Most love stories involve flowers, romantic dinners, and maybe an ill-advised grand gesture. Splatchinko has exploding eyeballs, collapsing realities, and a lonely cosmic horror smashing its way across the universe to reunite with its one true love.
Solo developer Stupidi Pixel has just announced Splatchinko, a pachinko roguelike coming to Steam later this year. Published by Stratos Publishing, it combines the unpredictable bouncing of pachinko with turn-based strategy and roguelike progression, all wrapped around a surprisingly sweet story about two universe-devouring entities separated across the cosmos.
Unfortunately, when you’re an enormous cosmic horror capable of consuming entire worlds, crossing the galaxy without causing a little collateral damage is easier said than done.
All Is Fair in Love and Pachinko
The goal in Splatchinko is simple enough…find your lost love. Actually getting there involves traveling across a procedurally changing cosmos filled with planets, boss battles, strange encounters, and pachinko boards standing between you and your intergalactic reunion.
Rather than attacking enemies directly, you’ll fire eyeballs onto the board and watch them ricochet between pegs. Every collision contributes to the damage you deal, turning a well-placed shot into a potentially devastating chain of bounces, explosions, and triggered abilities.
There’s strategy behind all that chaos too. Deciding where to launch an eye and which part of the board to target can make a huge difference, particularly once upgrades and special effects begin interacting with one another.
More Than 100 Ways to Keep an Eye on Things
Those eyeballs aren’t just ammunition. Splatchinko will feature more than 100 different eyes to collect and upgrade, alongside over 70 mutations capable of changing their physics, abilities, and damage. Combining the two lets you create different builds as a run progresses, with certain effects potentially working together to turn an ordinary bounce into something far more destructive.
With that many eyes and mutations available, finding ridiculous combinations looks set to be a major part of the fun. One run might favor raw damage, while another could revolve around manipulating how your eyes move around the board or triggering abilities through carefully planned collisions.
The universe itself won’t stay put either. Boards, planets, bosses, and what Stupidi Pixel calls “third-contact encounters” can change between runs, meaning reaching your other half isn’t as straightforward as memorizing the perfect route and repeating it.
There will also be seven playable characters, each bringing their own playstyle and powerful mutations to unlock after successfully reuniting with your lost love.
One Stupid Idea, One Solo Developer
Behind all of this cosmic destruction is Fabio Taurisano, the solo developer behind Milan-based indie studio Stupidi Pixel.
Taurisano is handling Splatchinko’s design, programming, pixel art, animation, and music himself. It’s not his first unusual project either. Stupidi Pixel previously worked on Death Noodle Delivery, a cyberpunk game inspired by the arcade classic Paperboy, alongside Dr. HackDream and several smaller game jam projects.
The studio’s motto is that without stupid ideas, there wouldn’t be fun games. A cosmic horror firing mutated eyeballs through intergalactic pachinko boards in the name of true love certainly suggests they’re sticking to it.
Keep Your Eye on Splatchinko
The game doesn’t have an exact release date just yet, but it’s currently scheduled to arrive on Steam later in 2026. You don’t have to wait until then to start bouncing eyeballs around the universe, either. An updated demo is available now as part of Steam’s Pins & Pegs Fest, giving players an early chance to experiment with its unusual combination of pachinko and roguelike strategy.
There are plenty of games about traveling across the universe to save someone you love. There are considerably fewer where you’re the universe-devouring cosmic horror, your weapons are eyeballs, and entire planets might accidentally get caught in the crossfire.
Nobody said true love was easy. Nobody said it required this much pachinko, either.