My fascination with pachinko video games started in the PS3 era when I imported random pachinko arcade games and found them to be absolutely wild. Void Pachinko merges together demonic-hole-in-the-ground-must-be-fed gameplay (surprisingly now a subgenre, I think) with pachinko physics chaos. I hoped it would be a chaos machine, and in some ways it is. The fun mainly comes from your planning rather than the incremental game structure.
Across five worlds, Void Pachinko places you in a village to oversee a void in the ground that must be fed with spell balls. Each world has a unique layout and gimmick, but the void at the centre has a barrier wall around it with increasingly larger gaps for the spell balls to fall into the void. Villagers throw the balls into the playing area, and they’ll bounce off of pegs as they roll and bounce towards the centre void, and players must spin the barrier around to allow as many balls through as possible. The more pegs the ball hits, the better the score (in general), and if the ball hits the barrier, the score halves upon each hit.
Players can’t control the balls, but players can buy different types of balls and different pegs on the playing area for the balls to bounce off. Where you place the pegs is the key strategy, as they all do different things. Some zap lasers, some create a multiplier, some change balls into void balls to generate a secondary currency for future purchases and upgrades, and others have area-of-effect score boosts. There are about 15 balls and peg types, and players choose where the pegs go and how many of each ball are in play. Whilst buying them costs money or void money, the incremental skill tree inside the void boosts base scores, villager speed, and mitigations for the level design. For example, one level has spinning swirls that turn off all peg bonuses, so you can pay to shrink them down and stay shrunk for longer.
The main interactive gameplay element comes from moving around the barrier. In early levels, this is crucial to scoring because there’s only one or two gaps for balls to get through. Over time, the skill tree opens up more of the barrier so almost everything can get through automatically, and it places the player on the sidelines. I also found the controls for the barrier to be confusing and unintuitive. When spinning the barrier, as soon as you cross the central point, the controls invert, so left is right and vice versa. Having it switch mid-spin is clunky and disorienting, and becomes more of a problem the further you get into the game. The last level involves adding a turret gun, which makes the issue even more prominent and obvious. In my opinion, the controls should pick a lane, not try to do both at once.
The other issue I found with Void Pachinko is that each level design might be different, but the impact of the change is minor. Numbers still go up. More balls get added into the mix. Pegs can be moved to adjust to the new design. A bit like how the game auto-prestiges when moving to the next level, the challenge is overcome in a minute or two.
I liked the concept and the peg-rearranging elements of Void Pachinko more than the incremental nature of it. I feel like the incremental nature of the game removes the need to explore some clever design of levels and gameplay elements that would have made this good game a great one. Incremental fans will still enjoy their time with this title, but after having high hopes playing the demo, the full game doesn’t expand beyond the demo much.
A review copy of Void Pachinko was provided by the publisher. Void Pachinko is out on 17th August on PC.
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