Peglin

It had been a while since I gave Peglin a go, and I had a half-hour free one lunchtime. There hadn’t been any new updates, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t ready for some fun play. Again, one advantage to Peglin is the fact it is so turn-based, as it’s based on Pachinko. So even if I got interrupted by work, I could walk away and come back to it easily.

Well, I don’t know what it was, but I had an almost magical run this week. Peglin is a roguelite, so every path and encounter is semi-random. This coupled with Cricuball’s increasing difficulties has had me stuck on Level 3 for a few weeks.

But not this week. My Peglin (I think that’s what my character is called) hasn’t had much luck on Cruciball Lvl 3. It has had some hard boss fights early on, with little chance of getting new equipment. This week though, I had a dream early run that gave me equipment early. Finally, my Peglin had a fighting chance!

And I took that chance and managed to get to the final boss quite quickly. I even managed to earn a couple of Steam achievements that I thought would be out of reach. They are ‘Don’t Make Me Say It’ and ‘Walking on Pegshells’.

Walking on Pegshells is earned by hitting more than 1,000 pegs in a single shot. Not an easy task. What helped this run was my Peglin had an item that refreshed the board every six pegs. Couple this with durable pegs, requiring multiple hits to clear a peg, and the achievement was almost easy.

Don’t Make Me Say It is earned by doing more than 9,000 points of damage to an enemy. You can’t say that the Peglin devs don’t have a sense of humour!

So this week, it was hard for me to pick what my proudest Peglin moment was. Unlocking two hard achievements (at the same time no less), or finally clearing Cruciball Level 3. Guess what won?

Sitting back and looking for something quick to play that I could put down quickly while working. Of course Peglin got a look this week!

The pachinko-style battles require little from the player once the ball is launched. Your game is also saved every time you reach the map, so it’s hard to lose progress in Peglin. I have made pretty good progress this week as well, reaching Cruciball level 6!

Given I am looking close to finishing what the Early Access version of Peglin has available, I might turn quick games to something else. I’m not saying that Peglin won’t be on my playlist anymore. I have too much silly fun playing it. Not to say there isn’t a challenge. The rougelite gameplay mix is nicely balanced, and I often hear myself saying “One more try”.

I will shelve Peglin until another update comes out. Yes, I have 2 more levels to attempt to beat, but if I beat that there isn’t anything left. Well, excluding Custom mode. Peglin added the custom start letting you pick starting orbs and bonuses. It disables achievements but gives you a better chance at that ‘dream run’ of items.

So there is plenty left to explore, but again, I am worried it will end before an update and I will lose interest. So Peglin is being moved back on the playlist, and I will keep the Switch near me for random battle grinds. That sounds like a plan. Let’s see how that goes next week!

Last week I talked about taking a break from Peglin. Running out of levels to defeat before new orbs, classes and levels could lead to dropping the game. (Slight spoiler – this mentality is touched on later in Mario Kart). Speaking of spoilers, there is a Peglin entry this week. Guess what I didn’t leave be?

Playing Peglin on my laptop with some background YouTube is like comfort food gaming. I don’t have to concentrate too much, letting me play tired or as a break. I can put it down unpaused for extended periods with no penalties. Peglin is a great game that I would love to see come to Switch when it is fully released. The gameplay fits the portable game factor perfectly.

I did play a couple of rounds with the custom start. I overpowered myself to the point there was almost no challenge to the run. That was me abusing Peglin’s options though, not a slight on the game balance. It was fun starting with a ton of health regeneration and damage potential though.

This was a run I would do back in the early Doom days, where all I wanted was to have mindless fun. Fire up Doom, and IDDQD. For Peglin, I can do this with the Custom Start. The only ‘penalty’ is I can’t get achievements, and I can’t unlock the next Criciball level. Fair trade-off in my opinion!

Do I try to finish the last Cruciball level though? Is it the last level? Might another section unlock when level 7 is complete? And the biggest question of all – do I have the ability to wait to find out?