Review: Bounce The Enemy To Bits In PEGLIN
I’m sure a lot of us enjoyed the silly arcade game Peggle years ago. The simplicity of shooting a ball and racking up points was always entertaining and quite comical. However, what if someone took that simple ball-bouncing game and made an epic adventure out of it? Red Nexus Games has done just that with Peglin, as it combines skills of bouncing orbs and stones around cleverly and thematically designed arenas to rack up damage to throw at incoming enemies.
While Peglin is an adventure game of sorts, it is also a rogue-like game. This sense of permanent death and loss of progression makes each fight, each treasure, and each throw important and engaging. I’ve already finished a number of runs with the zeal and hope for cooler combinations of treasures and orbs, therefore, I couldn’t help but start a new run right after. The gameplay loop is relaxing and yet very engaging. Players will start with a relic that give you a passive ability and a few stones to deal some normal damage to enemies. The more pegs you hit with your orbs, the more damage done to enemies. You can hit critical damage pegs, pegs that refresh all the pegs to be hit again, bomb pegs that deal damage to all enemies, and more. As you can see in the gameplay, it is quite simple and laid back, but each shot made does matter as enemies are getting closer and closer to you. Players will then navigate through different areas like forests and caverns and choose their path of more enemies, more random events or treasures. At the end of fights, players can choose from random orbs or receiving some much needed health. The orb and relic (passive abilities) variety keep each run feeling fresh and unique. There is a lot of choice in your playthroughs, which feel nice because you don’t feel like you lost from bad luck with treasures, orbs, or relics.
Peglin is a simple game, including its visual and audio design. The pixels are cute and well defined, giving it an old arcade vibe with a cute aesthetic, I never thought goblins could be so cute. The sound design of each orb bounce, missed shot, or enemy attack are all distinct and creative enough to breath a lot of life into this little world. Also, the music is quaint but fun enough to keep the game going. Lastly, the environments, maps, and orbs could use a bit more detail and flare, but they do the job well and add to the overall atmosphere of the game, even if they aren’t the nicest things to look at.
My only real gripe with the game is that after a few runs, it feels a a bit slow and repetitive running the same sequence of areas again and again. I understand that it is a part of the narrative to progress from a forest, to a castle and then into other places. This would feel less punishing and repetitive if there was some form of overall progression after each run, but this game is going “hard core,” giving no extra help to the players, which is fine, but tough. But going through the same sets of enemies and bosses for hours a bit bland. I wish I could jump ahead at the cost of some recourses, or I could hit a 2X button to make all the animations go quicker through zones I’ve cleared; anything to take me to the harder levels faster would have been great.
Overall, Peglin is a sweet, cute, and addicting combination of classic, tough rogue-like games and Peggle. While some extra speed in previously cleared areas or levels would be nice, it doesn’t ruin the fun to be had as players collect crazy powers, wild orbs, and fight their way to tough bosses again and again.
