Recent reviews by Old Timey Armadillo

Puzzle game that goes baffling deep. Everything is a puzzle. EVERYTHING. You have walked past the answer 75 times.

'Roguelike deckbuilder with a gimmick' has become a pretty saturated genre. This is an absolute standout within that large crowd. Accessible to brand new players, and deep enough to keep experienced ones hooked for quite a while. Peglin has become one of the games I can always go back to when I need a moment to relax and breathe for a while, and then once I boot it up, I get hooked, and do 15 runs in 3 days. A hidden gem.

Just finished my first playthrough, and will probably do at least one more before I'm done with this game. It is the closest thing to playing DnD but in a game, and you don't need to wrangle a group together for it. Masterpiece.

It's a clever deck building roguelike, except instead of a deck of cards, everything you have is an item in a backpack, so your deckbuilding is also inventory management, and also a bit of a puzzle to make everything fit. The core gameplay loop is addictive as crud, and it's full release recently shipped with a story mode where you get to build up a town with treasure you get from winning runs. It has different classes you can play as, tons of weapon/armor/item/relics to build with, and it's an overall blast. Also its pixel art style which looks really nice, and I'm also pretty positive it could run on a damp sponge of a PC, so if that's a concern, don't let it be.

Chugga✅
Chugga✅
Choo✅
Choo✅

I have a serious issue with this game.
IN THIS GAME THERE ARE 10 SLICES OF PIZZA
Now, you may ask, "Why is this an issue?"
Because it means one of 3 things.
1) The game dev cuts their pizzas into 10 slices and has put 1 pizza in this game
2) The game dev cuts their pizzas into 5 slices and has put 2 pizzas in this game
3) The game dev cuts their pizzas into some other number of slices and has put a non whole-number of pizzas in this game.
I find all three of these options to be personally detestable. Obviously if its 1 or 2, the game dev is simply a psychopath lunatic who needs to be locked up immediately. If its 3, and the dev cuts their pizza into say, 8 (like a normal person), then we have been given 1 1/4 pizzas. Why not just 1? Keep the last 2 pieces and eat them yourself, or else give us 2 whole pizzas. Makes no sense at all.

Other than that its pretty good.

I had heard really good things about this game, so on the good faith of reviews, I tried it out. For the first while, I had a good time playing through a charming little Legend of Zelda inspired rpg. Then I started to notice a lot of mysteries and puzzles to solve. I mostly ignored them and continued through the game. I hit some pretty difficult boss fights that almost made me want to stop, and a few segments that were particularly frustrating, bit eventually I arrived at the "end" of the game.

Only after beating the final boss did I unlock the ACTUAL game. It was then that it went from "pretty neat little game" to "masterpiece created by a lunatic". The puzzles, man. The puzzles go so deep. I have never before had a game so quickly and dramatically shift genres on me, and never have I been plunged so deep into the rabbit hole. I can't explain anything, because it will spoil too much and ruin things, but I did share many of my puzzle solutions and attempts with friends. Here are some actual reviews - not of the game, but of me playing the game:
"Holy Moly"
"This is insane"
"Wow I love this"
"I am genuinely concerned about your sanity"

One gripe I did have was that the music was a bit too mellow for me. Some of the boss fights are legitimately quite difficult and intense, meanwhile the music didn't reflect that. I ended up muting the music and playing much heavier stuff during boss fights as it actually helped me fight better. That was probably a placebo but hey, it worked for me. Overall, not a big problem, and years from now I will not remember the lackluster music, but I will most certainly remember spending 3 straight days going way too deep into the secrets this game hides, with the help of a few great friends.

TLDR;
Game starts like this: https://i.imgur.com/zdnr2gx.png
and ends like this: https://i.imgur.com/HGLviLF.png

At this point, the game is only about half finished, but what it does have already is very good. I wouldn't spend much money on it, but it's a solid card battler designed for very quick, short, energetic bursts of gameplay. They threw Hearthstone, Artifact, Tiktok, and Marvel into a pot and this is the stew that came from it.

This the type of game what makes you forget to blink for 37 minutes

The gameplay is cool enough that it almost makes the pointless story and anime cringe characters bearable. Game would be much more enjoyable without all that nonsense, and my lord, please let me give all my gifts at once. I ProZD voice acts in this game though, so that's cool. Mikey was the only character I didn't completely fast forward through.