Do you ever wish Peggle was a turn-based RPG with gear upgrades, unlockable characters, and branching paths? No? Of course not, but stick with me here. Peglin is a roguelite RPG based on pachinko, where launching a ball to smash special pegs lets your goblin hero do everything from attacking enemies to gathering gold to casting healing magic. Already a hit on PC and mobile, Peglin is on the Nintendo Switch starting Tuesday, as developer Red Nexus Games announced during the most recent Indie World showcase.
As designer Dylan Gedig explains, Peglin began as an entry for a game jam in 2019, its pachinko-inspired gameplay designed to fit the jam’s theme of “fall.” Peglin entered Steam Early Access in 2022, quickly gaining a cult following as its developer added updates. Its Switch launch coincides with the game hitting 1.0 on Steam, but Red Nexus promises this is “far from our final update.” Tuesday’s Indie World presentation referred to Peglin as a timed console exclusive, meaning PlayStation and Xbox players could eventually get their hands on the indie hit, too.
For those who haven’t yet fallen under Peglin’s charms, its premise is simple. You play as a goblin trying to confront the dragons who’ve been helping themselves to your gold hoards for far too long and fighting your way through all manner of other fantastical beasts to do it. You make your way ever closer through turn-based battles, which take place on a pachinko board. Each turn, you chuck a ball down at a screen full of pegs, and each one you hit increases your attack power, grants you gold, or activates other special effects. When the ball hits the bottom of your screen, you do damage to a line of advancing enemies, and they take a step forward or attack.
At that most basic level, the Peglin formula is already as simple as it is satisfying, but it only gets better from there. Like any roguelite, the game is split up into runs which end whenever you hit zero hit points, at which point you start from scratch. The longer your run goes, the stronger you’ll get, as you earn upgrades after every battle. Sometimes these are relics that grant bonuses like blinding enemies who attack you or increasing your health when you defeat an enemy.
But the heart of your build comes from Orbs. These are the balls you toss into the peg-filled abyss, and which ones you choose will radically alter your game. Some do increased critical damage or split in two when they hit a peg, but wilder variations zap nearby pegs with lightning, turn gold into damage, or return smashed pegs to the board. Peglin treats your Orbs like cards in a deck, cycling through them in turn as you fire them off.
If you’ve already sunk time into games like Slay the Spire, the Peglin gameplay loop will feel familiar, with a map of encounters to navigate between battles and treasure rooms while gathering an ever-growing arsenal. Peglin charmingly turns even advancing through levels into a pachinko puzzle, meaning there’s always a chance of misfiring and ending up somewhere you weren’t expecting. There’s a lot of unpredictability baked into Peglin, unless you’re some kind of math whiz who can visualize the chaotic bounces of your Orbs, which leads to plenty of surprise twists of fate, either spelling doom or leading you to greater success than you were even planning for.
That mix of randomness and strategy makes Peglin compulsively replayable. Its mobile release made it easy to pick up and play a round or two anywhere, and while the Switch is a bit less portable than the typical phone, Peglin’s newest version is still bound to gobble up an unconscionable amount of free time. If you’re looking for your next roguelite obsession, it may have just dropped on Nintendo Switch.
