Peglin is the roguelike Peggle RPG we didn’t know we needed

Enlarge / The feeling when you know your ball is just gonna get buried in there is so satisfying! (credit: Red Nexus Games)

Remember Peggle? If you were lucky enough to play this deceptively deep pachinko-meets-bagatelle game in the late ’00s, you know how addictive and entrancing it could be to just watch a bouncing ball ricochet off brightly colored pegs.

While developer Popcap released a few sequels and spinoffs in the years after Peggle‘s 2007 release, the series has largely languished since Popcap’s acquisition by EA in 2011. Today, the only actively supported version of the game is Peggle Blast, a smartphone port that dumbs down the gameplay with frequent pushes to spend real money on needed items, à la Candy Crush and its ilk.

A few other games have tried to capture the old Peggle ball-bouncing magic in the last decade, most notably the excellent but sometimes overwhelming Roundguard. But Peglin—which launched out of an extended Steam early access period and also saw a Nintendo Switch release this week—is my new favorite take on the concept, combining Peggle’s addictive ball-bouncing with just the right mix of roguelike randomization and RPG-style progression.