Justin Beardsly – Playing with Pinball

Initial Design Ideas

Having a recent obsession with playing GamePigeon’s 8-Ball for iMessage, I knew almost right away that I wanted to theme my pinball game around the actual game of 8-ball as a whole. I have a lot of fun competing with people over the digital version on iMessage, and I also very much enjoy playing it in real life whenever I have the opportunity to. I thought that combining 8-ball and pinball would make for a very unique kind of game.

Image credits: https://depositphotos.com/photo/billiard-table-31572899.html

While initially planning the game, I was going to name it “Pinbilliards“. I did this because I thought that combining the names of the two games would make for a fun title. In order to create a playfield that resembled a pool table, I planned to incorporate a couple of different features, such as:

Bumpers that represent different billiards
Holes that represent the pockets in a pool table
Flippers that resemble pool cues

Trying to think of a way to mix the two games together was a bit of a challenge, but I figured out a way that I think put a different kind of spin on both of the games. The original ruleset for Pin-8-Ball revolved around the player’s ball having its own identity. The identity of the ball would change throughout the game, and the identities that it could have all resembled existing billiards from the actual game of 8-ball. Along with the ball of the player, each bumper also had an identity resembling that of an existing billiard. There would be one bumper for each billiard that has a number. During play, the player’s ball would start as the cue ball after launch and then change its identity to whatever the identity of its most previously hit bumper was. This would happen continuously until the ball went out of play. The player would also receive an assignment: solids or stripes. This assignment was determined by the very first solid or striped bumper that was hit by the player, and it would remain with them for the rest of the game. In order to score, the player would have to get the ball into one of the six holes on the playfield, which would then affect the game depending on what the ball’s identity was when it went out of play. The effects were as follows:

Matches player’s assigned type: Score points and launch again
Matches type not assigned to player: Subtract points from score and launch again
Cue ball: End game
8 ball: Double current score and end game

At this point in designing the game, I notably forgot to determine what would happen if the ball fell to the bottom of the board, past the flippers.

Initial Design

After some planning and beginning to physically build Pin-8-Ball, there were some elements of my original plan that I realized I was going to have to change.

Firstly, in order to make the playfield really look like a pool table, I decided that I’d have to decrease its size and build 3-dimensional walls to place inside of it. This also meant that the ball would have to be spit out of the walls somewhere on the board. I was a little bit worried about making the choice to make the playfield smaller, but I decided to commit to it with hopes that it’d make the eventual final game much more immersive.

After making the playfield smaller, I also realized that I’d have to decrease the amount of bumpers on the playfield. It was already too crowded to begin with, so I decided to decrease the amount of bumpers that would be on the playfield from 15 to 7. This left the game having 3 solid bumpers, 3 striped bumpers, and 1 8 ball bumper. I chose to use billiards number 1, 4, and 7 for the solid bumpers and 9, 12, and 15 for the striped bumpers. I decided upon these ones because they were at even intervals from each other, but they did not have any real significance in accordance with Pin-8-Ball.

Finally, I decided to try and clarify the rules a bit while writing them down on paper. In doing this, I added actual score values, determined what would happen if the ball fell to the bottom of the board, and started referring to the ball’s “identity” as its “type”. It was at this point that I also changed the name of the game from “Pinbilliards” to “Pin-8-Ball“. I decided to change the name because I thought that it both sounded better and would make game’s the theme more obvious.

The prototype’s rule card reads as follows:

Your ball changes as you play!
- It starts as the cue ball
- It transforms on contact with a bumper into whatever kind of ball it is labelled with
You will have a ball type – stripes or solids
- This is determined by the first bumper you hit that isn’t the 8 ball
- Solids: 1, 4, 7; Stripes: 9, 12, 15
Score is determined by what type your ball is when it goes into a hole

At the bottom of the rule card, I made a small table that listed what happened depending on the player’s ball’s type when it went into a hole:

Matches your type: +100, shoot again

Does not match your type: -50, shoot again

8 ball: Double your score, end game

Cue ball: End game

Ball falls to bottom of board: -50, shoot again

Various angles of the initial physical design of *Pin-8-Ball*

Playtest Results

After playtesting, the I learned that Pin-8-Ball needed some work to be done. Although there was positive reception regarding the theming of the game, the playertesters struggled both with actually playing the game and with understanding the rules.

A lot of the playtesters reported that their ball would go into the holes on the playboard way too easily, making it so that they didn’t actually get an opportunity to play the game much. Some also noted that it would immediately hit the 9 bumper a lot of the time, and there were a lot of reports of the ball getting stuck on either the 4 or 12 bumpers. There were also some low ratings on the clarity of the rules as well, and according to one playtester, they did not convey how the 8 ball works well enough. On top of this, some playtesters were questioning if the numbers on the bumpers had any significance.

Final Design

Using the feedback I received, I started work on making changes to Pin-8-Ball while also giving it a presentable appearance.

In order to make the game more playable, I added 4 more bumpers (2 solid, 2 striped) to the playfield, particularly around some of the holes. This increased the bumper count from 7 to 11. I also moved the ones that were causing the ball to get stuck and applied pins to the playboard in other areas where it could get stuck.

I decided to try and make the rules more clear by writing a newly reworded card in addition to a separate one that contains the scoring information. I also made a small change to the rules, that being that the player now chooses whether their type is solids or stripes prior to starting their game. The final rules card reads:

Before you play: Pick SOLIDS or STRIPES
Your ball will represent the different billiards found in 8-ball! It will change what it represents to the type of the last bumper that it hit.
Immediately after launch, your ball is the cue ball.
There are 3 types of bumpers: SOLIDS, STRIPES, and 8-BALL.
When your ball goes into a hole, the game will be affected based on what your ball’s type was. Try to pocket it when it’s your chosen type.
Refer to the SCORING GUIDE after pocketing a ball.

The new scoring guide reads:

BALL TYPE	EFFECT ON GAME
Your type	+100 score; shoot again
Not your type	-50 score; shoot again
Cue ball	No effect on score; end game
8-ball	Double your score; end game

The scoring guide also has a note at the bottom regarding the ball falling to the bottom of the board, which reads: “If your ball goes out of play by falling to the bottom of the board, subtract 50 from your score and shoot again, regardless of type.”

Visually, I was planning on changing the game a lot.

One of the visual upgrades that I made to the game was that I painted the bumpers to look like the billiards that they represent. During the process of painting them, I decided not to give any of them, except the 8 ball, their respective numbers in order to avoid the confusion regarding their significance that was noted during the playtest. Solid bumpers were painted with solid colors with a white circle on top, while striped bumpers were painted with white stripes on their tops and bottoms in addition to the base color and white circle. The 8 ball was painted like a black solid bumper, but I also wrote an “8” on its white circle.

Another visual change that I made was that I gave the playfield a complete makeover. Using a combination of tape, construction paper, and paint, I made the entire playfield green, just like a typical pool table. Additionally, I gave the walls a paint job so that they’d represent the edges of a pool table and painted the flippers to look like pool cues.

Finally, some minor visual changes that I also made include the addition of a header for the game so that it could be displayed and identified more easily and decoration for the rules cards.

Various angles of the final physical design of *Pin-8-Ball*

Moving Forward With Visual Pinball

Looking ahead at developing a visual version of Pin-8-Ball, I don’t think that I’ll have to make many changes to the game in general. I think that the theme and rules can be executed even better in a digital environment, so I want to proceed with making a virtual version of Pin-8-Ball by sticking with most of what’s included in the physical version. Because of this, I only plan to change a few things.

One change that I am going to make regards tracking the most previous bumper hit. One of the biggest concerns that playtesters had with Pin-8-Ball was how difficult it was to keep track of what the last bumper that they hit was. In Visual Pinball, I plan to include a backboard in the game which will automatically track and display this for players.

I also might have to change the position of the bumpers on the playfield while translating Pin-8-Ball to a digital environment. The bumpers that exist in the physical version of Pin-8-Ball aren’t super bouncy because they are made out of cardboard, so I imagine that having bouncy bumpers in the digital version can potentially change up how the game plays and feels. Because of this, I plan to do a lot of testing with both bumper positions and how bouncy they are while building the virtual game.

Final Thoughts

After executing a second playtest, I learned that a lot of players enjoyed the changes that I made, particularly the visual overhaul. There were a few lasting issues, and some new, such as continued difficulty understanding the rules, new spots where the ball can get stuck, and it being a bit difficult to actually pocket the ball while it is the cue ball or 8 ball to end the game, but I feel as though the final version is a major improvement in comparison to the prototype.

This was a fun project to work on, and I had a great time building it. Just like with my bagatelle game, Skitelle, I am happy to say that I’m proud of my creation!

Initial Design Ideas

While brainstorming ideas for what I would make a bagatelle game about, I focused on the aspect of freely moving down a slope and came upon the idea of downhill skiing. Although I’m not a skier myself, I’ve always thought that it looks fun and I want to try it one day. I thought that downhill skiing would be a perfect theme for a bagatelle game since both skiers and the ball go from the top of a slope and head toward the bottom of it.

Image credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiing

I wanted my bagatelle game to look just like a piste. In order to accomplish this, I centered the features of my game around what one might actually find at one. The main features that I planned are as follows:

The ball which represents the skier themself
Pins scattered throughout the board that represent trees
Pockets that represent runouts
A ramp
An area only accessible via the ramp that represents a landing zone

In the initial plan for my bagatelle game, the rules allowed for a player to shoot 8 balls, one at a time. The way to score points was to land the ball into any of the unoccupied pockets, which would yield its labelled point value. The most rewarding pocket was blocked off, so the only way to score from it was to get the ball to catch air over the ramp so that it could land inside of it. Each pocket could only have one ball in it at a time, and if they were all full before each ball was used by the player, then each unused ball would automatically be converted to an additional 200 points for the player. If the player were to completely miss all of the pockets with a ball, then it would yield no reward and did not grant an additional attempt.

Initial Design

As I actually started building Skitelle, I noticed that I was going to have to change a few aspects of it.

Prior to starting construction, I realized that the way that I had laid out the pins would end up making it incredibly hard to score. As a result, I decided to shift some around and remove others. I also decided to make the layout of the pins symmetrical for the sake of consistency.

Additionally, I made the choice to make the pockets out of cardboard walls instead of pins, since using the pins that represented trees for scoring zones made it look like the “skier” was being rewarded for crashing into a group of trees. I also realized that getting into the most valuable pocket with the ramp would be virtually impossible this way, so I decided to replace this pocket with a “TRICK LANDING” zone. This zone encompassed much more area than the original pocket, and now also utilized cardboard walls instead of pins. Still only accessible via the ramp, the new “TRICK LANDING” zone was designed to offer much more forgiveness for players who were aiming to make a “trick landing”.

Another change that I made was straightening out the base and top of the ramp and giving it a consistent width entirely. I made this choice because I did not have the skills or materials necessary to warp cardboard into such a precise shape.

Finally, I also chose to change up a few of the rules a bit. Instead of giving the player 8 balls, I decided that players would play in “sessions” instead, where they chose how many balls they got to shoot, at the price of 10 cents per ball. The other rule that I changed was that I removed the score zone exclusivity limit for the “TRICK LANDING” zone. By doing this, I ensured that Skitelle no longer had a limit to what the highest score possible was.

Various angles of the initial physical design of *Skitelle*

Playtest Results

After some playtesting on the behalf of others in my class, I learned that majority of the playtesters liked the theme that I’d picked out for the game, and that they also thought the rules were conveyed to them clearly.

I also learned, however, that there were quite a few flaws that I needed to work on. The general consensus about this version of Skitelle was that it was too hard, for a variety of reasons. Players had difficulty scoring because of the small size of the pockets, and the ramp was not at a feasible angle to make a “trick landing” possible. Players also noted that it was very difficult to aim the ball because there were no guide walls at the top of the machine or by the launcher.

Final Design

As a result of playtesting and trying Skitelle myself, I made even more changes to accommodate for the issues that were discovered.

I firstly added a guide wall that ran parallel to the side walls of the machine so that balls would go straight after being launched. In addition to this wall, I added another one at a slant by the top right corner of the machine to direct launched balls to the left. I decided to add these walls to the machine to make the aiming experience much more consistent for players.

To tackle the “TRICK LANDING” issue, I made two modifications. The first change that I made was that I lowered the angle that the ramp stood at. I decided to do this because the harsh angle that it stood at before was part of the reason as to why making a “trick landing” was impossible. After lowering the intensity of the ramp’s angle, the ball was now able to actually roll over it, but it still could not catch air. Because it couldn’t catch air, I made the second change: extending the walls of the “TRICK LANDING” zone to the edge of the ramp. This change made it so that the ball only had to roll over the ramp, in the right spot, to make a “trick landing”. With this, there was no way for making a “trick landing” to be impossible anymore.

I also once again changed up the rules for the final version of Skitelle. I reverted the change to how to obtain balls and made the starting ball count 8 balls again. Additionally, I made it so that if a “trick landing” was made, the player would be granted an additional 2 balls on top of the points that they earned. I did this because I think that the monetization on the balls was too harsh in the previous ruleset, and it promoted paying to get high scores. Although playtesters did not have to pay to play, I could imagine that it would’ve been a frustrating system to deal with for them regardless. I also decided to make “trick landings” more rewarding because despite the changes I made to the ramp and zone, they were still difficult to perform. By granting an additional 2 balls for making a “trick landing”, I was able to maintain the lack of a highest score possible while also being able to reward players with an opportunity to play for longer.

Various angles of the final physical design of *Skitelle*

Final Thoughts

After doing some playtesting with the final version of Skitelle, I came to find that players generally appreciated the improvements. There were certainly still issues with the game, such as the small score pockets, but players were excited to be able to make trick landings, and, although it was still difficult, the game felt a lot more balanced than it did before.

My experience making my own bagatelle game has been quite the journey, and I learned a lot about it along the way. I had a great time designing and building Skitelle, and I’m glad to say that I am proud of what I created!