Wake up. Make sure the family goose has food. Hop on your bike. Babysit the twins. Deliver papers. Deliver pizza. Okay, now it’s time to win that last Dunko card.
I’m not sure what I expected from The Coin Game, but it certainly wasn’t what I got. On the surface, it looks like a simulator for those horrible games in malls and bowling alleys. The ones that are barely games and dangle amazing prizes are just out of reach. However, that’s not what The Coin Game is about.
The real concept of The Coin Game is that you’re trapped in the simulation of a rural town, and your only means of coping with your nightmarish existence is to gamble for cheap prizes. It is absolutely Diminishing Returns: The Game. And I love it. Above all, I think it’s exactly what I need right now.
Like The Truman Show with gambling
Created by Devotid, The Coin Game has been in early access since 2019 and shows no sign of ever leaving it. Every so often, the developer just drops a new landmark into the town, complete with new activities and, more importantly, more games to pump coins into.
To note, I was only barely embellishing my summary of the central concept of The Coin Game. You really are somehow trapped in the simulation of a rural town. There are no other humans that you bump into. Every citizen of Islandville is a conical robot. They roam haplessly in town and speak in thick Midwestern accents. The bridges out of town are blocked off by perpetually burning traffic accidents. There is no escape.
You can handle various side jobs, but aside from food, the only thing to really spend your money on is games. Games to win prizes that have no real practical use. Like plush toys and inflatable hammers. You can then sell them for more money to play more games. It’s like Hell. Or rather, it’s like life.
Little big-wig
I’ve long been a cheerleader for the use of mundane elements in games as a way of connecting you with the game’s world. It’s the reason I love games like Chulip and Deadly Premonition. They’re weird narratives that have stories and objectives, but through the use of mundane elements like lengthy travel and getting to know characters, they draw you in. It’s harder to leave these games and easier to remember them.
The Coin Game pours out the mundane elements, then flops down in the resultant mixture and wallows in it. You have pets to feed, and there’s really no reason for it. One of them is a goose that roams the house and throws a tantrum whenever its bowl is empty. The babysitting job involves catching a pair of hyper robot children and cramming them into their beds before collecting their toys and cleaning the floors. You subsist entirely on junk food like meals you have to microwave before consuming.
One of the arcades at the edge of town requires a rather long bike ride to reach. Another is within a shopping mall so well-realized that you can almost feel the sterile, conditioned air. You can also spend time within a traveling carnival and hear the taunts of the various barkers. Or take a trip to One Eye’d Billies and play a round of mini-golf. It’s a game packed with beautiful nothing.
I truly believe The Coin Game just started with the goal of replicating coin-op amusement games, and somehow it mutated into this. I can’t fathom how, but it overshot being an admirable experiment and became an expressive and evocative work of art.
Don’t hit the machines
The actual games? There are some bangers. I personally love the coin pushers, but there are some other gems. What I find fascinating is that I don’t tend to enter a location and hop from machine to machine. I locate one that I like the appearance of and give it a chance. I then eventually just find a few games that I’m comfortable with, and suddenly the games that I haven’t tried yet make me nervous.
The important thing is that there are a lot of them in The Coin Game, and their assembly creates a unique atmosphere for each arcade. There are enough that you may not experience them all in one day, and it keeps you circulating between them.
Another incentive for not just sticking to one game and one arcade is the pawn shop. This is where you sell your prizes. Each day it has four items that it buys at a higher price, and it’s a decent incentive to go off and try to win these particular prizes. Even if you rarely make back the money you pump into the coin-op machines, it’s a smart way to give you micro-goals to try and achieve.
Otherwise, you can also try to rank on the leaderboards for each machine. Multiplayer is planned, which might be a fun addition, but that’s something the developer is still working on.
Roll up, roll up
That’s not something that interests me. For me, I just want to drink in the tangible alienation and ever-present loneliness of the world The Coin Game presents. I want to listen in on the shallow dialogue of the robots and take in all the small details.
If there’s one feature I’m hoping for, it would be the inclusion of side-quests. I think it would be enriching to have robots that are looking to win certain prizes and will reward you for helping them.
Just make sure you’re back before curfew. There’s a survival mode that forces you to rest and consume food each day, so you can’t just stand slack-jawed in front of the coin pusher trying to win big. Well, you can. There are modes more suited to people who prefer to just play the game, but that, too, is not for me.
The Coin Game is one of those rare games that I fall hopelessly in love with. Like My Summer Car, it has a central objective with no true endpoint and then builds a believable but strange world around it. Like that game, it may be in Early Access roughly forever, but it’s also something I never want to see stop growing. But with that in mind, if this sort of comfortable nothingness excites you, don’t hold off for The Coin Game to leave Early Access. It’s got everything you need, and it’s waiting for you to slot your quarter.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer.]
