Clicker Climber: Reverse Pachinko Review

Clicker Climber: Reverse Pachinko is a pachinko roguelite developed and published by Bergeronimo. I love roguelikes, and it’s always a good thing to see one that does its own thing, and thanks to my experience with Danju (another pachinko roguelike), I dived into this without thinking too hard about it. However, upon seeing the difficulties starting at Hard and getting worse from there, I feel like I just made a huge mistake.

There is no story; the graphics are simple geometry, dots, and pixel fonts (that I actually found one of them on dafont.com), and you’re practically just thrown into the game with only a Training Mode to teach you how to play. Just start a game and do your damnedest to win it with the odds stacked against you. At least with the basic graphics, the rest of your computing power will be focused on the trillions you have to make every frame. Running at 60 FPS all the way through on Performance mode with the highest possible graphics settings, I didn’t run into any stutters or crashes… yet. A PC can only handle so many calculations at once.

At its most basic, balls will spawn on Floor 1 and will bounce around, getting a chance to earn money per bounce, before possibly getting to a hole at the top, where they will move into the next Floor. At the top are a bunch of slots that will earn bonus cash if a ball lands in them. You then use that money to upgrade your ability to get more of it, faster.

Once you reach Shop Tier 10, you can Prestige, which will reset the shop back to Tier 1, increase base prices, but also allows you to buy more upgrades and adds your current cash to your bank to purchase meta-upgrades that will last between attempts… except on Maximum difficulty, where it becomes a true roguelike and failing resets your progress to zero. No more handholding, despite the fact that it wasn't holding your hand already. And you’d better hurry, as there's an ever-looming timer that will end your run if you don't reach the required amount of money to buy the option to complete the level. Where the easiest difficulty is Hard, it’s not quite kidding. It will take more than a few tries before you can move on to the next stage.

There are two ways to conquer this game, either through skill or through strategy. Aim Mode tests your ability to click targets fast, as clicking the circles will spawn more copies. However, if you miss, that’s one step closer to losing. This requires a lot more effort and reliance on your ability to click fast-moving targets, so I’m sure anyone skilled in shooters won’t find this too difficult. There’s even a Warmup Mode to get you limbered up for high-speed clicking.

If you’re not the most accurate player, maybe your brain is a bit better. In Strategy Mode, all you have to worry about is how to strategically spend your cash on upgrades to buy your way into completing the level. I did find this mode easier, having worked my way up to the last challenge, but it will kick your butt if you aren’t paying attention… at least, in the beginning.

In both modes, the prices and the money you make quickly snowball into the billions of trillions of quadrillions. It’s honestly pretty fun to get to a point where you can just click on random upgrades and Prestige in seconds. Heck, in Aim Mode, if you get the Click Radius large enough, you don’t even need to aim! It’s honestly a power trip to see numbers go up like one does when playing a game like Balatro. Nothing beats breaking the in-game counter because there are not enough bytes to calculate the sheer amount of money you’re making per second.

Clicker Climber: Reverse Pachinko is a no-nonsense game where what you see is what you get: a wild version of pachinko that quickly spirals into insanity. I had my fun with it, but I kind of got everything I could out of one play session. I wouldn’t mind coming back for more though, because you can’t beat the simple joy of numbers going up and you winning. Pachinko has never been so addictive… at least, without losing or earning real money.