Let’s talk about my Bagatelle Project!
Initial Concepts
I was inspired by old school depictions of space travel and pulpy adventure serials. I knew I wanted to something in that style. I started thinking about how a Bagatelle, something made in an era before flippers and before heavy graphics, would showcase the theme of space.
(INSPIRATIONS: Microsoft 3D Pinball Space Cadet, Pulp Sci-Fi Serials)
With that in mind, I drafted up my first design!
I thought that by making it so launching the ball and having it “Land” on planets for points could be very fun! Since you don’t have a lot of control over the ball, the hard part became designing and placing objects on the board to help guide the ball without feeling like there wasn’t any room for chance.
Building The Machine
Here’s where we were at just before I started play testing. We can see that there’s three ‘Planets’ which 500 or 1000 points each. I decided that since the kit came with 3 marbles, I would make it so that you had three “attempts” to land a spaceship on one of the planets.
Final Product
After play testing, I noticed a few issues so I pivoted. I added a FREE BALL if you launched the ball into the Black Hole since the way that the cardboard is angled has it so there’s a chance it lands in there on the right shot.
I also adjusted the pins and cardboard on the top part of the machine since stuff wasn’t slowing down enough to land on one of the planets.
Fin
This project was really fun! If I had more time I think I would’ve messed with the overall design a *little* more just since I didn’t really like how they were spaced out (hah). But I liked the design constraints that a Bagatelle comes with, I feel like you can make something more interesting with it because of that.