Writing these posts at the last possible moment is getting a little bit daunting. It isn’t because of work that I am waiting until the final moment to write this up it is because Peglin is a really fun game that the whole family can play.

Last week Peglin went into Early Access and this week I am talking about it.

Peglin is a deckbuilding pinball game from Red Nexus Games. It is currently in Early Access for PC and retails for $20.

As of right now, there is no such thing as a plot, so I will not take space to talk about something that does not exist.

If you have ever played Peggle, then you will be at home here as nothing has really changed from the demo. You have an assortment of orbs that have special powers, that you can throw. Russin nesting doll orbs return from the demo, and even fresh new orbs like an orb that refreshes the board after a certain amount of pegs hit, bombs, and an orb that moves the refresh and critical hits around. The orbs are still as fun as ever to build around.

Along with new additions of orbs, there are a bunch of items that make their way into Peglin. Health restore, 2x the bombs, refreshes, and crits, 2x the balls but reduced damage, and even the ability to shoot the small ball twice. Items are rewarded to the player after mini-boss and boss battles and at question marks on the map on occasion.

The map looks like it had gotten larger to incorporate a wider range of fights and random encounters. Fights and boards are not randomly generated, just the refreshes and the criticals. Once you did a fight, you will do it a thousand times. While it is fun to play, levels get samey and will eventually feel like a slog to get through.

As of right now, there are three stages now: the Forest, the Castle, and the Underground (?). There are all incredibly different with enemies, bosses, and even board setups.

I really like Peglin. I like the builds that you can make and then enter, ultimately, a power fantasy. In the first round of Peglin that I played, I completed the game, and then that happened three more times. Peglin is also an incredibly easy game to play. It is so easy that I completed the game with a nonsense build that accomplished nothing and still was able to complete it.

My wife and I have put about eight hours into Peglin and it is starting to get samey.

At the end of the day, Peglin costs $20 for a game that can be completed in the first few hours. Experimenting with builds is limited by the number of orbs that there are, and even then, abilities and orbs are so frequent that building a top-tier “deck” is almost always guaranteed.

I had fun with Peglin but $20 is steep for something that can be completed within the first few hours.