Peglin

The thing about roguelike/lites is that the fun of them comes from getting insanely lucky and building these massively overpowered synergies, while still requiring some level of skill to use those synergies.
Peglin lacks any sufficient synergies, because balls can't really affect one another. It is to its core lacking any of the aspects I look for in a roguelike.

While it might be a bit odd to be leaving a review for a game that's still firmly in early access, I also feel like it's a perfectly fair thing to do due to the issues with the game that I have being things that feel a bit more fundamental to the game mechanics themselves. At first I absolutely loved the idea of this game, being another pretty unique take on a deckbuilder roguelike where your main method of attacking is basically playing Peggle. I love weird little ideas like this and seeing how they can be expanded into a full title, and it's been proven to work before with the slot machine deckbuilder of Luck be a Landlord, which is why I ended up being pretty disappointed with how this one turned out. The physics system itself is my main gripe with the game and the way that it feels closer to a rough approximation of what made Peggle's gameplay so fun and rewarding, but not quite hitting the mark at any point. The potential for cooler, flashier ricochets is lost when the ball simultaneously feels floaty but also made of lead, with the pegs similarly having both too much weight to them with how meekly you tend to see the ball bounce, but it doesn't feel like there's and real impact when the pegs are hit.

This one aspect of the gameplay alone ends up making for a pretty middling experience at the best of times, because I feel no real desire to continue interacting with a system that feels so unsatisfying to fully control, especially with some later maps ramping up the awkwardness in peg positioning. While it obviously makes sense to do this in order to provide a greater sense of scaling difficulty, it further takes away from the more compelling aspects of a game system like this, with any awesome shots you do make feeling more akin to luck as opposed to something you feel was largely influenced by your own actions. While this could be something that ultimately changes once the game is further along, I also feel that the fact that splash damage is such an overwhelmingly dominant strategy takes away from the experience a bit, especially with the way that the game has a relatively small selection of orbs and items making it rather easy to shape most runs into the same general archetype with minimal hassle. While I understand that players could still choose another build to strive for instead, it once again ends up being weakened by the sheer absurdity of how much more work it is to only have single target damage, clearing fights you usually could do in 4 - 6 turns into more than double that.

With the way the game is right now, I'll check in from time to time because I really do love watching games change over time through development, but I have my doubts that it will end up making things that much more enjoyable since as said, my issues with it are more fundamental that can't simply be changed with tweaking a few values around.

Just a quick note, this is written as of early July 2022. It is still in very early access.

Peglin is a fun and promising pachinko roguelike with some very obvious nods to Slay The Spire (understandably). I think the game has enormous potential, and I have really enjoyed what I have played so far. The devs seem to be really working to flesh out the content of the game, and they have a very solid base for doing so.