I found this machine was somewhat tedious to build. once I had the basic Pinbox set up, I spent most of the time slightly moving pins and play testing. A lot of the time was me trying to collect data and probability on how many tries it would take to successfully make the marble into a spot. Overall though, I thought it was a fun experience to build this machine. It was very satisfying to have a finished machine on Tuesday, and I think I’d like to spruce up my machine based on feedback I got on Tuesday.
I received a lot of good feedback on this machine during the playtest. People generally liked how I included the theme in the machine, but a few people suggested ways I could include more from the Hellraiser franchise (ie; using the cube from Hellraiser one as the drain, other cenobites on the back and sided boards etc). The piece of feedback I received the most was the pin placement around the eyes. Basically, it’s very hard to get the ball there and there’s a few pins around the eyes that look like they’re close enough to catch the ball, but they’re just a little bit longer. This was very frustrating for a lot of people, so after the playtest I changed the pins layout to be close enough to catch the ball.
Another piece of feedback I got is that some players wanted for their to be more for players to interact with on the playfield. I think adding some additional obstacle/mechanic other than the pins would help with playability and make the game more interesting. It’d be a challenge to do this while keeping the current theming, but I think it’d be worth finding a solution. I think that’s the thing I’d change if I were to make this machine again. While I like the simplicity of just the pins, I found the other Bagatelle machines with more features/rules/mechanics to be incredibly fun to play and I kept wanting to return to.
The only source I used was the 1987 Hellraiser poster which is where I got the pinhead art from.