Now, I have played A LOT of rouge-lites and it has become a genre that seems to be going down the toilet at an alarming rate. Rouge-lites nowadays only go as deep as percentage buffs and don’t focus on the synergies between those buffs. Rouge-lites retain replayability when those synergies and buffs can be experimented with.
On that note, I have been away from rouge-lites for some time and this week I played a rouge-lite that shined some light on the genre and what it has to offer in terms of creativity.
This week’s demo is Peglin.
Peglin is a Pachinko (Japanese pinball)/deckbuilder/RPG/rouge-lite game. It was developed and will be published by Red Nexus Games Inc. The demo is available on Steam and it is slated to release sometime in 2021.
Peglin is a tiny goblin that is supposedly on an adventure to stop the forces of evil from eradicating other Peglin like yourself.
The adventure involves magical stones.
Pick a path and Peglin is off. There are only a couple of options that can occur: Combat or essentially choose your adventure.
Combat is as follows: procedurally generated pegs (with an included Crit and Refresh peg) account for damage when hit with stones. Peglin’s stone is at the top and the player chooses the arc for the stone and then lets gravity do its thing. The stone hits pegs and racks up damage until it disappears into the void. Enemies surge forward and repeat until either Peglin or the bad guys perish.
There are more than just your basic dagger stone. Stones that resemble Russian nesting dolls, fire stones, electric stone, and even a regular stone fill Peglin’s “deck” per se. You get to choose what stones Peglin uses and, when completing an area are allowed to choose between HP or a stone upgrade. Each stone has damage and a critical stat multiplier that is relatively important when facing a big monster.
There are also passive items that can be obtained through the “choose your adventure” option. Reach your hand into a bramble thick tree? Well lose HP and gain a bramble stone. Persevere or rest? Peglin has choices that can either reward or punish.
The stat buffs in the demo are nothing special but they work.
Peglin is a really fun game. The demo can be played multiple times and a majority of the time the runs are vastly different from each other. I played for about two hours of the demo and every moment was a complete joy. Watching the stone bounce around and the numbers rack up is just plain fun.
Everything about Peglin is fun and I cannot wait to buy it, honestly.
Grinds and Games 