17:46like but you as the customer look at all the value you're getting hundreds of pounds of it so after we've tied in all of the music the sound effects these amazing mechanism designs with wonderful shots in between them we have to get down to the modes that interact with all these shots all these mechanisms and I had an absolutely wonderful time co-writing many of the rules for this game with Hilton Jones who also worked with us on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre very fond memories of sitting on Ben's cat hair covered couch together starting at the top of the modes and working our way down through many of them just wonderful collaboration from everybody on the team as a whole so evil dead pinball is based on the first two movies in the Evil Dead franchise Evil Dead dead and Evil Dead 2 colon dead by dawn so in the game you are playing as Ash although Ash will speak to you also in the third person he be like hey get the let out stuff like that we basically think that you are ash but then in the call outs what we're going to do is we're going to have the professor like the disembodied tape recorder voice like your salvation lies there up the left ramp you know the game will kind of tell you what to do then Ash usually reacts to what you did like hey get a move on or you know insulting deadites and whatnot so yeah you are ash but he also talks to you in the third person so the game kind of does break the fourth wall but it all seems to fit pretty well although it is important that you know like you know who is the player everybody has their favorite movie from the Evil Dead franchise mine happens to be the first one I like that real scary stuff but uh at the start of the game you have the choice to select which movies modes you wish to play Evil Dead 1 Evil Dead 2 and then you hit the action button to select and then on the back box which kind of looks like a juke box I think it's kind of cool with like the the eight modes the ones on the left are from the first movie and the four on the right are from the second movie and so once you lock into one you need to complete those four modes and then once you do complete the four modes of one movie then it will switch to the next movie on top of that though we still have all these very Dynamic multiballs that can stack on top of that you know deadite attacks and Boomstick multiball and the cabin multiball so then for the modes themselves divided up into the two movies we need to think of okay what are the key points of the movies what are things that people remember ashing and his hand chopped off people running through the woods old mobiles driving through the woods like we wanted to base it off the main things one of the most important things to me in this game is having all of the different elements come together to really make it feel like the machine is actually alive just how the items in the Evil Dead universe come alive one of the most iconic scenes from the entire franchise comes from the second movie where the cabin starts to come alive and laugh at Ash this is an experience that I really wanted to make sure we got into the machine because it is the most evil dead thing to me it just perfectly encapsulates everything that's going on in the series of Ash losing his mind so when the cabin's coming alive you know that deer head looks at him it's laughing the lamp is bobbing up and down we wanted the pinball machine to do this too the lift ramp is going to start opening and laughing at you saying things to you as well as the Cellar Door the pop bumpers are going off the hand is moving the game is really coming alive while you're playing it and holding it and in the insanity mode as you interact with the Necronomicon you're going insane you hit that Insanity mode the game comes alive you have to shut it all off you have to calm it all down and get it to stop by hitting those items to get them to stop laughing and doing things to you my favorite mode currently in the game is deadite multiball where we have these two awesome deadites that are popping up and essentially blocking your path at the jackpot so you are trying to constantly knock them down and collect the jackpots behind them and they're going to keep rising up from the grave and keep blocking your path it's super interactive and a good use of the mechs and how we're able to incorporate those awesome mechs that are in this game into the rules deadites the Evil Dead they're all very tricky and Linda in the game she's going to be trying to trick the player all the time you have Ash there to help you but she'll be saying things like ash the ball save is on the ball save's going to turn on it's not on if you drain they got you so the deadites are going to be tricking you the Necronomicon is going to be tricking you everything in this game's coming alive and giving you that full insanity experience of the evil dead but then we also have other sub Wizards based off some of the larger moments in the movie so like an Evil Dead 2 and he fights Henrietta in the basement that's its own dedicated multiball there's also a dedicated multiball for when his sister gets possessed in the first movie and then after that we have like candarian demon sub Wizards and then of course the wizard wizard mode but who knows what that is you have multiple wizard modes mini wizard modes movie modes multiballs specific to objects in the game character multiballs Insanity modes there's there's a lot to be doing in this game when you're playing this game and going through the modes you're going to want to look for the main objectives which are typically indicated by white arrows or yellow which is what I tend to use because you know there's color codes that people expect you know like red for jackpot green for locks but usually in most of my modes I also have um secondary and tertiary objectives where it's like okay well while you're doing phase one of the mode because I love doing phases while you're doing phase one if you do this other action you can build the jackpot value for phase three or while you're in phase two if you build some other value then you can enable something for phase three so that's that's what I try to do typically most of the modes have at least two phases and some of them have three some of them have four one of the modes in each of the movies is a little bit more deeper and involved because I like doing like deep rules because it's like it's like you're going through a story right and I think it's fun like instead of just like points points points points points like you should if you know you're adapting a movie which is a story The Rules should follow that story like this happens then this happens then this happens that's a story rather than just jackpot jackpot jackpot jackpot so when I when I design the rules I'm okay well let's look at the movie okay like so we're going to take this scene let's break it up okay here's this section like for instance like when uh hello lover like when Linda comes out of the grave and she's dancing okay so we have a dancing section we have a she's biting on your hand section and then we have a your fighting her in the Woodshed with the chainsaw section phase one two 3 and then as you're going through those phases you can do again ancillary actions that can build up to the final value so I like to do that because then you have multiple vectors of scoring so there's always a way for you to do better in a mode because you can do things faster or you can take a risk versus a a quick reward which I guess would also be risk reward I like to do it so it's like okay well you can shoot something that's very easy in the mode like oh you do something blah blah blah blah blah and then the trapo opens oh so obviously this is my next action to like move on to the next phase but then you've got okay you got 10 seconds right but then oh what's these little things like these little lures on the side well if I risk my time and go for those I can build up a value when get to the next phase but I better hurry up and get in there within the 10 seconds to get to that next phase so yeah like timed risk reward I think is really cool so often you have a code name when you're working on a pinball project so people can't drive by your window and look inside and say oh H Evil Dead pinball they're probably making Barbie the code name I came up with was mean trees and I drew a mean tree there so there's three reasons for that so one there's mean trees in Evil Dead and even I was reading the Evil Dead companion book written back in the day and one of their trees that they had on set they called the mean tree the other reason uh my old videographer for when I did YouTube he always had this idea he wanted to make a video game called mean trees I don't know why like this completely random thing so we would always just talk about it oh um how about mean trees and the other reason is mean trees can be abbreviated to Mt so the reason I like that is um when I was developing Texas Chainsaw Massacre I had a folder on my quick access called like TCM AV and I made YouTube videos from my own personal Channel and that folder was clearly visible so people would either think okay they're either doing Texas Chainsaw Massacre or maybe that's where he puts his Turner Classic Movies so so I I was like okay if somehow a screen cap of my Windows Explorer gets out all they see is game development Mt what what is Mt so look forward plain mean trees oh and this is also my uh my rule book I wrote it in my diary so I didn't have to remember so I like to I like to like draw out maps of the Playfield on the left and then I can color code the shots and then I jot down notes on the right this mode obviously doesn't have a lot of notes then of course it just goes all into code but uh yeah I just I just do that for every page that's how I map things out so the first thing you see when you walk up to a pinball machine is the artwork of course and this game has some very eye grabbing artwork done by none other than Christopher franie himself well my experience with Evil Dead uh actually is interesting because Bruce Campbell the star of the movie and Sam Ry the director and Robert tamper the producer are all from Michigan and I worked with them before and a movie they did right after Evil Dead called crime wave I did some set design and set construction for them uh here in Michigan as well and not only not only that but I grew up with evil dead I love horror movies I love creature features Saturday afternoon spook shows and uh so I've course grew up with evil dead it's been a dream team of mine to work on and when spooky came along and said hey we're doing Evil Dead what do you think I'm like I'm on it actually bug will tell a story about how I knew that they were making Evil Dead Before anyone else did and I went up to them and I said you need to call me and uh and that's how I got the job they did call me as far as art directing this project I've been in licensing for probably 25 30 years not specifically with pinball but um so when we sat down and we talked about it I talked about it with bug and we talked about a direction uh I know exactly where to go one thing that's really cool too is just the elevated ability of Christopher franie so he he's just so technically good at pinball he doesn't just you can have a pin you can have an artist but it doesn't mean it's a pinball artist Chris is actually a technically good pinball artist he knows how to put on there and it just makes the whole game look more professional and more well done physically what a great over-the-top property to work for for pinball I mean it's so much fun to draw all of these creatures and things uh monsters and the settings and the you know creating a mood obviously you have to create a mood with artwork and um Evil Dead was just um yeah it was everything I hoped it would be when I placed it in my dream thing them list yeah mood on a pinball machine is an interesting thing because you want people to feel the license that you're working with but at the same time you can't make like you know Evil Dead takes place at night takes place in the forest I can't just have a black forest all over the Playfield you know it has to be colorful and exciting how do you handle that what colors do you choose like I said I want to set a mood it can't just you can't just rely on the sound you can't rely on the visuals as they say world underglass so yeah I want you to really feel Evil Dead when you're playing this game but I want it to be exciting I want it to be dramatic I want it to be colorful but at the same time you know you got to follow rules you got to you got to fit this in that little Notch that says Evil Dead the style I have and what I usually use in pinball is a very realistic sort of style and being that Evil Dead has been comic books from time to time but it's not known for being a comic book it didn't start off as a comic book it's a real liveaction horror movie so it needed a style like that something that's o overly stylized or semi cartoony or comic Booky wouldn't really fit this project it had to have realism and and teeth you know that would really match the uh the look of the film so as far as what's appropriate for Evil Dead you can't just bring like an air of realism to it uh you just drawing video captures from the movie and you know let's face it the Evil Dead color palette is boring brown black dark red old crunchy leaves dead wood that doesn't make for a good pinball machine not an exciting pinball machine but you have to keep that you have to hang on to that and then you have to exaggerate that my style while people would say is just Flatout realism is not um there is a lot of stylization that goes in if you look really close you can see it sometimes you don't have to look real hard you know sometimes I make it a little more obvious but I have to bring in a sense of action and excitement and color so a lot of times I could take a you know I've got a photo reference of a shot of ash from Evil Dead part one and add sort of like maybe a light blue or a shark truce or a hot pink backlight that's just lighting up the edges of his hair and all that brings color in keeps the main image true but it also allows me to expand the color palette in ways that aren't is obvious a little more subtle so as far as putting together the complete art package on this project I always start with the back glass because that that leads me to where I'm going to go in all these other Realms side of the backbox cabinet Playfield Plastics interface Etc usually what I do after I do the back glass is we send that in for approval and if that looks good then I know that everything else I'm going to do that planned is going to be accepted so I start rolling on the sides of the back box because that's easy s so to speak has to be nice bookends for the backlash you don't want to repeat anything um but that's going to start bringing you down into the cabinet design from there I go to the cabinet design the big pieces and this particular case was interesting because we had two movies we had Evil Dead and Evil Dead two dead by dawn so one side of the cabinet on the right side is representative of Evil Dead and the left side is representative of Evil Dead Park 2 dead by Dawn um and then the Playfield is sort of a mixture uh the reason why we save the Playfield for last is because they're usually working on it until the last minute so there's going to be changes this is going to move that's going to move I don't want to do a whole bunch of artwork and then have to redo the whole thing because stuff changed so uh save that for last that's the longest process too so it's nice to get everything else done and then we got a nice little cozy wrap that we can snuggle inside of for the next 6 months to finish the project and know where the arc direction is once we get to the Playfield it's Playfield and then Plastics and all that and once I'm all done and everything gets approved I then start working on the interface in this case um with Ben heck um designing and doing illustrations and all that that he can animate and turn into um ball save match Etc and then um because spooky is the company that they are um and they have the trust in me that they do I've also expanded into doing the Flyers and doing the promotional images and setting up promotional opportunities and things like that with other partners and all that so I'm sort of going in that direction now as well as we approach the big release of this game and that's pretty much the timeline as far as creating the art for the Playfield um there's so many things to take into consideration number one you want to draw people in you want them to see something really Dynamic when they walk up to the game and it is all lit up you know just World under glass pull you right in another thing that I have to do uh my job as a Playfield designer is to Market each little shot that's what I call it anyway if you've got an orbit shot and you know it's like the uh out in the woods orbit shot well how do I Market that I have to I have to explain to you visually what that is whether it's just artwork or artwork in words um so each little feature has to be marked as their own separate little thing a lot of times you don't want to give a lot of stuff away like this game has a lot of surprises on it um you want to lead them right up to that surprise and then let the game take over from there this license in particular was so Manic and crazy and over the toop that it was hard to try and keep I don't want to say it was hard to try it wasn't hard to trying to keep organization it didn't require organization it was better if it was just you looked down and you in your head just kind of swirled like there's these monsters and these settings and all of this crazy stuff going on and you don't feel like your feet are firmly planted in front of all this you feel like you're swirling around in it and that was really important for this I I didn't want it to I didn't want you to look down and go well everything's neatly organized and no I I want you to look down and go ah so hopefully you look down and go ah and uh but it'll work that's what I want that's how I want you to react um you know I want you to have that emotion when you look at the artwork because that's what the artwork needs to do it needs to bring you in needs to make you feel um and then on top of that it needs to make you see what you need to do it needs to sort of teach you along with the what's on the screen and the call outs and Etc um so that basically how I approached this particular design was you know you're you're falling off a cliff into a Vortex and you have lost control and you have to do your best while you're swirling through this nightmare and the reason we chose this direction was obviously because you're playing as the character of Ash and if you follow the movies you know that Ash kind of starts off like an average Joe Schmo like you and I and then he turns into the superhero at the end of the movie um so you have to follow that progress with him you're thrown into a world you know nothing about and you're trying to understand it you're trying to overcome it and you're trying to build your character as you get through these different features so that by the time you get to the end and you get to the wizard mode you got your Boomstick you got your chainsaw you are ash and you're going to kick some ass Chris's knowledge and love for the Evil Dead license really shines through this game the Easter eggs that he finds to down to the most minute details that unless somebody came up and told you that that's why that's there you would have no idea why that's there he did not leave a single Stone Unturned on this game he made sure everything had a purpose and a very specific reason for being there just hands down the perfect artist for this machine whenever anyone ask me what I do for a job I say well these days I program pinball machines in unity game engine and they're like unity game engine why do you need that for a pinball and I'm like well because all the pinballs have these big LCD screens now which is too bad because otherwise you could run a pinball machine off a stopwatch but here we are to fill up that screen we not only have great movie clips from the series itself but we're also creating custom artwork with the help of Christopher franie with the the crude amount of tools that I gave him to work with so was really impressive unfortunately for him it that's that steps it up for me I'm like go if he can do that I'm gonna give him some more hard stuff as far as working with Ben Heck on the animations it was pretty interesting because um a lot of the stuff was up in the air um he was open for suggestions he did come to me with a lot of needs and I executed those for him but one thing that really stands out is I remember in in the movie in U Evil Dead part two dead by Dawn there's a scene where Linda Ash's girlfriend pulls herself out of the ground and she's a skeleton and she starts doing this dance and Ben calls me up and he says uh Hey I want to do an animation with this like is there any way you can give me artwork to animate this and the first thing I thought was like well I don't do 3D modeling and it's a skeleton uh wow uh so I said if you want like a three4 shot where she's standing up and she's got a leg kicked out and her arms out I can draw that and I can draw each bone individually you can anchor those points and animate it and hopefully that'll get you what you want uh was the best thing I could think of and he took that and he made this amazing animation that looks just like the movie and you know honestly it stepped up what I was given to him because I said well you know I didn't know the limitations of his animation skills but if he can do that well here it comes boy and I loaded all kinds of cool [ __ ] on him so here's how it works with the animation with Chris franchi so I'll take my notebook I'll draw something out very crudely then I'll very crudely take a photo of that with my phone and then I will text it to him so the random selection award I'll be like okay I want a gun in the foreground kind of like doom and then the award will slide by here and then I want there to be an arm piece a gun piece and a background so when the gun fires it moves separately from the arm then we'll argue about it for a while then he'll send me a file that's like 9,000 by 6,000 pixels and I'll be like oh well this is a lot of resolution I which is good because if you need to like you can zoom in Ian you can zoom in quite a ways Chris will send me a file because he loves talking on the phone which I hate cuz I guess I'm like a millennial at heart and then what I like about it is as I go through each game um I'm always into new tricks like this one we have like a three-dimensional book it's like oh yeah we can turn the pages of the Book of the Dead and stuff and that's fun so I'm trying to push that forward all the time as well and I think we have some really nice looking displays on this game we got lots of detail lots of art lots of cool humor all for you the consumer to look at so I did all of the uh sound effect design on Texas chainsaw and then I'm doing it again on Evil Dead I used to be into independent film and I've done podcasts and I was a professional YouTuber so I get it I can I can do that stuff and then they they don't have to ask someone else to do it it's like oh Ben can do it right so I think it's fun uh to do sound effects my favorite part is mixing together I mean you should always mix together different sounds right so I like to think okay well what can I sneak in there and they'll be like what you use that for a sound effect and it's always fun like you know if you have like bowling pins being knocked over which is like a huge cliche and hear it all the time in Disney movies so sometimes there'll be a little bit of that you want to have a sharp sound and then you have like the body of the sound and then you have like the aftermath of the sound or the bass and I like to work on that I'm still working on having like the best shotgun sound for this game because I got to think oh is it a single barrel being fired is it both barrels being fired so you're G to have two different sounds for the shotgun and then yeah I think I well just like Texas Chainsaw I like to make the game as visceral as possible like audio is so important for that because like you can feel the game and you can have like the the screams and like you know like people being terrified and stuff I think that's really important and then also I think about this like at shows because shows are a big part of selling games like TNA was a perfect example like you could hear that game from a mile away and you're like oh that's TNA that's why I like to have really distinct sounds like ding they're like oh that's hopefully people will be like oh that's Evil Dead it's got this one sound and here's the part I always like to bring up I was like 12 years ago I was living in Verona Wisconsin and I was moving out of this apartment to go move to the east side of Madison and had these really cool windows and they were spring-loaded so there was Springs on either side like and they'd be pressed or expand expanded based off the windows open or close and it we