Raccoin Review

Not too long ago, Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike would have seemed like an absurd and impractical idea for a game, but in the wake of time-devouring roguelikes like Balatro and Clover Pit, it seems like little more than a natural progression. Certainly, Raccoin wears its influences on its sleeve, and has ultimately turned out to be a worthwhile addition to the psuedo-gambling genre space, but whether it’s enough to draw players away from the myriad other addictive roguelikes on the market remains to be seen.

I’ll admit I was slightly skeptical about Raccoin at first. Coin-pushing isn’t a game with much depth or strategy: you simply insert coins and hope that they will wind up pushing other coins toward the front of the machine, earning you points/cold hard cash. Real-world poker involves countless different combinations of cards, different score types, antes, and other variables that a game like Balatro can manipulate for interesting mechanics, but coin-pushing is almost painfully simple. Thankfully, my skepticism soon vanished, as Raccoin capitalizes on this simplicity for some surprisingly well-designed and nuanced systems.

There are persistent power-ups you can acquire during a Raccoin run, but essentially all advantages and disadvantages boil down to the effects of special coins. There’s a dizzying amount of such coins to leverage, and you unlock more as you complete runs, and while this does mean that Raccoin has a slightly steeper learning curve than other “dopamine machine” games, it also keeps things interesting and chaotic over time. Coin-pushing’s lack of pre-established mechanics means that Raccoin can get unusually creative with these coins and other player-controlled variables, but it also means that Raccoin lacks some of the elegance of its contemporaries.

Raccoin Spins Gold From the Simplest of Premises

I hesitate to make too many Balatro comparisons, as it and Raccoin ultimately play quite differently, but one more parallel worth mentioning is overall structure. Raccoin runs start by having you select a Card and Ticket, which are the same as Balatro‘s Decks and Stakes, respectively: Cards confer special advantages, while Tickets are difficulty modifiers. Each run consists of 15 rounds, and between each round is a shop where you can purchase long-term buffs called Chips (equivalent to Balatro‘s Jokers) and single-use items to improve your run. Then there are Bad Coins (Boss Blinds) that cause negative effects but net extra rewards upon clearing.

But whereas Balatro is precise and scientific, Raccoin is hectic and chaotic. This is one of the reasons I was turned off by the game at first: since so much of Raccoin is physics-based, it can occasionally feel random and even unfair—a feeling that’s intensified by random effects like Bad Coins and spin-wheel rewards that add new coins to the field. Once you accept this relative lack of control and familiarize yourself with the positive effects of different special coins, Raccoin blossoms into a ridiculously addicting whole.

Depending on which upgrades you prioritize during a run, you can have well over ten special coins available at any given time, and there are numerous ways to acquire more during rounds and make individual coins stronger. The effects of these coins vary dramatically, with my favorites including those that need to remain in play. For instance, some coins will increase your score multiplier as long as they are on the field, rewarding you for devising a strategy around keeping them away from the scoring zone. Other memorable coins include one that causes coins it touches to grow in size, and a “wolf” coin that increases in value by hunting “pig” coins. In almost all cases, these modifiers set the stage for viable and unique experimentation, facilitating the satisfaction of build-crafting that’s key to so many great roguelikes.

Raccoin Faces an Ocean of Roguelikes Looking to Eat Up Your Time

After beating a run with nearly every character, I can confidently say that Raccoin is a strong and multifaceted roguelike with plenty of replay value and room for experimentation. I would even go as far as saying that it does certain things, such meta progression via in-run unlockables, better than most games in the genre. Indeed, taken at face value, Raccoin is an easy sell for roguelike fans.

Once you accept this relative lack of control and familiarize yourself with the positive effects of different special coins, Raccoin blossoms into a ridiculously addicting whole.

But does it do enough to meaningfully stand out against its relentless competition? On paper, Raccoin has everything a good roguelike needs and then some, but it never quite grabbed me the way that Balatro, Hades 2, Megabonk, Slay the Spire, and Mewgenics have. I wouldn’t say that I’ve seen everything Raccoin has to offer, but that drive for “just one more run” simply isn’t as palpable as it is with other pillars of the genre, and it’s hard to say why. The aforementioned chaos of the coin-pushing premise may have something to do with it, as this lack of player control undermines the calculated, master build-crafter feeling evoked by the best roguelikes.

At the same time, Raccoin occasionally feels like it’s holding itself and the player back. Design choices like forcing you to break your combo to activate a special prize wheel, or requiring the acquisition of several unique special coins for a relatively low-impact payoff, can make for an unfortunately underwhelming experience at times. In general, persistent upgrades can often feel disappointing, many of them offering such minor or context-specific bonuses that they are hardly worth the trouble. This issue is prominent in the Keychain upgrades, which are meant to be the most significant and least frequently offered: they range from major benefits like an entirely new upgrade slot, to inconsequential buffs like an 8% chance to make a normal coin a random special coin from your inventory.

The shortcomings of Raccoin are, ultimately, far from game-breaking, and I still find it fun, charming, and mechanically unique: it can net you a few dozen hours of solid gameplay, easily. However, we are living through an unprecedented era of deep and vast roguelikes, many of which offer hundreds of hours of constantly evolving gameplay. Against just a handful of these more avant-garde and ambitious titles, Raccoin, despite being well-made and enjoyable, feels unessential. It may only be marginally less compelling than something like Slay the Spire 2 or Balatro, but in this time-consuming genre space, that makes a massive difference.