RACCOIN

What is this?!

First off, the base idea of this game is amazing. You know those coin-pusher games they always have at crappy arcades? Places like Dave and Buster's or the Gatcha arcade at the mall that are full of games whose sole aim is to quickly inhale all your money and provide you with as little gameplay as possible? RACCOIN takes one of those games, only makes you pay once, and lets you enjoy the awesome feeling of putting infinite coins in the machine for as long as you'd like.

That premise alone is great. But what makes this game outstanding is the deckbuilder mechanics built on top of it.

The game loop

The game consists of 15 rounds, each with an ever-increasing points target. You're given around 30 coins to insert, and the aim is to time your insertion so the coins strategically fall off the edge within a certain timeframe, earning you point combos, tickets, and spins on a bonus wheel. Or, if you're my 2-year-old daughter, spam the 'insert' button and squeal each time a coin comes out. There are 300+ special coins and power-ups that affect coins' movement and scoring, but those are the basics of the game loop. A round ends when you achieve a goal and either run out of coins or manually choose to start the next round. Then a shop appears! This is when the game gets really fun.

Finding synergies

There are 6 characters that grant overall modifiers (this is essentially the "deck" in a deckbuilding game) and make it more likely to pull coins from that character's set. For example, the Biologist's shop has plant coins and animal coins that grow or eat each other to spawn more coins, while the Big Eater has food coins that can "cook" and combine together to create ever-increasing combos.

On top of that, there are also power-ups (temporary boosts), gadgets (permanent objects you can place within the machine) and chips (akin to Balatro's jokers) that modify gameplay in infinite ways. It's hard to describe what makes a perfect combo, but the game is pretty forgiving and has significant room for experimentation so you can see all these combos in action.

Breaking the game

I've talked about this before on reviews for other "make number go up" style games, and it definitely merits an essay of sorts. In short, what makes these games so fun is finding a combo or strategy that "breaks" the game. Of course you are not actually breaking the game; the game developers intend for this to happen. But it gives you the feeling that you've done something you're not supposed to by triggering stupidly high combos, forcing the score into an awkward "e number" format like 1.234E789, or creating some infinite loop that necessitates force-closing the game. In this screenshot, I created an infinite loop of coins that would explode and respawn themselves, creating an infinite loop that eventually shut down my Steam Deck, either because it crashed or all the chaos simply caused the battery to drain too fast. And I had a great time doing it.

Replayability

The game has tons of immediate goals: unlock all the various characters, coins, power-ups, chips, etc.; it also has macro-goals: beat each of 8 difficulty levels. Of course there is an infinite mode too, which, though pointless, scratches the itch of seeing a number get really really big.

I absolutely adore the fact that RACCOIN is in dialogue with other games in the genre like CloverPit and Cluckmech Oasis through the (purely cosmetic) cabinet skins you can unlock. It acknowledges the game developers and players in the community of people who, at their core, just love to see a number get really really big. (See also: the Wikipedia article for Skinner box.)

Overall

Compared to other roguelites, RACCOIN is a little more relaxed and repetitive, especially in early rounds. A lot of the game is spent inserting coins and simply watching what happens. I don't mean to phrase that as a bad thing -- maybe let's label it a "chill roguelite." There's a time and place for chill roguelites in the same way that cozy games provide a necessary reprieve from intense or twitchy action/adventure games. A little bit of sweet to balance out the savory.

The game does depend heavily on luck, which both creates a ton of variability and allows room for serendipitous discoveries, which is the most fun part of the game. It also creates an addictiveness that's hard to put down. Once you get a good synergy going, the game starts snowballing into higher and higher scores that feels so satisfying you won't be able to stop lying to yourself by saying "just one more run."