Roundguard

I was really looking forward to this game because I love Peggle - but unfortunately, it didn’t click with me. The biggest issue for me is the core health mechanic. Instead of having a set number of balls or heroes, you have a health bar. Every time you attack an enemy, you lose health. But to finish a level, you have to defeat all enemies - so if you manage to hit multiple enemies with one shot, you end up taking more damage. That feels completely backwards. In my opinion, it would make more sense if enemies attacked you after a certain amount of shots. That way, hitting multiple enemies in one shot would be rewarding rather than punishing. Right now, I felt like I was being penalized for playing well. I rarely felt like losing was my fault - it often came down to taking too much unavoidable damage just by trying to engage with the core mechanics. Overall, I came away confused and disappointed. I wanted to enjoy this, but the design just didn’t make sense to me.

It's a fun concept on paper, but it doesn't really work well. I really wanted to like this game, because it has some cool art and concepts and it looks well developed. But the chore mechanic is broken. You are supposed to hit the enemies, but then you get punished when you do that. Having a health bar for this type of games is just disastrous. It really takes the joy out of the game.

I have this on Switch as well, but bought it on PC in order to give it a 2nd go. Games, for me, are about being able to make interesting decisions. Some games have slow decisions made carefully, e..g puzzles, text adventures, and so on. Some games have fast decisions that are more reactions and muscle memory, like fighting games and arcade classics. I am not sure I find that this game gives me the chance to make interesting decisions. I can try to set up a good shot and it gets snatched away from me. Or I can just fire blindly and get whatever. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. Overall, this is hard for me to enjoy.

Lot o' rogue-lites around huh? This one hits good tho and although I hate the genre name this fits the bill perfectly and is full of lovely goodness because it's not a deck-builder, it's a Peggle erm I mean pachinko game, and it is beautiful, addictive, beautiful, hateful, addictive as hell, well thought out, glorious, clever, hateful and always giving you more. I wont waste time, it's a Peggle rogue-like where you'll fail many many times but each fail will make you slightly stronger via perks, learning and pure addicted determination. If you know the format you will love this. But I did hit a wall, where I thought I had 'won' and quickly learned that really I had only completed the tutorial. Slay the Spire did this to me, and then *dont* look how many hours I ended up putting into that! Well designed game, feels great to play, more-ish, well priced and basically very good.

Nasty addictive glitter-trash that will rot your brain, guaranteed. Highly recommended.

Too slow to be enjoyable for me. Decent ideas, but getting interrupted too often for the tutorial for a game this simple should not be a thing. Slow mo for every single ability shouldn't be a thing. Waiting several seconds to reset to fire again should not be a thing. Just plodding and dull. 2/5

Roundguard is definitely a game that turns a fantastic idea with subjectively-enjoyed artwork...and squanders its potentially as hard as can be, turning it into a bafflingly-executed, frustrating disappointment that is only about 10% player agency/skill, and 95% luck. [b][u]Demerits:[/u][/b] - Way too many dialogues. - the “Skip” button for them does not put you back into play, with “intermissions” where you get a trinket via wheel spin, still requiring at least 4 clicks to get through, maybe 5. - No bonus when clearing out every destructible object in a room, so little incentive to do so. - Of the 4 characters, only two really ever seem viable in any situation. The rogue is way too weak, even with the “double jump”, while the Wizard barely has any health while the skill you play with first time through is almost-useless in the setup, and lacking in damage. - Yes, “First time”, because unlike seemingly every other multi-character roguelike adjacent to Sol, the tutorial skill is only the one you get your first run with them, and after that, it randomises it. This means being able to experiment and practise with a skill is up to luck. If you didn't start with it, the only way to get it is to land in a “Book chest” slot after clearing a level, and having it be given by RNG. - You read that right; getting equipment/items is up to you landing in a slot, something you barely have any control over. - This is far from the only example of “Can and Should Syndrome” tainting this, as the fact you lose control after dropping means most things are up to chance, be this leaving to the room you wanted, grabbing the desired item, and more. - On that note, lack of clarity is present on when you'll take damage from hitting an enemy. This is already an issue, but when you couple it with the fact no shield is applied when you hit more than one enemy per shot, you take damage at rapid pace. In other words, if you intentionally plan shots to ricochet off multiple enemies, you're punished, rather than rewarded. - When so much of the game is seemingly up to luck, this also means you can be destroyed from no fault of yours. - ...and yes, this does mean you cannot do anything but tank the health loss when attacking. - Worse properties to this are present, though, because debuffs are handed out like candy on Halloween. I had many runs end as a result of the fact I was somehow weakened, enraged, bleeding, and poisoned without any perceivable source. - This means the feeling of barely being alive is present at almost all times, and this rarely – if ever – feels like a result of anything the player did. - As well, some rooms are literally impossible because you were either screwed over by RNG on getting equipment, said load out is very much not good, you have no source of healing, not enough health to get through it without dying, or otherwise a mix of all of them, when not literally everything listed. - Even if you do luck out and get to the final boss, you can still have it with a sliver of health, and you with nothing as you plunge down into the damaging areas. - This is the perfect opportunity to explain the “damage area” because while Peggle gives you a free ball if you land it in the bucket, every area bit the roving cushion is either spikes, or water, taking 5 HP from the player first floor, 10 the second, and fifteen on the final one. If this sounds like the ability to not take even more health loss on top of all the other random rolls is also up to chance, then you're absolutely right. The developers could have easily given you a reward for hitting the cushion, and nothing elsewhere, but if chance doesn't smile upon you, you're punished. [b][u]Verdict:[/u][/b] While an element of randomnness can make a game more exciting, engaging, and cause massive amounts of dopamine to surge through one's system, when your game is almost nothing but Random Number Generation, chance, and blind luck, it's flawed on a fundamental level. When you corrupt said reliance into outright punishment for the player when it doesn't go their way, you have a barely-playable mess that pretty much anyone is better off avoiding. This being said, as you sometimes do have things turn out in your favour, some enjoyment can still be had, and as such, it was... [b][u]Placed In:[/u][/b] 5: Dourly-Dismissed.

This is my favourite game that is peggle-inspired. I prefer the more action based gameplay rather than the puzzle aspect of peggle where you have a limited amount of balls where you need absolute precision. Cute and fun design. Plenty of unlockables and it doesn't feel like a grind to unlock due to the variety. This is a much more friendlier and less headache inducing than the more faithful ones like peglin. Enemy and usable characters variety is good, lots of modifiers and higher difficulty gives a new mechanic that is not boring/repetitive. A full run can last an hour.

I have played many peggle-like games, and this one had promise but the main "gimmick" of having HP instead of balls/lives pretty much ruins the experience. since the floor is spikes and hurts you almost every turn, with very little predictability of the physics (because the physics do not obey any rules of physics), each mistake punishes you forever rather than for one turn. too many things cause damage, not enough things heal you. in a boss room, you have to pay attention to multiple variables to check whether it's even worth it to hit the spikes. are you vulnerable? are you weak? are you poisoned? so that in some cases hitting the spikes causes 5/300 damage, but if you have negative status effects could take 70 or 100/300 HP away. meaning game over. This mechanic could be improved greatly by just thinking it through. why am I earning gold? why not be able to spend some of it to buy HP back at the end of every x rooms? but instead this game falls flat and gets too annoying after about 2 hours.

Super fun rougelike Peggle style game. This game is both challenging and enjoyable every time I play. I will say, the visuals are VERY overstimulating and it took me a long while to get into the game because of that. If you can get past the intense visuals, this is 100% a game you should check out.