If, like me, you’re a bit of a degenerate who just likes watching numbers go up, you’ll probably relate to this pretty well. We’ve all seen it happen before. Hades, Loop Hero, Balatro… Think of literally anything remotely interesting and turn it into a roguelite, and you’ll probably have a hit on your hands. So, too, is the case with RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike, at least from what I’ve played of the early playtest so far.
RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike does exactly what it says on the tin. You play as an animal of your choice (you start out with a raccoon, naturally) and you push coins out of a left pipe or a right pipe onto a moving platform, and watch as that platform slowly pushes coins into a scoring zone. Now I never quite understood the appeal of coin pushing machines. It all seems so dreadfully dull and boring. I mean, you’re literally just watching a machine push coins. After spending a whole weekend with RACCOIN, though, I get it.
Even from the very moment I first laid eyes on the game, observing its cute arcade cabinet pixel style graphics, I knew this game had the potential to completely ruin my life. Much like how Balatro did in 2024. And yeah, as you might’ve guessed, RACCOIN is now my latest obsession.
As far as the actual, moment-to-moment gameplay goes, RACCOIN is extremely simple. You hit left-click to dispense a coin from the left pipe, you hit right-click to dispense a coin from the right pipe. Dispensing from the left pipe causes the coin to fly all the way to the right side of the moving platform, and vice versa. Click both pipes together, though, and you’ll dispense two coins to the center instead. From there, you just let the machine do its thing. Simple, right? Except, not really. You see, RACCOIN‘s target scores increase rather drastically the further you get into the game, and before long, you’ll need to start actually thinking about the timing and positioning of your coin pushes, and make use of various modifiers to make the game easier.
In-between rounds, you’ll be able to purchase items from a shop. These include special coins, which introduce a whole ton of crazy effects to the game. For instance, there are quite a few animal-themed coins in RACCOIN that all do different things. Pig coins are among the weakest of the bunch, but you can spam out a whole lot of them and they’ll even merge if they’re close to each other. Wolf coins, on the other hand, will “hunt” down other animal coins by bouncing to them and absorbing them. If you manage to score with a beefed up wolf coin, you’ll be rewarded with a ton of points.
That’s just one example of special coins. There are seedling and water coins, which work synergistically to help your seedling coins grow into trees. There are bomb coins that explode, sticky coins that stick to nearby coins… the list goes on.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are also items you can buy with Tickets — your main currency, which you accrue by scoring points — that shake up the game in very enjoyable ways. This is where RACCOIN starts to go off the rails a little bit, as you’ll be able to summon UFOs that zap up coins in a line, or a black hole vortex thing that transports coins within its area of effect back to the moving platform so you can try to position yourself a little better for victory.
To top it all off, there are also a number of characters you can unlock as you keep playing, all packed with unique abilities that give you access to different coins and cater to different play styles. Like any good roguelite, RACCOIN‘s strength lies in your ability to experiment with different coins and characters as you try to figure out what works best together. And of course, no two runs are ever exactly the same, and you never quite know what sorts of fun strategies you’ll stumble on next.
It definitely helps that the game looks so good and charming, too. The CRT filter over the arcade cabinet UI evokes that retro game vibe that’s so in vogue right now, and the pixel animations of the coins, characters, and special effects are so crisp you’ll find it hard to tear your eyes off the screen. Most dangerous, though, is the especially hypnotic music that seems targeted at putting you in some sort of weird coin-pushing obsessive trance as you mindlessly watch that moving platform swing back and forth. Hours seem to just disappear when you’re playing RACCOIN — a mark of a good roguelite game.
It’s still early days of course, and RACCOIN doesn’t even have a set release window yet, but the potential is obvious. My only complaint is that right now, the game feels just a bit too RNG-dependent in the sense that it can be difficult to predict how your coins are going to land, and how they’ll affect the machine. Given that you often only have 10 to 20 coins to work with each round (though you can get more by exchanging Tickets on the fly), every coin feels precious and it can feel pretty bad if you happen to misjudge where a coin is going to land, or if the platform doesn’t push the coins the way you thought it would.
I might just be bad at the game, and this may be something you kinda just need to get a feel for over time, but it’s worth pointing out either way. It’s a small complaint in the face of an otherwise excellent game, though, and just in case you needed yet another roguelite to completely waste your time in, RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike is a fantastic contender.
