Peglin

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.

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

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.

There’s nothing crazy about Peglin. The game is straightforward but still offers plenty of twists the further into your game session you manage to get. This is one of those no two rounds are the same games, a staple in roguelight titles I have come to enjoy. The better you become at playing Peglin the longer those sessions tend to become. I don’t daydream about Peglin, which is to say the worst thing I can think about Peglin; it’s there, it’s fun, but I don’t feel much of a sense of accomplishment once I move onto something else.

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?