Return to Hallownest is a homage to my advanced pinbox design Into Hallownest. I feel that after my pinbox I did not use enough theming to really classify it as a game that represents my favorite video game. It is based on the game Hollow Knight and therefore I tried to play on the different aspects of the game. Some of these aspects are the boss fights, the sword, and the art style.
A big part of this game was the idea of having multiple levels of play. As you can code with this machine, I felt that I could really bring it to the next level by adding different goals other than just keeping your ball alive. To do this I wanted to portray a boss fight. In Hollow Knight you shouldn’t just run up and try to fight every boss as soon as possible. To have a good chance you need to prepare, upgrade your nail, explore and get money, and equip charms. Some bosses even require you to defeat other bosses before you can even see them. All these aspects were something I felt I could use to make my game better.
My original design was very rough due to me wanting to base it off two other machines. So above you can see my rough draft. They gray shapes are more general geometry with the ovals being flippers, and the curved shape near the top being a ramp. The blue circles are bumpers, and the orange rectangles are different targets. I plan to use a variety of objects to complete my goals such as triggers and drop targets. I plan to use drop targets for charms in front of the ramps, and triggers to signify the minibosses.
The scoring of this game is going to be minimal with a focus on how quickly the player will be able to complete the goal and with the minimum amount of balls. The idea I plan to have is a multiplier that gets reduced base on time, and the balls affect the score linearly.
The biggest issue I feel I will face is making the goals completable in a timely manner. This may occur because if I want to have all these goals, if one goal is placed in a bad spot, it could delay the entire game. Pinball is never fun if you must do one small thing that is virtually impossible in order to proceed. Therefore, it will have to take a lot of testing to make the game feel and play well.