Newly released coin-pusher roguelike game Raccoin has been compared by many to Balatro, the incredibly good poker roguelike that has sucked away countless free hours since it launched in 2024. Those comparisons are fair. Racooin, like Balatro, can easily make a few hours vanish in seconds. But for me, a random phone call broke the illusion of engagement the game had created and left me unsure if this is really a game or just a slightly interactive screensaver.
Out now on Steam, Raccoin simulates a coin pusher arcade machine. You know, the kind where a shelf slides back and forth with coins on top and more coins down below. The goal is to shoot out coins onto the top of the moving platform that will, when it slides back, push against the rear wall of the machine and, in the process, slide some coins forward that will drop and then fill the space in front of the moving shelf. When it pushes forward again, the hope is that these new coins will push the other coins down into a pit. Do that, and you score points. Score enough points and you finish that round and move forward; fail, and your run is over.
This setup means that you spend a lot of time in Raccoin flicking coins from either the left or right side of the machine, then watching to see if they cause other coins to fall. That might not sound very fun, and truth be told, it’s not. But it can be exciting to watch a big pile of coins slide off and score a ton of tickets in the process, which you can then use to buy special coins and various upgrades and bonus items. And this is where Raccoin gets wild, as these upgrades and special coins can blow up, spawn mini-tornados, turn into black holes, or shoot out lasers.
As I collected more of these special coins and gifts, I started creating larger and larger combos, which happen when a coin is scored within a few seconds of another coin being scored. Racking up massive combos and hearing all the coins clink and slide around made me feel very good, and I spent a happy few hours playing Raccoin.
But then, I got a random phone call that I needed to take. I picked it up and turned away from Raccoin to chat for a bit. When I turned back around, I realized that while I wasn’t playing, a few different special coins and upgrades had been popping off, and I had earned a massive combo and nearly reached the round’s score goal. Yet I wasn’t even playing. Hmmm. Later runs also led to similar situations where, once I had enough upgrades and special coins popping off, I could mostly sit back and watch the coins fall, and the score counter tick up. It reminded me of when I went to Vegas and played slot machines and watched them spin over and over again, occasionally paying out. Was I having fun? Not really. Was I being distracted by pretty colors and clanging coins? Yes.
Watching coins fall
While it’s true that Balatro can reach a point where your jokers will create massive combos that feel amazing to pull off, I never felt like a passive viewer when playing that game. I still had to pick the right cards, play them, pay attention to what was happening, and make choices. In Raccoin, that’s not the case.
During many runs, I wasn’t always sure what was going on, as there can sometimes be a ton of special coins, upgrades, and other modifiers popping off at the same time amongst hundreds of coins. Sometimes I just stopped paying attention to whatever challenge a round was presenting me with, usually some form of bad coins being dropped into the machine that cause problems, and I’d just flood the game with special coins and watch the machine start up and go on without me. There’s even a fast-forward button in case you want to speed things up, which I started to use.
Raccoin isn’t a bad video game. And I suspect that for some, it will continue to be very fun to watch coins slide off in big, messy chunks for hours and days and weeks. But personally, I reached a point where I realized that I was barely playing the game and was instead just watching things happen, like the game barely cared I was even there.
