David Kim – Playing with Pinball

For my Pinbox Pinball table, I initially wanted to do a magic/wizard-themed pinball table, as the idea of a “Magic Missile Multiball” mechanic sounded really cool. However, as many others had a similar theme they wanted to execute, I decided to pivot to a more general medieval theme; one that would keep the era the same, just with a different overall theme. As such, I went with a castle siege.

Design

The main thing I wanted to implement was a central castle that would be the fastest way to “win” the game. You could only get in via using a ramp to launch your ball into the castle. Alongside that would be supporting forces to defend that castle, all of varying degrees of strength.

The initial concept for the table layout.

The overall playing field was designed to represent the kind of field a castle would be in, complete with a moat to deter any ground invasion.

To fit the theme of trying to attack the castle, I designed the launcher track to have a cannon motif. It’s most likely not 100% era accurate, but I think it works much better than having a top-down view of a trebuchet or catapult.

When it came to building the castle itself, I admittedly had a lack of foresight into the design process; as a result, launching a ball up the ramp into the castle was extremely difficult. Because of this, I decided that getting a single ball in the castle, under any circumstance (whether actually using the ramp or some sort of crazy bumper shenaniganery), would result in an instant total victory. Additionally, I included a crown motif to represent the significance of attacking the castle; with the fall of the castle, the kingdom would fall too.

Around the castle were the bumpers representing the defending forces. Because of how I placed the castle, it was harder to hit the bumpers towards the top of the table (aside from the initial launch of the ball); as such, I made bumpers towards the top of the layout (i.e. “behind” the castle) represent more points. Additionally, I had a very basic score rating based on the amount of points someone got before the game was over, representing how successful your “attack” on the castle was.

The full final table, with rules, scoring, and ranking.

Playtesting and Feedback

Feedback for Storm the Castle! was overall positive. Many people compared shooting balls toward the castle to playing a carnival game; a bit ironic, seeing as my bagatelle table was Skee-Ball, which would fall under similar circles. (Maybe this is a calling for me to design carnival games?)

The main things people praised were:

The visual presentation of the board itself.
- This came as a huge relief for me, as that was easily the most time-consuming part.
- I feel like I might’ve exhausted some of those paint markers entirely…
The use of the plastic chip stacks to represent the bumpers/enemy forces.

The castle was both a point of praise and a point of criticism. While everyone loved the design concept for it, a good amount of people found it placed awkwardly (i.e. too close to the flippers) or hard to play around. Lots of people enjoyed the idea of going for the castle, while others called it too prominent and luck-based.

Other points of criticism included:

Lack of a topper with the game’s name.
- This would’ve been a lot easier to deal with if I hadn’t already used the included one for the Skee-Balltelle.
Balls could get stuck in the launcher, as the exit path was a bit too narrow.
Balls launching off of the table, mainly due to an unintended lip in the ramp.

I’m planning on revising this layout in Visual Pinball, since I think the core idea is still fun and could be improved. What I plan on doing is:

Move the castle a bit back and have all the bumpers forward, that way it seems more akin to attacking an opposing force.
Add some sort of visual representation for each of the troop types (infantry, cavalry, artillery), perhaps with a little cutout drawing on top/in front of each bumper.
Change how the castle works. I can’t exactly keep the balls stuck in a hole in Visual Pinball, since that’ll result in a softlock. I’ll most likely make the castle a walled-off kicker with a rail being the only way to get into it, but we’ll see once I get started on getting this together.

In the end, while there were a few issues that prevented Storm the Castle! from being the absolute best it could be, I’m satisfied with how the Pinbox turned out. I’m glad I could keep the idea intact throughout the design process, and the end result, while not perfect, was still a fun prototype; it gave me the exact steps to take for making it in Visual Pinball.

Inspiration and Design

When the class was first covering the concept of bagatelle, I noted a lot of emphasis on luck and skill. That was the primary reason I decided to base my Pinbox bagatelle design on Skee-Ball; it’s a familiar test of consistency with a bit of luck involved.

The initial design of the bagatelle board.

My initial idea was to essentially fully adapt a board to be like that of a Skee-Ball table; Have the same form of grouped scoring areas and have people shoot 9 balls, but adjust the scoring regions to follow how bagatelle balls are launched (i.e. up and around from the side rather than just straight below in your typical skee-ball machine).

A few problems arose as I tried to do this:

There would be no holes in which the balls would fall into and return to the player.

The smaller scoring regions (50, 100) would only fit one ball at most, given my initial size drafts.

Following a Skee-Ball layout 1:1 (i.e. having the 100 region off to the side) resulted in being able to score 100s into a trivial task of just launching with as much force as possible.

The revised design for the bagatelle board that would essentially become the final design.

Revisions

These were the things I did in order to fix my initial tests:

Remove the 100 scoring region entirely.

Since this resulted in a LOT of overshooting, I added some pins at the end of the launcher’s trajectory to allow scoring to be a bit more consistent.

Provide a point bonus to compensate for being unable to fill other regions. If you managed to get a ball in every scoring region, you would get an extra 30 points.

I did this so that if you get one ball in every region, then scored 30 for the rest, you would get a total of 300 points. This is the exact same as scoring one ball in the 50 and 40 regions and then scoring 30 in the rest.
It was designed to emphasize that test of luck, skill, or consistency.
- If you want to be technical, this mechanic makes it more like Fascination, but since this mechanic is optional, I’m still insisting on calling it Skee-Ball.

Feedback and Postmortem

Playtesting feedback went about as well as I had anticipated; the main points of criticism came from how scoring was designed (more specifically, its wording) and its overall visual presentation (or lack thereof.)

Turns out the 30 point bonus I tried to implement was worded a bit too ambiguously; I should’ve stated that at least one ball in each region would’ve provided the bonus.

Additionally, the lack of eye-catching visuals was just entirely an issue on my part. I could’ve definitely refined how the game looked, but with how I drafted the initial project, I backed myself into a wall and couldn’t give the game the visual flourish it desperately needed.

One thing I should’ve anticipated was people having issues with having all 9 balls. Between play sessions, balls would get stuck in the return chute; this resulted in people not knowing that all 9 balls were actually there, and as a result I had a lot of feedback regarding that. It sucked, because I had thought I dealt with this problem while testing it on my own, but it seems it still persisted despite my best efforts.

Another piece of feedback was that it seemed a bit too easy; the balls bouncing off the pins at the end of the trajectory made things too consistent for some people. To an extent I understand this point, but I also choose to believe that the person who said this just managed to master the game better than I did, since I don’t think I could keep things that consistent throughout my numerous tests while prototyping.

If I went back and revised things, what I would focus on would be the following:

Visual polish, obviously. The game was very visually basic and on a paper white background.

I’d try to make the colors more akin to a real Skee-Ball machine, but I’d first need to find a consistent color scheme for it, because even the official machines seem to lack that.
I’d also like to make the marquee a bit better. I don’t think I did a bad job at emulating the Skee-Ball typeface when making the one I currently have, but it just lacked color.

Using holes for the scoring regions. This would eliminate the need for 9 balls and also make it so scoring in the same region multiple times was possible.

Trying to actually implement a 100 point scoring region. The game’s score is woefully small because of the limitations of the current board, and the game didn’t feel quite right without the high-risk, high-reward that the 100 hole provides. I’d have to spend a lot more time in prototyping to figure out where it would work best.