The 1.0 release of Peglin took me somewhat by surprise, but after dedicating many hours to learning its subtleties while the game moved through Early Access, it didn’t take me long to get back in the groove for this review.
The origin story of Peglin starts with Pachinko, a real-world low-stakes Japanese game that has been around for a century, and which looks like a cross between Pinball and a slot machine.
The next destination on the game’s Indiana Jones-esque journey around the world saw it reach the west coast of America in the early ’00s. Next stop: Popcap Games in Seattle (back before the studio sold out to EA).
Popcap’s interpretation of Pachinko goes by the name of Peggle (2007), and you’re probably well aware of the game and its sequels. I don’t mind admitting that my whole family enjoys a bit of Peggle. And so when I first clamped eyes on Peglin, and given my disposition towards replayable roguelike games, it was a no-brainer for me, even with it still in Early Access.
Peggle + Rogue = Peglin
Jumping back in the plane with ol’ Indiana, our journey takes us to yet another destination. This time we are in Canada, the home of Red Nexus Games. It’s this indie studio that has developed the game that is the focus of today’s write-up.
Peglin takes the basic premise of Pachinko and then rips up the rulebook by introducing roguelike inspired mechanics to create a deeper and more replayable turn-based experience. Here’s how it works:
Players take on the role of Yoda Peglin (there are three more characters) and then advance them through a series of biomes filled with Pachinko challenges, random encounters, and other miscellaneous activities that usually involve editing your loadout. Each biome is an interlinked board filled with battles and events, and each one is punctuated by a boss fight.
Battles take place on the Pachinko board. Your enemies face you, but you fling your orbs into the board, aiming at special pegs that deliver additional benefits. I’m talking about explosions, damage, and critical hits, with the effects on the board then translating to the enemies in front of you. You take your shot, they fire over some damage. Rinse and repeat.
Do you feel lucky, punk?
Pachinko is a game of luck, and therefore you need quite a lot of it in Peglin. This feels somewhat unavoidable given the fundamentals of the original, but I still think this will mean that it is more divisive than a game this sweet deserves. You’ll either love it or hate it.
I love it. Yes, there’s a fair bit of “hit and hope” at times, but the aim of the game is to try and minimise the risk associated with each turn. This means building a collection of different orbs to throw down during each run.
These orbs vary wildly in terms of their abilities – some zap surrounding pegs, others bounce all over the place, some deal extra damage, and so on and so forth. You’re given frequent opportunities to diversify your collection; I’m not detailing them here because some of their functions can be quite hard to understand on paper and need to be tried to be truly understood.
You can build your collection of orbs in one of two ways. Or, at least, there are the two contrasting tactics that I’ve worked out. The first is to have a broad selection of different orbs, and then edit down as you gather more special items (more on them later). The other tactic I’ve tried is to keep a small collection of orbs from the start, but spend all the gold I earn on levelling them up as much as possible.
No matter how you play it, success comes down to your ability to make good decisions between battles, and then take accurate shots during your various encounters. However, no matter how powerful you get, or how clever your build is, and regardless of how accurate your aim, there’s always still a fair degree of luck involved.
Taking aim at a hopeful conclusion
There’s a surprising range of enemies to battle and there’s a few that I haven’t even encountered yet, which bodes well for future run variety. There also seems to be a decent number of in-game items that you can collect over the course of a run. These items each have game-changing properties to aid you on your way. Examples include a ham joint that gives you HP everytime you reload during combat, or slime that makes the walls extra bouncy.
The presentation is also quite lovely. As a huge fan of cute pixel-art, I’m really pleased with how Peglin has turned out. The world and its denizens is all nicely designed, from the orbs to the enemies and everything in between. The soundtrack is alright, too, although it’s skippable if, like me, you prefer to listen to your own tunes.
Overall, I have to say that I’m delighted by Peglin and I’m pleased with it’s 1.0 final form. For the full launch the devs at Red Nexus have added new higher difficulty ascension levels (Cruciballs 17-20) along with a bunch of extra additions, plus the usual tweaks and changes you get with any big update. However, now that it’s considered finished, I think a lot of new people will be ready to jump on board, and unless those people are allergic to large amounts of RNG, I think most will have a good time with this cute and quirky Pachinko roguelike.
Peglin has just left Early Access on Steam PC (and that’s on Mac and Windows) and the game just surprised launched on Nintendo Switch! You can also play on Android, should you so desirest!
