Gameplay
How fun/engaging/challenging the game's mechanics are and how well they support the intended experience.
- The core idea of combining pinball with rogue-lite is really fun and I immediately experienced the satisfaction of different upgrades being synergistic.
- The pinball level seemed a little cramped and full of bouncers for the size and speed of the ball. It felt like there were a number of instances where the ball is bounced toward the hole so fast it becomes impossible to react or anticipate.
- Unfortunately I ran into a number of bugs that I could only figure out how to fix by fully resetting the game:
- No new balls spawn at level start.
- The plunger stops working.
- The wall to the plunger doesn’t disappear when the active ball is dropped.
- The ‘next level’ and ‘shop’ buttons don’t appear after last ball is lost.
- Resetting is obviously not desirable when a core mechanic is rogue-lite progression, and so I’ve only fully finished one run.
Presentation
Quality of the visuals, audio and general juiciness.
- “Ka-bum” is a genuinely funny voice line for dropping a ball without being too much and becoming annoying in the long run.
- The picture-in-picture tracking the ball is a good addition that makes the movement of the ball feel much more visceral and powerful.
- The art style isn’t entirely pixels and pixel sizes relative to each other are inconsistent, hurting the visual cohesion of the game. Especially UI buttons with text look out of place.
- The shop has a basic greyed-out effect for items that are too expensive, but it’s not very clear when a lot of the game uses grey already, so more clear UI borders and effects would help.
- The art for the shop, items and score screen are all quite good with shading and high amounts of detail.
- Notably absent is a soundtrack, because all other parts of the game have reactive and satisfying sounds, especially the pitch shifting upwards as the score streak increases is a great feature.
Experience
How well any intended emotions, themes, narrative, atmosphere, or fantasy are conveyed.
- The game comes across as a theme of hell and damnation combined with gambling and the wild west. It’s a fun combination that comes with a bunch of built-in atmosphere.
- The way a burning glow emits from the hole and fires spew up when a ball is dropped both evoke falling into hell and really support the theme.
- Having the shop look like a saloon and selling items that look like smokes and similar likewise supports a the overall theme.
Cohesion
How well the gameplay, presentation, and experience support each other.
- Gameplay seems like the clear focus, and barring errors that lock progress, it has a very strong experience built up already. With polish and additional levels, I could see myself playing this for a while, even though I do not normally play pinball games.
- While the quality and consistency of art and UI is noticeably weaker than the rest of the game, the theming is impressively cohesive and clear with everything working together to sell a compelling fantasy.
- With pinball already having an association with bars and gambling establishments, the theming feels very appropriate and relevant to pinball, rather than a random visual theme thrown onto unrelated gameplay.