Peglin

I already thought Peglin was fantastic even in its early access state. While some balance issues hold it back a bit, it is an essential on Switch if “pachinko x roguelike" sounds good to you. I also love that the developers made full use of the Switch hardware features by adding good rumble, full touchscreen support, and button controls making it so that you can play however you want. Now we just need a physical release.

In the end Peglin feels like one of those great background games, that I can see players picking up again and again. I can’t look ahead in my crystal ball, but I foresee that Peglin may just stick around for quite some time.

While it might not reach the towering standards of other recent roguelikes like Balatro, I still had myself a ridiculously fun time and one I’m sure I’ll return to in order to again in the future for another cheeky run or two. Best of all is the fact that Peglin takes something familiar and gives it a unique and interesting spin, one that proves super successful making it an easy recommendation for Nintendo Switch owners looking for something to fill that Peggle void in their life.

I feel like Peglin is a fun roguelike game if either you miss Peggle or are okay with knowing how well you do might is completely up to RNG. It isn’t always demanding perfection in the same way as roguelikes like Hades or Dead Cells, where your skill is a big part of deciding how successful you are. It very much comes down to chance here. Which means if you’re okay with that and playing it in small doses, Peglin can be great! But since how much you can influence a run is limited, it can be very frustrating to often see yourself do everything right, but fail because you didn’t get the right orbs or relics and it ended up being unbalanced.

Peglin is the blend of Peggle and Roguelike I never knew I needed, but the luck factor and repeating layouts let it down a little.

Visually, the pixel art style works well enough, and it helps on the Switch not being that complex a title so load times are minimal. Because your foes only respond after your attacks, there’s always time to stop and plan out shots around how each orb’s power works – once you wrap your head around that – and so it’s a pretty easy drop-in-drop out kind of game. Not everything needs to be a 100+ hour epic, you know?

Although it isn't as flashy as its inspirations, Peglin provides an enjoyable roguelike formula that makes fighting monsters entertaining.

The current wave of turning other games into rogue likes has been fun for sure, but also a little bit excessive. Peglin, on the tin, looked like another game stepping up to that plate, this time turning Peggle into one. And… yeah. That’s exactly what this is. And as a Peggle aficionado, it was so much fun! That said… it is EXACTLY what’s on the tin. There’s pretty much nothing here that will surprise you or make you feel particularly accomplished. I really like it, but I do feel obligated to inject just a little bit of objectivity into the equation because of its lack of true pizzaz, so 7 it is.

I like booting this game up every once in a while, but I never have the drive to keep playing it. Pretty good roguelike!

I played this game in PC but I could not see an option. The core addictive mechanic of randomly multiplying numbers felt satisfying. However, I got stuck on level two and never managed to reach level three. A difficulty setting would really improve the experience. Outside of its main mechanic, everything was too generic about being rogue-like.

Had fun initially, but the formula quickly runs out. I finished the game on the second run and discovered that nothing that you unlock brings anything to the table. I hope they will make a second installment and spend more time on design.