Rack and Slay is a billiards roguelite that continues the growing trend of physics-based arcade roguelikes. In fact, we first took a look at the game when developer Ludokultur dropped a demo last year.
This little sub genre that’s been emerging since Peglin has been a small obsession of mine these last few weeks. There’s something about the physicality of smacking things around with a paddle or a pool ball and watching the objects bounce around and causing silly things to happen that’s really entertaining.
Your goal in Rack and Slay is to get through 10 randomly generated levels that can be filled with teleporters, bounce pads, boost zones, and spikes to make it much harder to knock enemy balls into the holes. Almost all obstacles in the game affect you and the enemies so you can go for trick shots and combos using the traps to your advantage.
Roguelikey choices
At the end of each level, you’re given a choice between three passive upgrades that can alter the stages or your own power. Some of them are pretty interesting like throwing bombs around and orbital knives, but the item pool is pretty heavily diluted with small upgrades about money and simple health ups. I would like to see way more chaos in the pool because the game is at its best when you get the crazier upgrades.
You are able to play Rack and Slay exactly how you want to with a large amount of options in difficulty level and even run length. There is even a rare unlock all items button that you almost never see in the genre, which is huge if you want to skip the meta grind to have all the toys at once.
Rack and Slay’s enemy design is great. There are a ton of different elite type enemies that make you alter your approach. There are balls that shoot themselves towards you or poison balls you can’t touch directly without taking damage.
Like the ol’ days
Presentation is definitely kind of rough here. Visually the game looks like one of those old flash games you would play on the computers at school and the music is unimpressive. That said, the developer knew exactly what he was doing with the game feel and audio design. The ball has a very good punch to it and enemies have a squishy sound to them when they hit spikes. If you’re looking for a game with super crazy visual effects and great music to jam to you won’t find it here.
Rack and Slay did surprise me a bit with just how addictive it is. Even the longer runs are not even 20 minutes long so it’s easy to just start another attempt. Runs get crazy with enemies bouncing all over and explosions going off; despite that, the game is still way more skill based than a lot of physics-oriented arcade or rogue games.
Rack and Slay releases on May 27 on PC Steam and I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot!
Finally, a big thank you to Ludokultur for the review access!
