as her yoki sense, a radar for the monsters the top screen hides.
The yoki gauge
The touch screen meters how much yoki Clare releases: more power, more damage, and past the limit, possession and a game over. It is the manga's central bargain turned into a mechanic, the same bargain every Claymore page turns on: borrow the monster's strength and risk becoming it.
Unlocked warriors
Finishing the game with Clare unlocks Miria, and other warriors of the Organization, among them Teresa and Ophelia, appear as playable fighters. The DS cartridge became a small roster of the ranked forty-seven that print never gathered in one place.
THE COLLECTOR'S FOOTNOTE
Import onlyNever localized
No English, European, or Australian edition exists. The cartridge is a Japanese object, and the surviving copies in the West are all imports. On original DS and DS Lite hardware the cartridge itself carries no region lock, so the import is playable; the language is the only wall.