Murder your way across the universe in Splatchinko’s bizarre twist on pachinko.
I’ve got to be honest with you, when I took the code for Splatchinko I wasn’t expecting too much. I’m a fan of pinball and pachinko, and it sounded like a wacky twist on the latter. Static images didn’t do much to explain the combinations or speed of things, and it certainly didn’t touch on the wacky soundbites or rocketing score combinations that pristine timing can deliver.
It probably doesn’t help that the name is a little generic, which is a shame because there’s an incredibly amount going on here, and a lot to like if you’re a fan of either run-based games or the recent surge of incremental games. Splatchinko is as much about careful, Peggle-style launching as it is about putting the right things in the right place and then blowing them up. And, blowing things up is incredibly easy as there’s a whole mass of different eyeballs to launch – with more unlocking as you play – and you can stockpile a handful of them up by simply using your default one.
Considering that each of the worlds have different pin-board layouts, and that these can be reset or interrupted by moving objects and articles, there’s a lot of room for you to pick out a favourite strategy. Each of the battles, which make up the majority of the map nodes in a run, are also just that – battles. This means that you’ll be dualling against other odd space monster, one that’ll often come packing a few little buddies, and will also take turns attacking you. When it does attack you it’ll also often litter the playing field with more modifiers and pips that can be interacted with.
Ball selection in Splatchinko, as I said earlier, is vast. Many will have affects that alter the pips they interact with, passing on some sort of extra buff or nerf to later balls. Additionally, you can flip gravity for a moment, allowing a deft strike to turn into an effective launch, an effective recall and then a further effective drop. Mix that with eyeballs that detonate or split after a certain number of hits and you can create a ludicrous cascade of screen-clearing antics within just a couple of levels.
Enemy health (which is what you’re damaging with your launches) does scale quite rapidly, but between level rewards and a generous number of shops, I can’t actually imagine many people not making it through the first boss.
All of this is brought together by the sound and visual design. I don’t often spend long talking about either of these as I’m normally more interested in mechanics and gameplay, however there’s a lot to like here in both departments. I’ve said the word wacky a couple of times already, but that’s the only way to really describe the soundboard style quotes that are spat out as you achieve hits, it’s frankly incredibly silly and… well, that’s completely fine, because it’s hardly a serious game. The art style is charming and goofy, with a great collection of odd characters giving it an almost cartoon vibe, although maybe not one for oculophobics.
Splatchinko is available for PC now.
