Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic Review

I’ve never happened upon Roxy Raccoon previously, but was immediately taken in by the premise on offer in Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic. I mean, a reimagining of Roxy’s greatest platforming adventures, but in pinball form? What on earth could go wrong?

Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. In fact, I’d go as far to say that no matter whether you liked Roxy Raccoon on Steam, or love a bit of pinball, you should probably be tilting away from this one. 

Things don’t start well in Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic and that is all down to one of the worst UIs I’ve experienced in years. Even now, with hours of playtime under my belt, I still cannot get a handle on the clunky, unintuitive, mess of a user interface, clicking through menus that are hard to read and extremely clumsy. It’s so bad that we’ve found fun in passing a controller to another person and watching them struggle too. Attempting to move from one level to the next is a chore, picking one of the various game modes on offer, an absolute ballache. And that’s when those menus work, with ‘back’ buttons disappearing at times. It really shouldn’t be difficult to allow a player an easy route into a game, but it’s been totally muddled here. 

Manage to get in to Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic and things struggle to get much better. From the off are choices to make in regards to game modes, with Story, Pinball, Rapid Ryan’s Arcade (Ryan being a rabbit, obvs) and Customisation on offer. The latter does what you would expect, and as long as you play enough of Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic you’ll get to unlock various skins and cosmetics. Again, you’ll need to battle through the unwieldy menus just to do that. 

For many, it’ll probably be the Story mode that is most tempting. It’s this which seemingly takes the same tale found in the original game, twisting it slightly to fit a pinball theme. Frankly, I’d quite happily have jumped from one table to the next with little requirement for the backstory or lore, but for those looking for it, that narrative could just about intrigue. Again, we guess that if you played Roxy Raccoon, it would feel a nice fit. 

Whatever, this one is all about the pinball, but again, Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic struggles. A ‘Table Overview’ continues the tired and clumsy navigation, whilst various camera angles do little to help. We’ve found that pretty much the only camera worth using is that of the top-down overview, giving a full table front and centre; playing Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic with anything but that has just given us a headache. 

From there, it’s about the pinball on offer and it’s here where the game just about picks things up; ever so slightly. Pulling back on the trigger will see a ball fired off into the play area, full of bumpers, spinners, flippers and more. Some of those tables are pretty decent too, with various lanes to shoot and elements to involve yourself with. And as you make progress through the story, ticking off highscores in order to unlock more, the table variety on offer is good. We won’t go as far to say that it gives Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic a pass, but at least the pinball side of things is playable. Is it on Pinball FX levels? Not a chance, but you should find a little bit of fun made possible. 

Witch Trials help build scores and give some kind of objective and mission structure, coming about via the evil wicked witch of the west who has landed in Roxy Raccoon’s world. Attempting to fire your balls towards certain areas of each table means that there is a bit more to this pinballer than just whacking the flippers in blind hope. Add some collectible gems that, well, are collectible, and Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic doesn’t do ‘pinball’ too badly at all. 

Tire of navigating through the story and you’ll find a few further options. Those found in the ‘Pinball’ sub-menu land on variants of Classic play, Time Attack, Survival and the like, each doing as you would expect. But it’s in Rapid Ryan’s Arcade where this one really goes to town.

See, Ryan is a rabbit, a key character in the whole Roxy-verse. All you need to know about Ryan is that he’s rapid, and he loves a mini-game. This little bunny seems to love an arcade so much that he’s put together a collection of cabinets for you to play through. We’ve lost count of the sheer number of variations that are available in here, with twists on pinball, some Bagatelle/Peggle vibes, football, match ‘ems and pathway puzzlers. The problem is, we can count on one hand the number of those mini-games which are good enough to play more than once or twice, with the vast majority of them falling even shorter than that. Consider that in order for each to be ‘completed’, you’ll need to nail some highscores, some of which feel stupidly unobtainable, whilst others will be ticked off within mere seconds, and the interest levels wane, fast. 

Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic isn’t helped by some visuals and sound that shouldn’t see the light of day in 2024. Admittedly colourful and mostly clear enough, we’ve rolled our eyes at the screams emitted every time we’ve tilted a table with a face button, looking away from the screen in anger and disgust upon visual lag and glitches. It’s hard enough to nail some of the required scores in Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic as it is, but when your ball is stuttering its way around a table, or warping through barriers, it all gets even harder to contend with. 

And that’s the overall vibe of Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic – a clunky, clumsy pinballer that tries to add in a story for no real reason. Whilst there’s no doubt that the amount of content included in Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic is high, rarely does any of it work as intended. We’d have killed for some QA testing, and would have taken half the amount of levels and mini-games if any were actually any good. As it is, Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic goes for quantity over quality – and that’s a big problem.