In the world of indie gaming, innovation often emerges from blending unlikely genres, and Peglin is no exception. Combining pachinko mechanics with rogue-lite elements, Peglin offers a refreshing and addictive gameplay experience. With its charming visuals, strategic depth, and endless replayability, this game has captured the attention of casual gamers and hardcore enthusiasts alike. This detailed review will explore every facet of Peglin, highlighting its features, mechanics, strengths, and areas for improvement.
What is Peglin?
Developed by Red Nexus Games, Peglin is a rogue-lite game where players take on the role of a mischievous goblin exploring a world filled with danger and treasure. The game’s unique hook lies in its combat system, which is inspired by pachinko, a popular Japanese game involving balls dropped into a pegged board. Each level presents a mix of challenges, including enemies to defeat, treasure to collect, and strategic decisions to make.
Core Gameplay Mechanics
The Pachinko Board
At the heart of Peglin is its pachinko-inspired combat system. Players launch orbs from the top of a pegged board, and as the orbs bounce off pegs, they generate damage or trigger special effects. The goal is to strategically aim and time shots to maximize damage against enemies positioned at the top of the screen.
Peg Types: The board features different types of pegs, each with unique effects. Regular pegs add standard damage, while critical pegs amplify damage when hit. There are also bomb pegs that explode and deal area-of-effect damage. Refresh pegs reset all used pegs, giving players an opportunity to sustain long chains of hits.
Orb Variations: Players have access to a wide array of orbs, each with distinct properties. For example, stone orbs deal basic damage, while fire orbs ignite pegs for ongoing damage. Healing orbs restore health, while multiball orbs split into multiple projectiles for increased peg hits. The variety encourages experimentation and strategic planning, as each orb interacts differently with the board.
Rogue-lite Progression
As a rogue-lite, Peglin offers procedurally generated levels and a sense of progression between runs. Here are some key elements:
Randomized Levels: No two playthroughs are the same, thanks to randomly generated boards, enemies, and treasures. Each run feels fresh, presenting new combinations of challenges and rewards.
Persistent Upgrades: While death resets most progress, players can unlock permanent upgrades and orbs that enhance future runs. Artifacts found during gameplay provide game-changing effects, such as doubling damage on specific pegs or adding passive healing between battles.
Difficulty Scaling: As players advance, enemies become tougher, and boards grow more complex, keeping the challenge engaging. Boss battles introduce additional layers of strategy, requiring precise aiming and resource management.
Strategic Elements
Peglin isn’t just about mindlessly launching orbs. Strategy plays a significant role:
Choosing Your Path: Players navigate a map with branching paths, deciding whether to pursue combat, treasure, or elite enemies for greater rewards. Each choice can significantly impact the success of a run.
Managing Resources: Health, orbs, and upgrades must be carefully managed. Taking unnecessary damage or failing to optimize shots can lead to an early demise. Balancing risk and reward is essential.
Adapting to Randomness: Luck is a factor in Peglin, but skillful aiming and resource management can mitigate its impact. Learning how different orbs and artifacts interact with the board is key to success.
Graphics and Audio
Visual Style
Peglin features charming, cartoonish graphics that appeal to players of all ages. The goblin protagonist is endearing, and the environments are colorful and varied. Each board is thoughtfully designed, with visual cues that help players strategize their shots. Boss designs are particularly creative, ranging from giant tree monsters to fearsome armored knights.
Sound Design
The game’s sound effects are satisfying, with the clinks and bounces of orbs adding a tactile quality to the gameplay. The music is light and whimsical, complementing the game’s playful tone. However, some players may find the soundtrack repetitive over extended sessions. Customizing audio settings or adding new tracks could enhance the experience further.
Replayability and Depth
Peglin’s rogue-lite mechanics and randomized elements ensure incredibly high replayability, making each session feel like a new adventure. This section explores why Peglin has such lasting appeal and what makes its depth so engaging.
Diverse Orb Selection and Synergies
One of the key factors contributing to Peglin’s replayability is its wide range of orbs. Each orb has unique abilities, from basic stones to elemental orbs that deal fire or lightning damage. The game also allows players to upgrade orbs, enhancing their damage or unlocking additional effects. Combining orbs with complementary artifacts can lead to powerful synergies. For instance, pairing a Multiball orb with artifacts that refresh pegs creates endless opportunities for massive combos. Experimenting with different orb builds encourages players to refine their strategies and keeps gameplay exciting.
Dynamic Enemies and Challenges
Peglin’s enemies are varied and increase in complexity as the player progresses. Early encounters with simple slimes gradually give way to battles with heavily armored knights or magical foes with unique abilities. Boss battles introduce additional layers of challenge, requiring careful planning and precise execution. The unpredictability of enemy patterns ensures that even experienced players must adapt their strategies.
Branching Paths and Exploration
Each run presents players with a map featuring branching paths. Deciding which path to take—whether to focus on battles, treasure, or healing—adds a layer of strategy to the game. Special events on the map, such as hidden treasure rooms or encounters with mysterious characters, provide additional opportunities for rewards or unexpected challenges. These decisions make each playthrough unique and engaging.
Hidden Secrets and Special Events
Peglin rewards exploration with hidden secrets and special events that can dramatically alter the course of a run. Some events offer rare artifacts, while others introduce unique challenges that test a player’s adaptability. Discovering these secrets adds an element of surprise and encourages players to experiment with different paths.
Procedural Generation and Infinite Variety
The procedural generation of levels, enemies, and treasures ensures that no two runs are the same. This randomness keeps the game fresh and unpredictable, requiring players to think on their feet. While skill and strategy play significant roles, adapting to the ever-changing landscape is crucial for success. Procedural generation also allows Peglin to scale in difficulty organically, providing a satisfying challenge for players of all skill levels.
Artifacts and Meta Progression
Artifacts are game-changing items that add depth and variety to each run. From doubling damage on critical hits to granting passive healing between battles, artifacts can significantly influence a player’s strategy. The meta progression system allows players to unlock new orbs and artifacts over time, creating a sense of long-term achievement. This progression ensures that even after dozens of runs, players have new content to explore and master.
Endless Replayability for All Skill Levels
Peglin’s balance of luck, skill, and strategy ensures that it appeals to a broad audience. Casual players can enjoy the game’s whimsical visuals and simple mechanics, while hardcore gamers can dive into its complex synergies and challenging encounters. The combination of accessible gameplay and deep strategic elements creates a game that remains enjoyable for hundreds of hours.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Unique Gameplay: The pachinko-inspired mechanics set Peglin apart from other rogue-lites.
Strategic Depth: Balancing randomness with skillful planning creates an engaging experience.
Charming Aesthetics: The visuals and sound design are delightful and cohesive.
Replayability: Procedurally generated levels and a wide variety of orbs keep the game fresh.
Accessible Yet Challenging: Peglin’s simple mechanics are easy to learn, but mastering the game takes practice.
Frequent Updates: The developers actively improve the game, adding new content and balancing features based on player feedback.
Cons
Repetitive Soundtrack: While pleasant, the music can grow monotonous over long sessions.
Luck-Dependent: Some runs feel overly reliant on RNG, which can frustrate players.
Steep Difficulty Curve: New players may struggle with the unforgiving nature of rogue-lite mechanics.
Short Runs: While engaging, some players may find the average run length too brief compared to other rogue-lites.
Tips for New Players
Aim for Critical Pegs: Prioritize hitting critical pegs to maximize damage. Refreshing the board can help set up better opportunities.
Balance Risk and Reward: Taking on elite enemies can yield great rewards but may end your run prematurely. Assess your current health and resources before engaging.
Experiment with Orbs: Try different combinations to discover synergies that suit your playstyle. Don’t hesitate to upgrade orbs that align with your strategy.
Plan Your Path: Use the map to chart a course that balances combat, treasure, and healing opportunities. Avoid taking unnecessary risks when low on health.
Learn Enemy Patterns: Understanding how enemies behave can help you prioritize targets and plan your shots effectively.
Future Potential
Peglin’s developers have shown a commitment to improving and expanding the game through updates. Potential future additions include:
New Orbs and Peg Types: Expanding the arsenal of tools available to players. Introducing orbs with unique mechanics, such as teleportation or gravity effects, could add depth.
Additional Bosses: Introducing more challenging encounters to test advanced strategies. Multi-phase bosses could further diversify gameplay.
Expanded Lore: Adding depth to the game’s story and world. Including dialogue or cutscenes could enhance immersion.
Multiplayer Modes: Competitive or cooperative gameplay could enhance the experience. Imagine racing against other players or teaming up to defeat powerful bosses.
Seasonal Events: Limited-time events with exclusive rewards could keep the community engaged.
Conclusion
Peglin is a delightful blend of pachinko mechanics and rogue-lite gameplay that offers a unique and addictive experience. Its charming visuals, strategic depth, and high replayability make it a standout title in the indie gaming scene. While it has areas for improvement, particularly in its soundtrack and content variety, Peglin’s core gameplay is strong enough to keep players coming back for more. Whether you’re a fan of rogue-lites, puzzle games, or just looking for something fresh and fun, Peglin is well worth your time.
Bit short on replayability, the game would really benefit from an endless mode of some sort, but still a fun game!
Enough content here to entertain you for dozens of hours, especially if you already love deck-building rogue likes.
The game has a good difficulty too. It's not so easy that you can win every game consistently with basic game knowledge, but also not so hard that the game feels downright unfair. (for the most part, some encounters like the one in the dungeon where new pegs get added every refresh is just plain evil)Still really good game though, it rewards strategic play, and it's easy to learn.Would I say it's worth 19,50EUR? Probably, but I'd get it on a sale, since the game has those pretty often.
I would give this a tentative "buy it" review, but it is highly dependent on the buyer. This game is just too random for someone like myself. I have had runs that get so strong, the game is just boring in the last half. Then I've had runs that just get wrecked out of nowhere in the first Act.You always start with pebballs and to me the first priority is to remove them as quickly as feasible. The problem? You can only get guaranteed removal at a shop and a random removal at an event. So if there is no shop within the first 8-10 nodes, I found myself gravitating toward events as a priority. But again the events are random so not guaranteed. Some events are completely useless.I also find myself rarely adding balls after the first Act. Adding more will just clog up your "deck" rather than contribute to your ability to win. I would still get this type of thing in StS, but it felt like I had way more control over the outcome of my run. Here, it just feels like something you sort of passively play and hope for the best. It's just not what I look for in my roguelikes.
[h1]8/10[/h1]
It is very fun and quite easy to play but the last difficulties feel a little too unbalanced, which made it feel frustrating losing countless runs just because it felt like the AI was perfectly countered against you or too powerful.If I compare this game to Slay the spire because it plays quite a lot like it in some ways, I get the feeling that you couldn't be as flexible because some things were just too weak to use in the later difficulties and it feels like you have less impact on how the run is going to go and have to be lucky with RNG instead.I feel like I could have been done with the game way quicker since I had a lot of strong runs that I feel should have won but lost to RNG or balancing issues in my opinion.The gameplay is still fun and it is a game that you get that itch for "just one more game" even if you do lose frustratingly.
waiting 5000 runs to get any fun synergy, which u get to play with for half a map probably before the game ends abruptly and cuts you off from your rare and fleeting enjoyable moment. otherwise, overwhelmingly boring. every death feels like bs. fun level designs are the exception rather than the norm. after the first 2 hours there is no fun to be had, especially if you complete the cruciball, a mechanic that rewards you with less fun the more ball torture you endure.
Peglin is what you get when you combine Peggle with a rogue-like.It's a simple game with a lot of variation - toss a ball, deal damage, brace for enemy attacks, upgrade orbs, and push through the map. During gameplay, you'll also collect little pieces of research, and be able to fill out your bestiary journal.I confess, I do wish each run was longer, because it's only a few dungeons. Maybe in the future, it'll add more maps, but I'm not counting on it.The enemies are interesting, and fun. The bosses are exciting to fight.It's a chill time, and feels pretty rewarding (especially when you can hit a big combo).I'm a fan, and can definitely see myself loading this up to waste some time.
Of all the spectrum this particular game pinpoints my exact f'in shade to the T.
I'm all intuition so I can't really say why it does it, but it does.I love this game.Part of me absolutely understands why, yet the other side doesn't understand anything about me, partially because of how much I love this game.Why am I like this.Buy the d*mn game already.
Relaxation. If you enjoy the poker style rogue game and the massively popular peg game, this is the game for you. Many options, mild learning curve, love the bounce of the peg orbs. Well made. Give it a try.
I really want to like this game. I gave it many fair shots but it really comes down to a few things that makes this unfun for me.First is first zone experience. Some of the encounters in the first zone are frustrating. Many are set up so that it makes it impossible to deal any sort of meaningful damage outside of bombs, while bombs on some levels are incredibly hard to hit on a regular basis. Some fights just seem absolutely unfair, like the slime boss which just kills your orb's momentum and essentially kills the entire point of the game.Second is the lack of any meaningful and builds. There is hardly any synergy in the game and the synergy there is lacks any way to obtain the synergy outside of hoping and blind luck. Later cruciball levels rely on these almost impossible to obtain synergies to be comfortable in beating the stage.Third is just all around weird physics. Orbs will sometimes bounce in strange ways, while this would be fine and easy to overlook, there are many times the orb will bounce in some weird way causing you to go to a path you did not want to go down, leading to a run end. When you compare the bouncing to something like Peggle, there's something that's off about it.Finally there's just a rancid RNG element that really dampers the game. Sometimes a reload will be in an absolute awful spot requiring you to use multiple other orbs to open a path to the reload. As the game lacks any meaningful way to build yourself for the boss you are coming up to, sometimes you lose just because the game didn't give you the items you need to fight that boss. Seemingly more negative random events than positive also doesn't help this.I wish Peglin had ways to control RNG. Maybe a way to organize your orb order, so that you aren't at the mercy of RNG at the start of every fight and reload. A way to set your orb focus prior to starting the game, like selecting a class in other similar roguelites.Overall I really, really want to like Peglin and I gave it plenty of time to win me over. I just can't find a way to keep playing. If you stay at lower cruciball levels, it's an easy push and an enjoyable experience. But if you want to push higher, it's frustrating and you will lose a lot to situations outside of your control, and it's just not for me.
This game is really fun and very addictive trying to get the orbs and relics to match up to create OP builds that will take you throughout the game to beat the bosses of the 3 zones. For this reason I recommend it. I first got this game when it was in early access and had a great time getting all the achievements at the time. I really do like the game and recommend it but I'm about to rant about it for the rest of this review.I don't recommend is trying to achievement hunt now that the game is full release. The Cruciball 20 challenge has been gruelling and may be possible without cheesing with quitting out and going back in but it stops being fun when you don't manipulate until the start of the run or the orbs order you have in a battle to maximise the progression potential.
Trying to setup and go for an achievement based on many factors that are RNG based without being able to re-roll rewards or trader inventory can be brutal.
I legitimately enjoyed Peglin much more than I expected I would. It was recommended to me based off "similar titles" I'd played (and absolutely adore) but the crossover sections from those titles often leave me disappointed and feel a bit underwhelming. Peglin is an exception to that.It reminds me a lot of Peggle, but if someone from Peggle had said "this deserves to be a cute rougelike dungeon crawler with unlockable and combat elements" - and that's exactly what it feels like. The learning curve isn't all that rough, my first clear was on my third try, and it has additional elements like most games in this genre to grow into it.It's enjoyable, you can make some crazy combos, there is some strategy involved; all and all a good pick it up and play for a bit game that essentially any device could run.Do I enjoy it more than Balatro? No. Am I glad it was recommended to me because I played Balatro? For the first time in quite some time, yes.
This is a wonderful game for when you have a little bit of time. It scales nicely through the cruciball to a significantly challenging game, but can also be a fun relaxing game on the lower difficulties. The variety of characters and relics make each run unique and entertaining.
You can definitely have some level of strategy, you can choose who to attack first, remove a orb for another one, build a passive deck. There is some level of strategy to the game but It is just roguelike peggle game, it really all falls down to luck at the end of the day. some of the bosses are more forgiving with a good set of orbs and passives, some are too easy and some are too hard. It is just good fun though, as long as you don't care that much and just wanna have a podcast or a stream in the background then it is perfect for that.
Overall I think it is for a certain type of person and that person is without question me.
10/10
liked: pleasing sounds, well thought out level structure and item distribution, the challenge mode (crucibal) makes this game something i look forward to playing, because i am looking for ways to refine my strategy. a clear amount of love went into this game.dislike: because it is a rougelike game, sometimes you lose your run over randomness instead of skill. annoying at times, but is not enough of an issue to make me stop playing.
Peglin is a rougelite brick-breaking game, in the style of Peggle meets Slay the Spire. Each encounter involves entering a room with enemies, and a peg board (usually some design that's based around the enemy). You start off with a few basic orbs, which serve as your attack. The amount of damage each ball will do is based on the ball itself, as well as how many pegs you hit after launching it. Furthermore, there are pegs that'll: grant gold, activate bombs that'll hit all on-screen enemies, refresh the board, and make the damage a crit hit. After defeating all enemies, you'll have a chance to buy some different balls (each with unique and/or complementing effects) as well as level up any balls in your inventory. As you progress through each zone (there's 3 total), you can navigate your way through enemy and random encounters, as well as shops. Each zone will culminate in a boss battle.This game has been on my radar on a while, since I am a fan of Slay the Spire and played Peggle a ton in the good ol' PopCap days. I will say up front: the first forest zone is rough. The boards are not that interesting and doing damage early on feels inconsistent. But if you can push through and clear the first boss, it gets so much easier and interesting from there. I really cannot sum it up better than my opening statement, and if that's enough for you, then I definitely recommend this game.
