Kick the Pinata gave the turtles guns and things only got weirder from there

I love incremental games; that’s no secret, and I also love roguelite games. There’s something incredibly satisfying about getting better and better, watching the numbers climb, and reaching goals that previously felt impossible to reach. Kick the Pinata is a combination of the two genres, and it might be my latest obsession. 

Kick the Pinata, by Eduardo Scarpato, is a game that looks cozy at first glance. Bright colors, a simple premise, cute little piñatas to break open for their candy… It all seems very lighthearted. In actuality, Kick the Pinata is an incremental roguelite that quickly crosses from cozy to chaos in the most unhinged way imaginable, and I love it. 

Cozy first, unhinged later

I went into Kick the Pinata with expectations of a cute incremental, and I gladly picked up my bat and started whacking each bear that dropped down from the top of the screen. It was, in fact, a very cute if slightly guilt-inducing experience, until I started unlocking upgrades that progressively made the bears more mutated. Suddenly they had extra-long limbs, weird-shaped heads, and pain in their eyes. 

I also unlocked turtles that crawl along the bottom of the screen and collect the candy as it falls from the pinatas, which is the main currency to buy further upgrades inside a run. I gradually made them faster and added to their ranks, and then I turned them into mobile gun turrets by attaching weapons to their shells that automatically fire at the pinatas 

I think this short explanation is enough to tell you what I mean by cozy first, unhinged later. Everything in Kick the Pinata starts out adorable, and it feels like a really fun time, but you eventually come to learn that there is some real darkness hidden beneath the surface of this colorful CRT TV incremental, which really makes the game stand out. 

The roguelite element

Kick the Pinata doesn’t have the roguelite tag on Steam, but it definitely fits the bill for the genre thanks to the upgrades you unlock between runs. During a run, you can exchange some candy for Hammers, and those Hammers can then be used to uncover furniture in a deceptively delightful pixel art house. 

These upgrades boost how hard you hit, how much damage your turtle turrets and flying saw blades (yes, those exist too) do, and how much your candy is worth. You can also unlock the chance for special types of pinata to appear, such as crowned or ethereal pinatas, which drop the most valuable candy. 

And this really is a roguelite, because the more of these in-between-runs upgrades you unlock, the faster and more chaotic your actual runs become. Instead of doing one damage per swing of the bat and taking a long time to remove a pinata from its rope, you start to one-hit the initial ones. Things get fast and wild… And noisy. The volume in Kick the Pinata is set to 50% by default, but I recommend turning it down to around 20%, especially if you plan on wearing headphones. 

In the end, Kick the Pinata became an idle game that I left running in windowed mode in the background, because the final upgrade in a run costs 666,666 candy, and I wanted to know what it did. My waiting was rewarded with over 10,000 Hammers, allowing me to unlock the final upgrade at the house. 

I have no idea where we go from here

That final upgrade is… dark. While most of the other upgrades at the house are clearly labeled and understandable, this one is simply called “One More Pinata.” Well, it turns out that unlocking this upgrade ends the game by having one of the little people at the house presumably hang themselves from the tree. You never get to see it, but the subtext is there. 

And the thing is, I have no idea where Scarpato intends to take Kick the Pinata beyond the point at which the demo ends. I’m hoping there will be new levels with new and hardier pinatas that require additional upgrades. Maybe more weapons, or more homes to explore and gradually unlock with earned Hammers. 

Either way, I can’t wait to see what the developer comes up with when Kick the Pinata gets its full release, which is happening on November 12, 2026. Until then, you can go and enjoy the chaos of the demo on Steam.