A dark pachinko parlour after hours. A white glove holding a hammer hangs inside the one lit cabinet.

Crooked Pins

The House rigs your pachinko machine.
Pay it, stop it, or let it cheat you rich.

Free on itch.io soon Steam page coming soon

A short horror pachinko roguelite for PC

After hours

The owner comes to your machine

You drop balls, aim for the pockets and try to net your quota before the floor runs out of drops.

The House plays too. Between drops a white glove reaches into your cabinet and rigs the board. It hammers pins aside, bends rails and welds pockets shut. Then it sets its offer on the ledge.

Your three answers

  1. Bribe

    Pay it

    Pay the House off in balls, and the board stays as it is.

  2. Block

    Stop it

    Hold the glove off, and lose a drop.

  3. Accept

    Let it cheat you rich

    Play the rigged board and take what it pays. Often the odds turn against you, but a rigged machine can also flood.

The cabinet with the House's offer on the ledge: pay two balls, skip one drop, or take the rigged jackpot for extra Fever.

The glass doesn't lie

Hammers, not dice

Before you answer, the glass shows you the honest odds of both boards, worked out by the same machine you play on.

The House cheats with hammers: every rig changes the pins, never the roll. What you read is what it did.

A Fever Flood: hundreds of silver balls pour out of the cabinet onto the parlour floor.

Let it ride

Fever Flood

Fill the Fever meter and the machine floods: the cabinet spills hundreds of balls into the room.

Some rigs feed the meter. Whether that is worth a narrower gate is yours to judge.

Real pachinko parlours did this for decades. At night a nail specialist, the kugishi, adjusted the pins to set how much each machine would pay.

Pull up a stool

Free on itch.io soon Steam page coming soon

Players, press and creators: write to hello@crookedpins.com.