Peglin

Where most roguelikes resolve combat through cards, dice, or direct stat checks, Peglin from Red Nexus Games Inc. resolves it through physics. Every attack is a shot fired into a pachinko-style board studded with pegs; the ball bounces unpredictably, and the more pegs it strikes before landing, the more damage it deals. Aiming is real and consequential, which sets the game apart from virtually everything else in the deckbuilder-adjacent space.

Runs follow a structure familiar from Slay the Spire — branching maps, escalating enemy encounters, and boss fights gating each act — but the execution layer is wholly different. Players build a bag of orbs rather than a hand of cards; each orb type carries its own effect, from multi-hit chains to area blasts, and is fired one at a time into the board. Pegs are not static: relics and certain board configurations alter their behavior, their layout, and even the physics governing how the ball travels, meaning relic choices can fundamentally change what a winning shot looks like. Consumables including crit potions, refresh potions, and bombs add a resource-management layer on top of the shot-selection decisions.

Progression within a run comes through orb upgrades and relic acquisition at rest sites and shops. Because relics can warp both enemy behavior and the physical environment of the board itself, the interaction space between items is wide enough that run identity shifts dramatically depending on what appears in a given map layout, which is procedurally generated each time.

Peglin launched on August 27, 2024 after a period in early access. Post-launch support has been substantial: the 1.1.0 update arrived in February 2025, followed by a series of patches and hotfixes through mid-2025. The game expanded to Steam China in January 2025 and reached mobile players in Mainland China by June 2025. The most significant post-launch content addition was Act 4, released in March 2026, which pushed the game into a v2.0 versioning line and prompted several rapid hotfixes and patches through April 2026. The game has also generated enough affection in its community to support two rounds of official plushie merchandise.

For players who found Peggle’s pure entertainment too shallow and Slay the Spire’s abstraction too removed from anything tactile, Peglin occupies a genuine middle ground that neither game attempts.