Roguelike deck builder! They are everywhere! It’s a bit of an epidemic, and let’s be honest, it’s a lot of work to sort the wheat from the chaff. Of course, a truly novel take on the genre pops up from time to time. PinKeep has done just that. It’s a pinball game where you change the playing field as you progress through your run. From the developer of the Far series and Herdling.
The pinball element is probably self-explanatory. There’s a ball, it’s launched, there’s two flippers to hit it with, nothing new. Everything around me makes me think about the beautiful game (in this world, the beautiful game is pinball). The run is divided into stages with different themes, and it’s up to you to add elements to the main arena.
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For example, if you need a bumper somewhere on the field to propel the ball, choose from the cards you’ve collected and place it at various fixed points. You can rotate these structures to your liking, but you will need to spend money to play these cards. To get money you need to use the ball to destroy trees and rocks. Then collect resources from these destroyed natural elements and sell them to the merchant at the top of the screen. Reach the merchants by successfully throwing the ball towards them.
This is further complicated by the enemy slowly advancing towards your operational town, and if they manage to reach you you lose a bit of health. You might think that attacking enemies requires not only skill but also luck, but you also have the ability to slow down time and flick the ball whenever you want, allowing you to line up the balls and defeat enemy combatants.
All of this took a while to get used to, due to the fast-paced nature of pinball mixed with slowing down for interesting strategy. The thing is, I don’t think you can go wrong with pinball, but the way it’s constructed here makes it more strategic. You can add the bumper mentioned above. When it hits a bumper, it has the added effect of a small goblin that sits on top of it and fires arrows at incoming arrows.
When you structure your field properly, everything comes together in great harmony. I do wonder if slow-motion flicks or changes to the flipper itself would add anything or make things too complicated, but as with the current demo, PinKeep is heading in the right direction. You can try it out for yourself or add it to your wishlist here.
