{"id":11484,"date":"2026-04-22T13:43:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=11484"},"modified":"2026-05-04T14:23:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T04:23:00","slug":"raccoin-a-million-allowances-worth-of-quarters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/raccoin-a-million-allowances-worth-of-quarters\/","title":{"rendered":"Raccoin: A Million Allowances Worth of Quarters!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The algorithmic ruled world that we find ourselves (and increasingly LLM dominated) has a habit of mirroring our own inbuilt recency bias. This is shown most aptly in algorithm first apps that tend to take a small signal of interest and flood you with endless content in the hopes of capturing your attention for just another second longer. It wouldn’t work if we weren’t already prone towards it and Raccoin is a good example of me falling for that. I was in the midst of a incremental binge, looking for the next hit of a game that’d give me that steady dopamine drip as I watched the numbers go up. It didn’t manage to capture me as other, more recent examples had, but that was the clue that I’d been mining this particular genre too hard for a little too long and it was time to move to other pastures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Raccoin, which its full name Coin Pusher Roguelike<\/em> describes aptly, puts you in charge of extracting a set amount of value out of one of those tried and treasured coin pushers. The base mechanics are easy enough to understand: put coins in, they fall in and push others out, simple. The challenge comes from the ever-increasing score you need to achieve which is only possible through the strategic use of special coins, items and the various interactions that all of these have with each other. It’s very much in the vein of Balatro <\/a>where the initial mechanics seem straightforward enough but the real depth comes from the complexity around the interactions of all the different mechanics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visual style of Raccoin has its feet in two camps: on the one side it would seem like your typical low poly\/low texture indie but, with the addition of some rather clever filtering it becomes a kind of retro-future pixel art interpretation of said style. The most fun part about this is when you’re given the option to choose your pixel size as one of the starting options which, should you choose to max it out, does help to sell the premise that this was some kind of found-game from a bygone era of CRTs and limited graphics budgets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The game’s tutorial does a good job of getting you familiar with the core mechanics in a limited setting before unleashing you on the game proper. There is still a lot, and I really mean a lot, that’s not said as part of that tutorial though as it basically boils down to strategy. Pushing coins, choosing things that look cool and just generally fumbling your way through will probably get you half way through a run (which goes for 15 rounds) but it will become obvious rather quickly just how much steam your current build has. This is, of course, by design: you don’t start off with all the coins unlocked, there are numerous ones that don’t synergize with your chosen character class and simple luck of the roll will determine what tools you have access to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance the game lets you play past winning the current round which, if you’re feeling like you’re onto something good, can be a good way to bolster your ticket reserves which are the main currency for upgrades. Doing that though could land you in a lot of hot water for the next round though, as a bunch of coins dropping after the fact do not<\/strong> count towards the next rounds score at all. So even though your total score might be well beyond what the current round requires you still need to earn whatever that round demands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s only example as well and keeping track of all these different mechanics and how they interact is going to be the difference between consistently winning rounds and being taken by the will of RNGesus at every turn. For Balatro veterans this is really nothing new; learning which mechanics you’ve got and how they can scale is part of the core game loop. For newcomers to this kind of genre though it’s likely going to be daunting and a little bit frustrating given just how many different ways there are for things to interact with each other. Thankfully though the devs are frequent posters in their own subreddit<\/a> providing some great clarity on how things work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some keen readers may have noted in my opening paragraph that I mentioned I’d been on an incremental<\/em> binge and that Raccoin, despite one of its core features being big-number-go-up, isn’t one of those; it’s a Roguelike deckbuilder. Therein lies the rub as to why I didn’t gel with it as much I think as whilst I certainly had fun in certain runs (all of which the screenshots in this review are taken from) I didn’t get that same hook into me like I usually do with incrementals. Funnily enough this kind of echoes my experience with Balatro as my initial review capped out somewhere at 5 hours or so. Today though? I’ve got over 30 hours played in it, far less than some but still a pretty good innings for a game that I’d basically thought I was done with at the time. Does that mean Raccoin is due for a second wind post-review? Maybe, although I’ll be honest and say I haven’t really felt the desire to go back…yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Raccoin does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a roguelike deckbuilder that uses the genre as firm basis whilst showcasing it’s own unique take on the idea. The base mechanics are solid, making it easy enough to get into but incredibly challenging to master. Of course there’s numerous posts, videos and guides out there showcasing absolutely ridiculous numbers that can be generated and I’m sure many Balatro faithfuls will find a good home here. For me, whilst I enjoyed the time I spent with it, that same big number hook I’d been craving just didn’t seem to catch. Maybe it will someday but for now I think I’ll be giving this genre, and all those like it, a rest for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating: 8.0\/10<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raccoin is available on PC right now for $17.75. Total playtime was 3.2 hours with 13% of the achievements unlocked. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The algorithmic ruled world that we find ourselves (and increasingly LLM dominated) has a habit of mirroring our own inbuilt recency bias. This is shown…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,16],"tags":[6099,6819,6820,733,2033,6660,6092,6449,748],"class_list":["post-11484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","category-review","tag-arcade","tag-deckbuilding","tag-doraccoon","tag-pc","tag-pixel-art","tag-playstack","tag-roguelike","tag-singleplayer","tag-strategy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Raccoin-Review-Screenshot-Wallpaper-Title-Screen-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1067&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-2Ze","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11489,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484\/revisions\/11489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}