Peglin is a roguelike pachinko game. If you’re not familiar, pachinko games are where you shoot a ball from the top of the screen to hit and bounce between as many pegs as possible for points. It’s a simple concept, and one that gave rise to the hugely popular Peggle games, but where that series has faded into our memories, Peglin is looking to revisit and spice things up with more items, ball types, bonuses and monster battles.
In Peglin, your points don’t just go toward a high score, but are instead translated into damage that is then dealt to enemies. These enemies are shown at the top of the screen and take their turns in between balls you throw, moving closer to you until they’re in range, then attacking to take chunks out of your health. Naturally, once your health drops to zero, it’s game over and you start another run, hopefully slightly more savvy than before.
You’ll want to keep an eye on the R pegs and the exclamation mark pegs, which are refreshes and criticals, respectively. A refresh will replace all the pegs that have been hit on the board, which is very helpful as you quickly start to run out, causing you to deal less damage. Criticals don’t deal damage themselves, but they cause all pegs hit to deal their critical damage rather than their standard damage, and it applies retroactively for all pegs hit by that particular ball. There are also bomb pegs, which after being hit twice causes you to drop an actual bomb that damages all enemies for 50 damage, which is exceptionally helpful, while coin orbs give you cash that can be spent on new orbs, upgrading the ones you have, or healing yourself between fights.
It’s not all enemies and pachinko though, as you’re working your way down a map, moving between different types of encounters by shooting a ball into the right hole to pick a path to follow. The chest icon means you’ll find some treasure, some of which can have very powerful effects on gameplay. A question mark is a random encounter that could be anything from a chance to upgrade or acquire new balls, an opportunity to acquire some treasure, or just another fight. Meanwhile, a skull on the map is a fight, and an even bigger skull is a boss fight, whilst the very bottom area will be the boss. Defeat that boss and you’ll move onto the next map; complete all three maps and you’ll beat the game!
I actually achieved this on my first try, which was a surprise for both the genre and for me, if I’m honest. The thing is, you then get access to the Cruciball, which is a series of escalating challenges to make things more difficult, unlocking more Cruciballs as you complete each one. But what does difficulty mean in a pachinko machine? Nothing, so instead the game just introduces frustrations. Technically these do make it more challenging, but not really in an entertaining way, as you now just start with less health, one less critical peg, decreased bomb damage, or a particularly bad ball to be stuck with. These challenges might be satisfying to overcome in a more consistent game, but the balancing in Peglin is all over the place.
I have to admit that I didn’t win my first run of Peglin because I’m a genius – I’m quite the opposite – but because I got lucky with the randomised options that the game gave to me on that run. That’s nice and all, but the opposite has also happened, where a run was basically a waste of time because the items I was given to choose from didn’t complement the ones I’d already gotten, or the one run where I kept being given healing balls instead of damaging ones, causing me no not even make it off the first map.
When a run goes well you can end up with incredibly effective setups, to the point where it feels almost like cheating. Such as when I found an item that added two additional balls every time I fired one which, combined with electric balls that trigger nearby pegs and another item that caused there to be many more refresh pegs. It didn’t even matter that it restricted my aim to four directions, because I was practically carpet bombing pegs that were constantly being refreshed, dealing thousands of damage points at times. But when it goes badly it always feels like it isn’t your fault and, after this happens a few times, you begin to realise that the same must apply to the wins as well, which means you are not really winning, you’re just facilitating the game winning against itself by aiming some balls as best you can.
It’s a shame, because it is often fun. There is a great variety to the types of balls you can play with, each with their own pun. The Infernorb, for example, is lighter than other orbs and on fire, so it triggers bombs in one hit, whilst the Icircle pierces through an enemy during its attack and through the first peg it hits on the board, and the Memorb deals additional damage for each peg hit so far by any orb. There are a lot of them as well. When you get a new orb you add it to your inventory and whilst you’re in combat they’ll be played in a randomly chosen order. Once you’ve used them all, you’ll have to reload and the enemies will get an extra turn.
The items can be very powerful as well, encouraging you to completely change the way you’re playing in some cases. But the game is just too random, so you often don’t find things that complement each other and can’t really complete a run. After this happens a few times the fun fades a little from the experience, because you’re losing due to things outside of your control. You can play custom mode, where you’ll be able to choose which items you want available from what you’ve already found whilst playing, which is nice. It does feel a bit like tailoring the game into an easy mode if you choose all the effective ones and exclude the ones you don’t like though.
