Pinball Arcade Table Thing

2024-10-06

Anyone who's had a conversation with me this year knows I've been obsessed with Pinball; digital versions specifically. , I have also been working on a pinball game. It's a concept I've been kicking around my head for a while: A metroidvania inside a human body, played entirely through pinball mechanics. I will probably write something about that game in more detail in the future so I won't spend too much time on it here; all you have to know for now is that making pinball feel good is hard.

The mechanics themselves are not that bad. Just some physics objects with the right friction and rotation speed to launch the ball naturally. Easy peazy. But a physics simulation is not fun to play. Mario doesn't feel so good to control because he moves realistically, but because he was designed to be. I have no interest in making my pinball game realistic - other than on the shallow "ball behaves like ball" level - I want it to feel fun to play.

When Super Mario 64 was being developed, the team spent the first year polishing Mario's movement in a playground area so they could design the game around his abilities. Since I decided to take a page off their book, I'm working on a little playground area too: A table hockey-meets-pinball game that I want to finish before we throw a Halloween party. This isn't just a digital game either, I'm working with my roommate to make a physical cabinet for it with arcade buttons and everything.

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