The Coin Game lovingly recreates a 1990s arcade experience, but is very rough around the edges.

*The Coin Game.* Credit: Devotid / Kwalee

The Coin Game is a 90s-themed arcade sandbox from solo developer Devotid, published by Kwalee. The game hit version 1.0 and arrived on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S after seven years in Early Access. The premise is simple: explore Islandville, a small open-world island populated entirely by egg-shaped robots, and play a collection of 50+ arcade and carnival games across its many venues. Play games, get prizes, repeat.

There is no real narrative to speak of, outside of what the main gameplay modes provide as framing. Survival Mode has you managing hunger, health, and money, taking odd jobs like newspaper delivery and lawn mowing to fund your arcade habit. Or you can just dumpster dive. It adds a bit more complexity to the core loop than what I alluded to in the intro. I opted for Birthday Mode, which gives you unlimited cash courtesy of your Uncle Phil, letting you freely explore and play without any stakes. It’s the cleanest way to see everything without getting bogged down in resource management.

The physics simulations for the individual games are the clear labor of love here. Claw machines, coin pushers, ticket redemption games, and dozens of others all behave realistically with a clear attention to detail. You can tell exactly how much care went into making each machine behave like the real thing. That authenticity carries the entire experience.

Everything else is where the game falls apart. The 3D graphics are functional but flat, with lighting that makes spatial relationships in games like the claw machines harder to read than they should be. The UI is genuinely ugly. Not just plain, but actively unpleasant to use, and it never feels intuitive. None of the love in the arcade simulations is present here. My experience on PlayStation 5 also included frustrating bugs. I ran into stuttering, occasional lag, and even got stuck in front of a claw machine at one point and had to reload from the title screen. That kind of thing kills the experience.

To be honest, The Coin Game wasn’t for me. I think you need a real love for this specific era of arcades to get what it’s doing, and even though I’m in the right age group, I don’t have that nostalgia. Without that connection, the novelty wears off quickly. I found myself getting bored sooner than I expected, and the rough presentation didn’t help. There’s clearly a lot of passion here, but it’s not enough to carry the game. Perhaps if more effort were put into polish and presentation rather than spending that effort on the open world, things would be better.

The Coin Game is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.