Help, I've discovered Nubby's Number Factory, a 'plinko-style roguelike' where you stop the sun exploding

See you in a week. Nubby's Number Factory is what the developer calls a "plinko-style roguelike" (everything is a roguelike now apparently?) where you drop your ball (Nubby) down a pegboard to rack up increasingly large numbers to stop the sun from exploding.

It's really simple but it deliciously sucks your time away as you keep on dropping Nubby down to get higher numbers. It's the same sort of feeling you might get from putting time into the likes of Balatro, Ballionaire and various other straight to the point games. Much like Balatro, you're trying to hit a specific number each round.

Tested on Kubuntu Linux with the latest Proton 9.0-4 it works perfectly.

The basics are: you click to aim and launch Nubby down the pegboard, where Nubby will bump into all the numbers and they continue to add up. The pegs can be hit multiple times, as each number is double of the one before it. So a peg of 32 can be hit down to 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1.

It's all about hitting your quota for each run. The numbers end up getting silly at hundreds of thousands and more. You only have a limited number of Nubby's to launch down the board though to hit the quota each round, so you have to aim carefully. Sometimes it really is just hoping for the best. You also have to reach the quota from a single launch of Nubby, otherwise it resets the board to try again. And with you only having a limited number, if you fail on your last one it's game over and you begin afresh.

To help you on your mission there's also a shop system, so you can spend some of your hard earned cash on 50 different items to help you surpass that ever-increasing quota. Items like a Flamethrower that can pop a random peg and pop 8 nearby pegs as well, or Jake the Snake that can double all pegs. Or, the Rubber Chicken that if activated when Nubby is still on the board will launch an egg missile that will explode a bunch of Pegs. The items are just plain silly. You can upgrade these items as well by buying up the same one and dragging it over the top of the other.

You also get random loot drops as well that will give you permanent perks like an increased chance to trigger your purchased items, a Grab-A-Tron like arcade grabber game to gain you some extras and more.

It also throws in various different types of Pegs too. There's plain numbers but there's also Pegs that can give you extra gold, Pegs that will explode the highest other Peg that isn't themselves, Pegs that will kill Nubby and all sorts.

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I love the really cheap style of it too, it reminds me of various bargain-bin games when shopping around PC World when I was young and had a head full of hair. That's the only real way I can describe it, the graphics are kind-of hilarious. The kind of thing I would have expected in some kind of "100 games in 1!" collection. It's clever with it though and charming.

This is one game that someone might have to come over and physically pull me away from. I need more. Lots more. Nothing else matters right now, I need to stop the sun from exploding and make bigger numbers.

Absolutely love it. One to grab for sure and it's only £4.29.