Review: Peglin Is Perfect in Pint-sized Doses

Peglin is, on the face of it, a pachinkoand Peggle type of game with roguelike elements. Each run involves another opportunity to try and become strong enough to stand against the dragons stealing gold from goblins. However, since it is about aiming balls at pegs to deal damage, how well you do can all come down to chance. That means it might not be exactly the sort of roguelike people want or expect, but it does come down to a pretty fun and entertaining experience if you approach it in the right way.

Each Peglin run begins with players choosing a goblin as their avatar. You start with a standard Peglin one, but can unlock additional playable characters like the Balladin, Roundrel, and Spinventor by performing certain in-game actions and accomplishments. However, as luck plays such a big part in the game, it could take quite some time before that happens. The general premise for each one remains the same, regardless. Your goal is to go through different areas, defeating various bosses in three acts, in the hopes of saying “no more” to gold being stolen. 

Since this is a roguelike along the lines of Slay the Spire or Inscryption, there is a map for each act. You can pick a relic at the start to affect your performance, as well as earn them after major enemy encounters. Depending on where you land, you could face a group of enemies, find a treasure, deal with an encounter, or face a miniboss as you work toward each of the three areas’ final boss. You fire orbs, which can have different properties, at pegs to deal damage and accrue gold. Gold can be spent after enemy encounters or at shops to buy new orbs, upgrade ones you have, or restore health. As for the pegs, there can be different kinds. Standard ones add up total damage and may have gold tied to them. Some will cause the attack to be a critical hit, which increases damage and could trigger properties of certain orbs. There is also a refresh type that causes the board to reset, so pegs you already eliminated return. Your goal is to build up a good selection of orbs with different properties to help you stay alive and wipe out foes, as well as choose a path that allows you enough opportunities to grow while not getting defeated. 

Because the core premise of Peglin is a lot like Peggle or pachinko, you can only do so much to influence the outcome of a stage and run. There will be certain stages and peg patterns where you can take advantages of arcs and positions to set an orb out at a certain direction to hit one or maybe two specific pegs. Picking your orbs can also help, since certain ones like Daggorb may deal extra damage on criticals, Echorb will deal AOE damage, Doctorb will heal you, Protectorb creates ballwark to build up defenses, and so on. So you’re really trying to build up a good range of orbs that may help you deal damage while staying alive and protected, so even if you get a crummy stage or boss, you’ll be okay. Since you can get a peek at the maps ahead of time, you can even plot out your selections to prepare for certain act bosses.  

This means that actually succeeding at Peglin in the long run is daunting. There are so many things beyond your control that can ruin a run. Getting a bad map with not enough elite enemies in the first act can make the subsequent ones harder. There are certain bosses for areas that are way more difficult than others. Some relics are much better for runs in general or specific foes. Also, maybe I’m just not good at the game and need to spend more time with it, but some of the higher unlockable Cruciball difficulties felt too much and unbalanced for me. 

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 available for the Nintendo Switch and PC.