Coming to Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One on Friday the 13th (and later PS4) for $19.99, Roundguard is turning Peggle into dungeon-crawling role-playing game. Wonderbelly Games ( a three-person team based out of Seattle) combined the Pachinko-style gameplay of Peggle with randomized loot, character-specific skills, and RPG progression to create this interestingly fresh take on the genre.“Roundguard is soaked in nostalgia celebrating some of my favorite games and fantasy — references I love to include for my fellow game nerds, but also as a gateway to share with my daughter someday,” Andrea Roberts, the game designer, said in a release.
Players start by choosing one of three classes, rogue, warrior, or wizard, each with a particular set of skills that have their own advantages and disadvantages. From there, a rounded version of the adventurer is fired at enemies, bouncing off treasure, potions, and different fantasy creatures such as spiders, skellingtons, and orcs. When a creature is hit, the player’s character does damage but also takes damage. Bouncing off healing potions is essential for adventuring success and moving on to the next level. You progress one room at a time, clearing out all the hostile locals while collecting all the treasure, and equipment upgrades that you can.
Each character is helped by skills and equipment randomly given as they move throughout the dungeon. Randomized equipment also adds excuse in adventuring, bringing extra damage and other beneficial buffs or affecting enemies majorly. The challenge from the game comes from getting as far as you can by carefully managing your resources – health, mana, equipment, other upgrades – and trying to build an effective character from whatever random scraps the game dishes out. The three available characters all have a broad variety of active skills you can find and equip, such as double-jumping or being able to charge enemies in mid-air.
As of today, Roundgaurd is also available on Apple Arcade.