DANJU Review

Danju is a roguelike pachinko game developed and published by SpicyTrain Games. Okay, I admit, I have a very limited experience with pachinko: maybe I’ve played it at the arcade a couple of times, maybe an attempt in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but it’s just been a game where a lot of wins are determined by luck. So, what happens when you throw in the sheer “number go up” insanity ofBalatro? Well, let’s find out!

The game is rather simple on the surface: all you have to do is choose how much money you’ll bet before you launch your marble. If it goes through a lit-up hole, you win and earn that bet. Lose and you get nothing. Your goal is to win the Stake by earning Trophies, which are converted from the coins you earn.

Once you win, you unlock the next board and a new marble, and after you’ve beaten them all, you can head into Arcade Mode to see how far you can go without losing it all. Of course, it’s a lot easier said than done. Not all holes will be lit up and various boards will have different obstacles, pegs, and the number of available holes that will ensure you can’t use the same strategy twice, especially when Tickets come into play.

As you play, you’ll earn Tickets that will modify your board to help you reach the Stake. Add bonus coins to your bets, generate Mult to increase the payout, add more lit holes per shot, or indulge in more risky builds that take away coins and lit holes for better rewards and scaling. These can turn 100 coins to 100,000,000 if you bet big enough, though you are just as likely to lose it all if things don’t work out that way. But, you know what they say, 99% of gamblers quit before they hit it big, and I’ve definitely done it… after bankrupting myself a few times.

Although, as I played, I noticed that I was basically getting the same Tickets even after several runs. There doesn’t seem to be that big of variety, which is a little disappointing. I wanted to see explosive turns with crazy effects, discovering absurd builds, but once I found something that worked, it was easy to become complacent. I wanted a little more out of DANJU when it comes to this type of thing.

Pachinko is a pretty luck-heavy game, but I did find a good degree of strategy and skill involved; Ticket combinations, the amount of power used to launch the ball, and the timing of obstacles can let you choose which hole it might go through, but sometimes it’s just down to physics and luck, and that can feel bad. Still, the payoff can feel worth it when a thousand coins become millions out of nowhere.

However, the more I played, the less interested I started to become. I eventually just started to get a little sleepy as I mindlessly launched my ball because at the end of the day, there wasn’t much I could do outside of betting, shooting, and hoping for the best. I felt kind of passive, and that’s kind of a shame.

I didn’t have any other issues, though. The load times were instant, the framerate stayed at 60 FPS, and the ball didn’t glitch out of bounds. I should not think that, due to the way boards are set up and the effects of one particular Ticket, the ball can sometimes get stuck. Thankfully, you can easily hit the spacebar to jostle the board to get it back to rolling. There isn’t an indicator, by the way, but it was easy to discover. Also, I would’ve loved to have access to a glossary of all the Tickets to check if I’ve used them before.

DANJU is a fine time filler. It’s not hard or too complex, but watching your numbers go up by substantial amounts will never not be exciting. That being said, I found myself getting bored due to a little bit of shallowness in the content. I beat everything the game had to offer in two hours and it left me wanting more.