All right. What's happening, ladies and gentlemen? This is a very special emergency podcast. This is Pen Pals After Dark, and it's a more subdued – what would you say, Serge? Well, Cale, we're both going to talk like this, which is very low. It's an unusual low tone for me, despite my excitement. And I am excited because Serge Jr. and Sergeette Jr. are sleeping not so far away from me. So I have to be a little quiet. That's also why I have the ear, so I could hear them. But I didn't want that to stop us, Cale, from doing this emergency podcast. And this is an emergency podcast about a release I knew nothing about until this very day today, which is Winchester Mystery House by Dune Pinball. Is that right? Yes. That's correct. I learned – I was probably one of the first people to know about it because Jamie called me, Jamie from the JBS show. After he hit send and publish on his YouTube video, he called me and he said, yesterday I played the new game from Barrels of Fun and it is freaking rad. And I think that's immediately when I messaged you about that. And that's right, Cale. And, you know, the game just came out. But as crazy as it sounds, I believe I know the rules so far. And I'm excited to talk about it today with you, Cale. And I know what you're thinking, pen pals, listeners. It can't be true. And I admit, my opinion is a bit limited here. And there are lots of limitations to mention, Cale. You know, as all good science should start with the limitations of the study. I'll give you four limitations on this, right? One is the game just came out today. Carl himself said on an interview that there's only about 25% of the game coded in there. So how could I know more than that? There has been zero gameplay video. There's no camera over the top of the play field. There's just two second clips and trailer vids. That's my third limitation. The fourth limitation is that I have no inside connection to anyone in pinball besides you, Kel. and I purposely, for this episode, I have not reached out to Carl or Jeff, who does the sound, or anyone at Barrel of Fun that has worked on this. I didn't know this game came out until today, as I said, but yet, Cale, despite all of those limitations, I've done my thing that I love to do, Cale, which is I've soaked up whatever I can with a new game and I'm here to present it to the ravenous public out there that cares about this. Does that make sense to you, Cale? 100%. Where do we start? Let's do it. Well, first, I should start by crediting my sources here. I've based this breakdown that I'm going to give you on pictures from Naps Arcade and Kineticist, as well as podcasts that were released today from Carrie Hardy, from Jeff at Dirty Pool Pinball, Flip N Out Pinball podcast, and also the trailer from Barrels of Fun themselves. So I want to give a shout-out to all of them and credit to all of them, because otherwise I have nothing to talk about. But that's where it comes from. Fair? Yeah, very fair. uh, portal, a multi-morphic, uh, motor head, which was like a homebrew and Led Zeppelin was a homebrew. Um, can I tell you what I love about the art? Yeah, go ahead. Cause you know, all artists subjective, of course, but I do love the art, but I want to talk about some objective things he did with the art that showed the dedication and passion that you see with this company and this artist who, who are doing it, the, the objective things I could say about it. Um, so for example, if you look at the, uh, inserts, they have ornamentation on them. You know, like I could zoom in, for example, there are fine detailed ornamentation on everything. Even, let's say, just this arrow shot that on other games would just be a boring old arrow shot. They took the time to put in the ornamentation. And I also want to point out that the inserts are all different from each other. It's not like the same insert like you would see everywhere. There's weird shapes, for example. There's diamonds. There's rhombus. There's circles. There's rectangles. And when I see that, I see that an artist has gone through this and cared about what they did. We can all say it's subjective. I think it's beautiful. But the objective thing is that there's passion in here, in this art. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. And one very cool thing that he did, I think artists in the know might be done with this trend, but it's still here. The orange and teal trend, which was made popular in the early 2000s with movie posters. Love that you know that. Yeah. And it kind of came around with the introduction of digital color grading in films. And so you could really see where he gets this. And it creates a high contrast kind of really – I think this is overused in art. but it really pops, and it's very attractive and appealing to the eye. Yeah, and I want to say, I totally agree 100% of everything you just said there. Other art details that we can agree are objective here. There's no rules card on the apron, and Bowser has been doing this. If you look at their Dune game, for example, it's got that worm going around the apron. And here again, rather than just have a boring old rules card on the apron that, frankly, people don't really look at, and it doesn't help them anyway because it never says enough rules on these modern complex games. and so here the rules card rather the apron is a Ouija board although I think I have to say spirit board for licensing issues or whatever the spirit board lights up actually and they can light up like ball number one for example or you know lock number two they can even say like yes and no for questions that happen in the game that can like influence what you do in the game for example and so it's just so immersive because you're like right up against the game your your hands are right there on the flipper buttons and you're seeing a spirit board as soon as you play you know what i mean so very cool yes and then and then i'll one maybe one other thing i want to say about the art is just the sculpts right look at the detail and sculpts they don't just have a screen in the back like they've done in other games and it's looked awesome in other games to be clear i love it but they also now put like a whole sculpted mansion behind that thing you know for example and the crystal ball and just just full of sculpts here that's just beautiful it's beautiful and uh one thing about that mansion um i don't know if everyone's noticed this yet from the videos that have been released uh the of course just like every other barrels of fun game it has that extra display in the back they've this display is different it's parallel you're right it's not the same right it's parallel with the play field and sits above. You don't actually look at the screen. The screen projects onto a piece of plastic, creating a hologram. Right. It's not just a screen. I'm so glad you said that. It is a 12-inch screen, but because it could do things like transparency, you can have times where you see behind it, I believe. And that means so many cool things can happen. There's a magnet behind it, for example, and you could see it trapping the ball. All those sort of things can happen that contribute to it. And then you have this ghost that can fly back and forth like a hologram, for example. And we love holograms, Cale. Yes. Right? Absolutely, absolutely. One other thing I think we should get into about the art, or you tell me, is something we actually figured out. Tell me. Should we do it now? Can I prep you? Can I prep the listeners for it? Yeah, please. All right, all right. So should we get into it now? Yeah, let's get into it now. I knew you would, Cale. I knew you would. You want to get into it right at the top. That's right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's get right into it. So they have a secret on this game. And God bless them, by the way, for trying to put a secret there. And I love that. And that they kept it as a fun secret. And I love that they wanted to include things like that, that they don't even need to advertise, that they leave it to players to figure out. But I am who I am, Cale. And you are who you are. And I cannot turn off my brain. My brain was designed to find patterns. And so help me. That's what I'm going to do, Cale. sometimes I find too many patterns and maybe it makes me a too conspiratorial Kale, unrelated to this podcast. No such thing. But other times, Kale, I see the signs. And so I'm going to give a spoiler alert before we say it. So for people who don't want to know everything about the game, I won't be offended. Don't listen to this podcast. If you want to be surprised, if you want to be surprised by the rules, for example, there are people who want to come up to a game and know nothing about it and be surprised surprised by the rules. And I'm not offended. You shouldn't listen to this podcast. There's other people who are like me, frankly, who get excited when I hear rules for a game. It makes me want to play the game more. It makes me want to buy the game more, which I do for a game like this. And that's also true of this secret that we're going to say, something else they added to the game. So feel free to not listen. Is that a good warning before we talk about it, Kel? That was my prep. That's very fair. All right. So one of the things I noticed is they had a one-second clip on the Flip N Out Pinball podcast. Shout out to Flip N Out Pinball. And I caught it. So I'll share it with you now. We'll pull this up. Not that, not that, not that, not that, that. So you can see the fluorescent lights, for example. And right now, this is a mode where the fluorescent lights are on, it looks like to me. So I think they have a painted in UV light in the game, or UV fluorescent light that can be captured with UV that's also in the game. And Barrels of Fun is known for their amazing lighting, among other things. And this is just another example of it. So the surprise, actually, this kind of surprise, if you're for trivia-minded people out there, was done once before by a different manufacturer, which I won't name, that used secret UV lighting. But I will say that they charged you about $280 for it, as I recall, back in the day. And this one seems to be totally free, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So that's what I have to say about that secret. What do you say, Kel? Yeah, and you talk a lot about immersion. And the interesting thing about this reactive ink is it seems like the user is going to have to discover this. And the way Rachel and I figured it out, we were listening to Jeff Dobson and Carl D'Python Anghelo talk about the game on the Dirty Pool YouTube channel. And Jeff talks about this but bleeps it out. But Rachel used her antisocial superpower of lip reading, and she said, Jeff said, there is reactive ink in the play field, and if the player shines a black light onto the play field, it will reveal something. This is so immersive because this is all about a haunted house. I mean, it's based on a true story about Sarah Winchester, who had a medium come over and do a seance. And, you know, long story short, said you were haunted because you were the heir to the Winchester mansion. And these firearms have killed so many people. So now the mansion has these spirits in there. so this is a very like any haunted mansion you're walking around with a flashlight i mean that's that's the story you're discovering things and that's how immersive this is you're gonna take a black light and it's gonna reveal something and jeff says it's it's something interesting and one of his words was hilarious and and you and and you know if you know uh david is david's um humor. I'm excited to see what this is. And I am bringing a blacklight flashlight to Expo to reveal this. That's that one you always bring to your hotels anyway when you go to the Expo, right? Yes, exactly. It's permanently in my suitcase. Good. I'm going to say we finished with the art. We're talking about the lighting. And obviously, this is an amazing feature of the lighting that they're purposely not advertising to their credit. But I will say also one other thing about the lighting that I've said it before, even early when Dune came out, I think Dune has some of the best lighting in all of pinball, across all manufacturers. They have this sort of mood lighting along the sides that can give you day versus night in that game really, really well. And they're also using it in different ways on this game. And I'm sure just with that, plus this, this was going to have some of the best lighting in pinball, I believe that. And I give them so many credits. And also with those faceted inserts that can refract light it's just really beautiful is what i have to say yes um that's my ego i think we also have to bring up that carl d'Python Anghelo uh he um he said that it would take people about two months to figure out that there was some kind of uv he hasn't met us before kale that's what i'm saying he underestimates the pinball community and he knows the pinball community better than anybody But what I love about it, Cale, is you and Rachel independently figured it out from me, and we figured it out at the same time from different sources. Right. Don't you love that? That's great. When it happened, it gave me goosebumps. Beautiful. We're very connected in the simulation, Serge. You know what? If we get to maybe 50 podcasts, Cale, we're going to go on a complete tangent unrelated to pinball and talk about are we in a simulation. That's a completely other topic, but I have passionate opinions about it, Cale, as you well know. Yeah, we'll get Rizwan Virk to join us. Yes, it's an important digression we made, but we'll get back to the game. But I agree with you, Cal. I agree with you. So before getting to the code, though, we talked about the art. We talked about the lights. I want to give you my overall impression of the game so you know my bias going into it. It's incredible. I think it looks incredible. I love it. I think it's amazing. I love the theme, not because I knew much about or at all about the Winchester Mystery House, but because I do love haunted houses. And more than anything I can tell that already that they brought the theme to life And theme integration matters to me just like the theme does And this is really great theme immersion as we talked about some things already It themed off of that Winchester Mystery House as you said But there so much They took that idea of that kind of crazy house with all these rooms with secret passages and doors on the floor and all sorts of number 13 everywhere and the stairs go nowhere. They've taken that idea and they've really ran with it. So should we maybe talk about the layout first, a little bit of the layout, and I'll bring it back to this picture from that. Yeah, absolutely. And just real quickly before I talk to somebody who played this game and their opinion, and this is someone I trust, good player. This is easier than Labyrinth but harder than Dune. You have to think about that. Interesting. Yeah, the layout's really unique and special, and I can tell this thing already is super fun to shoot. It has diverters everywhere, and we'll go through the layout in a little bit, so no shot ever feels the same. You know, there used to be this meme going around recently in the past few years of pinball that shots are the new toys, meaning that a clever layout with lots of diverters means that a manufacturer doesn't have to put anything special mechanically in the game because they're saying, well, look at all the shots. We have 27 ball paths, you know, kind of thing. I won't tell you which manufacturer said that, but that happened, for example, recently. And that is not this game. This game has a tremendous amount of ball paths. They didn't even tell you the number. They didn't make a big deal about it. And then they gave you lots of mechs in the game. And we're going to go through those mechs. But there's this incredible mech over here that we'll have to talk about, the turntable, the rotating turntable. It mixes the physical turntable from Batman 66 with the functionality of the Harry Potter staircase in the new J.J.P. game. which has all these diverters going in different places. But it does, frankly, in my opinion, just from seeing it, it does both better. And I will be specific as to why I think that. But it really does both better. And as you mentioned, it has that 12-inch screen in the back that's not just a screen. It's doing some things holographically, which is really cool. A side trivia question, Cale, is do you know who first had the idea to put a display screen inside the game, not just on top? Am I allowed to do this on trivia? Usually I reserve it for Twitch streams, by the way. No, no, no. This is great. Was it not? Who did World Cup Soccer? Nailed it. You're absolutely right. Yeah, why would I draw a blank on it? John Papadiuk. John Papadiuk. World Cup Soccer, 1994 ballet game. It has a mechanical goalie, but he wanted to put in a virtual goalie with a DMD right above that. And when the goalie moved, then it would block the shot wherever it was virtually. But ironically, back then, they said that's too expensive to do. And so they put in something mechanically instead of the virtual. And that would be the opposite, you know, these days. But then he did that. And then he later put it in Circus Voltaire, actually, in like 1997. But real deep trivia for those who are caring about this sort of thing is it was beaten by a game. And that Circus Voltaire was beaten in 1996 by Python Anghelo in that game, Capcom's soccer game, Flipper Football. That's what it was, not soccer game, Flipper Football. Anyway, that's my trivia side. Can we get back to the game? You don't want to hear this nonsense, you viewers listening to this. I don't think so. But back to this Winchester Mystery House game. So it has, I was already saying it has the screen. It has the rotating turntable, which is itself amazing. But it has a physical ball lock, for example, right here that holds three balls. And we'll get into that, too. That's the crystal ball. I'll show that here, for example. Wait. There it is. So there's the crystal ball holding, like, three balls right there. And we'll talk about that as well. It has this spinner. It has nine drop targets. There's three right here. There's three bank right there. And another three that are inline drops. And, boy, I love me some inline drop targets, Gil. I've never met a game that has inline drops that I don't like. You know what I mean? I'm wearing the shirt right now. Flash Gordon, my favorite classic of all time, has inline drops as well. Metallica, Paragon, Future Spile, all these great games that have inline drops. I love any game that has it. Oh, TNA is one of the best, right? Yes. So anyway, it's got that. It's got subways in it, two subways. It's got two magnets. It's got a tower that falls down, and we'll get into that too later. and reveals a shot behind it. I mean, it's just got a ton there. So that's my first bias about the game, that I love it, and why all these things in the layout. We're going to go into shot by shot in a moment, but I wanted to kind of give a shout out to the layout of the mechs and the art, and we talked about the lighting, for example. Anything else you want to add there? Yeah, and do you have any images where you can see the mag lock or the orbit shot in the hologram that you use for your mystery collect? Oh, I wonder if I do. Boy, I love that you know that. I'll see if I do, actually. Well, here, when you get the shot, the mystery award, it goes behind this. And actually, I don't know if you could see the ball trapped in the spider web right here. And then it tells you the mystery award as you get it. So it's going to be the right orbit, and the ball gets trapped right there. I don't know if that gives you enough. I think one of the problems with this, and it's not a problem, it's amazing, but one of the problems is this won't appear as well in pictures as it will in person. Do you know what I mean? So I think the way you're describing it is correct that you could see it there, but I don't think you can get an appreciation for it by the picture. And I'm sorry if this picture doesn't do it, but does that give you a sense, Cale? Yeah, absolutely. And so we talked about the art. We talked about the lighting. You know what we didn't talk about, though? Sounds. Obviously, we haven't heard much of it, but a bit of it. And it already has great sounds. And Jeff from Dirty Pool Pinball is very, very good at this, I should say. Like, I know he's just started in pinball recently with Dune and now this game, Winchester Mystery House. But he really clearly knows what he's doing. If you check out his streams at Dirty Pool Pinball, you'll see what I mean. But I even learned that they're using a Yamaha synthesizer chip from old Ballywilliam games. So they use them on, like, Dracula and games like Adam's Family, all the Super Pins, or most of the Super Pins, for example. So you really get a unique soundscape with that. It gives you that sound effects that you might have heard in, like, 90s games that people tend to love, you know, like Showtime, you know, like that. Yes. I'll pause there. Does that work for you, Kel? What do you say? Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you that don't know Jeff, he has a long history of working on film, working on audio for major, major films and productions. So he's an absolute pro at this. and I don't think this has been mentioned anywhere but he called on one or two of his friends in Hollywood to do some call outs to bring some very theatrical stuff to this game. I didn't know that and I love to hear that because you could hear it already in the trailer call outs. It's acted well that way. And we'll go through the game but for example there's a left out lane kickback not a virtual save but a real physical kickback as just yet another mech that I wouldn't even remember to mention in this game because there's so many. But it has a call-out from a little spooky girl that says, like, Do you want to play? when he kicks the ball out kind of thing. And those are the kinds of things I think you're talking about. It's just they did it well that way. So all of that is in the service of talking about this game. But you know what we didn't talk about yet, Cale? That maybe people are here to see something new that they haven't heard a breakdown of fully yet is the code. And that's what gets me the most excited about. Because, you know, Cale, this tends to be a code-focused podcast, and I'm a code-focused guy, as you know. I firmly believe that good code can really elevate a game and is what elevates a game, and bad code can ruin a game. And Carl is just simply not going to make bad code. I can already tell it's incredible. We'll go through specifics. And there are very, very few pinball designers out there that lead layout and rules of design. Keith Elwin is the goat here of rules design and layout. And layout is one thing. This layout is incredible. A lot of Keith's layouts are incredible. But as I said in the last podcast, really great code is another thing entirely. And it's hard to do both. It's hard because it takes a lot of effort, of course, the design alone, but then also rules design. The effort is hard, but it's also the capability. You have to be a certain kind of fanatic to be able to do both the hardware and the software. I don't mean that they're programming it. I know that. But what I mean is just thinking about it in those terms, in software terms, is not something that's obvious to a lot of people who also might be involved in the physical side of the game. What do you say to that? Oh, for sure. And for those of us listening who don't know who Carl is, he's one of the best pinball players in the world. Like Keith Elwin will watch him stream his games, Keith's games, and change code because of stuff Carl does. He's phenomenal. 100%. One of the best players ever. And one thing I want to say about the rules, even before getting to it specifically, I had a whole rant ready to go, Kale, on our next episode. I was ready for a rant about how companies do all this work. They make all these games. They spend millions of dollars on licenses and design and manufacturing, but then they don't tell their players how to actually play their games. You know, like, sure, they have readme files some places, and those aren't the rules, by the way. They're just, like, random things that come up, you know? They have animations during a track mode that say do X for Y, but you go. Sorry, Cale. I don't know if you were heading toward this, but Carl did mention there's sort of a tutorial part of this game. Exactly. Yes. So how you get to that is when you start the game, you can hold down the action button if you want the tutorial, and then it gives you a tutorial. I mean, how brilliant is that? It's so obvious and yet so crazy that other manufacturers don't do this in their games, that it should just be like, that should be standard of care out there in pinball land to do that that way. I will give credit, before just lambasting many other companies, I will give credit to JJP, who does at least put out flow charts of their rules, and I love that they do that. I wish other companies did that as well. But I really love this feature that Carl came up with, where it was actually used, as he mentioned too, in Centaur before, long ago, where if you hold the right flipper, it can tell you stuff. but he's using it in a very clever way. Hold down the action button and give you the tutorial. So I want to start off by saying I'm impressed with that. Is that it? And anything else before we get into the layout specifically and then the rules? No, I think we've covered it. Let's get right into it. All right. So layout. We're going to start just first in the bottom here and say what's there. So there's a left lane kickback, a left out lane kickback right there, physical kickback, and that's the thing that gives you the creepy girl call out. The bottom inlanes will spell the word open. And if you get that, this turntable will rotate so that you could use the mini flipper shot to go up to the staircase to nowhere where the ball is captured on the magnet. I think I have a picture of that just to show you what I mean. Sorry if I have to skip ahead a little bit. Maybe I don't have a picture of that. We'll get to everything that I'm showing here later. But now we'll get to that later. I apologize. I don't have a picture, but it would be right around here. okay back to it so that's inlands and there's two main multiballs in the game that we'll get to one of them is the wheelbarrow ghost multiball and the other is the seance multiball up here and we'll get to each of those but this is how you get your one of those main multiballs you spell open and you shoot mini flipper through there which captures the ball and I should even say a magnet captures the ball it's cooler than I'm describing a magnet captures the ball then the turntable rotates to reveal a subway here. The ball drops down into the subway, goes into the basement to help start the multiball. So it's just got a lot of layers to this game. There's like levels. That's amazing. So what we're looking at, the scoop on the turntable is facing us. You're saying that will turn... Yeah, you see the scoop? It's going to go away, and it's going to turn to reveal a shot. But also, there's a shot right here that's made with this mini flipper. And so that's the shot that also is affected by the turntable. And when you get the open, that's what triggers the turntable to rotate so that this shot is revealed to go to the staircase to nowhere. Or I should say, yeah, is that staircase to nowhere? Yes. That's right. That's what it's called. So that's, first of all, just the bottom of the game. Now, are you ready to go through the shots? Absolutely. One by one. Okay. So over here you have a captive ball. right there. And the captive ball can hit this thing that says, call spirits. And we'll get into that as we discuss the multiball in a bit, the sans multiball. It has a left ramp that goes all the way to here. And while I'm talking about the left ramp, I want to point out some more art here. The detail, they put the staircase on the ramps, for example, you know, so you could feel like you're going up somewhere. I just love detail like that. That's what I have to say. But anyway, left ramp goes back down through this left inline like that. You have here your three inline drops. And so to get the seance multiball that we'll talk about is you have to hit a drop, then you have to call the spirit. And when you do that, it allows you to go behind the inline drops where a vertical up kicker brings it to the physical ball lock right here. Does that make sense? And you can do that three times. That is phenomenal. I am really blown away already about this game. Right. It's great. And I was chatting to Jeff Dodson before we were doing this. Sound designer. Yes. And I said, I think David is going to be kicking himself in that. By limiting it to 525 games? 100%. I believe this thing is going to sell out easy. And people love Carl too and they want to show him love So I think that what going to happen But anyway we talked about the inline drops which I sure could be backhanded really nicely that great feel just like you can in Metallica for example Alright, there's three drops over here, and I could zoom in for you there. And so that's going to do just work just like a lot of... if you've played Dune before, where you have three different items and you have to lock it in and then get all the drops to get them. This middle one is your lighting mystery, and we'll get to that for the right orbit. This is Call Spirits, which can help you with the Seance multiball to progress to it. And then Advance 13 is something to do with the modes, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But those are your three drops at the center. Does this create a skill shot? Yes, the skill shot plunges right to there. As a whirlwind, for example. Or Foo Fighters is another one. Or Predator, actually, which we just played the other day. we can get to that in another video um and so uh and so now let's get into these upper flipper shots over here and to do that i should i'm going to actually show you a different image a different view because it's hard to see them all over there um so i'm going to give you this different view and it'll take me a second to find the image sorry about that there it is and so now we're looking at all the things you can do with the right upper flipper does does that make sense as i've shown it now at this angle? Yeah, totally. Okay, so there's a shot here to the side ramp. And the side ramp is quite complicated already. So the side ramp feeds to a door here, and it can allow the ball to just drop down completely. If it drops down, my understanding is, so meaning the ball goes up here, it can drop down, and then feed super fast back down here. Does that make sense? That's amazing. Alternatively, it can go through the door into a ramp that then feeds back the right in lane. So that's what I mean. Every shot has different shots. There are shots on shots on shots. And if that was all that was in the game, that would be cool. That would be great. But it does so much more. It has mechanical toys, all of that. So that's the side ramp so far. Now let's go back to that image. And here we have a side loop, for example. And the side loop has a few inserts on it. One of them is advanced tour. that helps with the modes, to start modes, and we can get to that. It has this spider web. We could talk about that too. We saw the spider web on the mystery, for example. And you could collect spider webs for a mission in the game, a side quest. We'll get to that too. There's a mode arrow here with the ornamental insert here, which I love. There is a stand-up target, an X stand-up target. You could collect those as part of side missions that we'll get to as well. And then there are these key drop targets, spelling the word K-E-Y right there. And so key drop targets get you keys in the game which unlock certain mode rooms that we'll get to when we talk about the code in a little bit. So anyway, that's a bunch of stuff already happening here. Any questions about that area? None so far. All right, then the mini flipper can hit those key drops, but it could also hit this shot. So I'm going to go back to the other image to show you this shot. And it's hard to show this because there are so many ball paths. So what I'm talking about is this shot from the mini flipper right here. And this picture is only showing one of the ball paths. For example, it shows that it's in this configuration. And what I mean is, in this configuration, what it's going to do is a loop around like that. Whereas, alternatively, it can rotate, like I said, with the open, for example. If you light open on inlines, and then it goes up here, where a magnet captures it, and then drops it into a subway. isn't that pretty cool that this is phenomenal i am i'm really stoked about playing this thing this weekend yeah i am super jealous of you by the way you can always come i know i have two jobs and two kids and god bless you know bless them all but that's the reason i can't travel for now you'll see me in seven years or so all right in the meantime um all right there's this shot which looks like a scoop and if that was the shot that would be great but this shot is many shots. It's not just the scoop. It is the scoop. That's one thing it can do. But it can also do... It can also come back around if this turntable rotates, in other words. What it can do is it can go through reverse, back through the right flipper, like reverse through this... Sorry, right spinner, I mean to say. And come back down like that. And I'm sure it could do other things, too. I'm only pointing out two or three things with each of these shots, but it's more than that. It's much more than that. For example, So does that make sense? Like here, and I can rotate. Like you can imagine if this thing were to rotate to the left like that. Right. Suddenly, you're going this way, if that makes sense. And, you know, I love hitting a spinner from behind. I know you do, Cale. I know you do. All right. Next shot is this right haul shot. This was called the center haul, by the way. But this shot is called the right haul. and the right hull also has variable feeds depending on this diverter situation, this thing like that. So, for example, it can go into a dead end and then come back right away really fast. It can go up like this way, for example. And so that already also has multiple paths it can do. And then there's the right orbit. And so now the right orbit has two things it can do, to my understanding. One is a magnet. It can trap it right here. And we talked about that earlier. I showed a picture of that earlier. That's the mystery shot, by the way, to collect your mystery. Or if the mystery is not lit, let's see if I could bring it back to here. If the mystery is not lit, it's going to fly super fast around back here through the left inline. So it's a real fast right orbit shot. I was watching on the trailer, and that impressed me too. We're going to be ski passing right there. You're going to want to ski pass on that. And I noticed, actually, that there's two feeds to the left in lane. One is from there, and that's fast. So I bet you you ski pass there. This, though, on the left ramp, it's not going fast enough because it lets it out below the switch of the in lane. And so I bet you you cannot ski pass, and you're going to have to hit it on the fly, in other words, there. Great design. Great design. All right. Now we're at the right ramp shot, and even that gets diverted, Cale. So it can go this way, feed this upper flipper for you to do stuff. That's one thing it can do. Or as I zoom in, it has a diverter right here. And so that diverter can open and then it could feed that tower shot right here. And that tower shot itself has diverters. So for example, I know this is getting crazy, but I'm getting it right, I believe so far. That tower shot can go back this way, for example. or the tower can fall down. And I'll show you a picture of that here. Let's see if I can find it. There it is. There's the tower falling down right here. And so if you hit that right ramp when the tower falls down, like it did in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that damaged the house and knocked down the tower in real life, then you will go behind here to a secret passage. Are we getting nuts here, Cal? Are we getting nuts? This is one of the most stunning designs I've ever seen. Genuinely agree. I haven't played this, and I know it's amazing. This is an amazing layout. That's what I have to say. Amazing. So that's the layout in general. I could talk about more specific things, like even the stand-ups, for example. There's five stand-ups that are this drum music stand-ups, in other words. This is a tambourine. I'll show you here a trumpet, I think. Or a bugle. There it is, or a bugle, if you will. Love it. Love it. And then these aren't seen so well, but there's a gong right there and a bell right there. And the point being that you get those, and that progresses you in other ways. Like, look at the screen, how the screen changes when you have those five instruments lit, for example. It's also going to be on your display, and we'll get to that in a moment. You know Jeff had a blast with all this. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Putting all that in, all the sound effects in, it was great. So that is my layout breakdown before getting to the code breakdown. What do you say to that, Cal? Anything that you wanted to cover on the layout that I missed? Not that I know of, but I will update you this weekend. All right, fair enough. And you will be playing, and you will see if I am right, by the way. Okay. Now let's talk about the code. and I love where the code is going already and let's talk about why. I know three important things about Carl before talking about it. Everything I said was about the layout, but now Carl D'Python Anghelo is also the rules designer here. Number one, he's one of the world's best pinball players. He understands layouts very well and as part of his particular skill, he streamed himself on his channel, i.e. Pinball, beating the wizard mode of many, many games. So he understands pacing. He understands what makes wizard modes annoying, like, you know, Buck Hunter and some other things that are like so hard to get to. And they're so monotonous in order to get to. That's the number one thing I'll say. He just understands pacing. The number two thing I'll say is he is a risk and reward nut in only the best way. And as you know, we talk about that as one of the criteria for great code. If you ever watched his stream where he's playing with risk and reward type games, he'll always go for maximum risk. So if you think about Dune, for example, if you beat a mode, you finish phase one, and then it gives you the choice. Do you want to continue for up to 500 million points phase two? And he's always going to phase two. You know, for example, you could build up super jackpots to a crazy value, and he's always going to that. If you ever watched him play like JJP Guns and Roses, he's going for maximum collect. So this is a guy who gets risk and reward. That's number two thing before getting the code. Number three thing I'll say is that he's a deep board game rules type of guy, like deep board game, kind of settlers, Catan, that sort of thing, and much deeper than that. He came up with the critical hit pinball tournament, for example. And I think, have you played in that, Cale, before? Do you know what I'm talking about? I have not, but I'm very familiar with it. And also software for games. I shouldn't say games. I mean tournaments, too. So the guy's really deep into board game type rules. And I'm going to use that term again because this is a board game type rule set. It's a board game rules approach. So what I mean is that if you look at this inserts here, there are a whole bunch of inserts. for all the rooms of the house. And there's going to be 13 different rooms of the house. You can go in for 13 different modes. And the game is broken down into a mode phase and a travel phase when you're in single ball play. So you start the game, when you first start the game, in the foyer right here. And then you have to travel to other rooms to play them, for example. And here's where I'll show you. And I like that they have all these little dots here. These little dots light up individually with different colors as you progress. And so I'll show you now the display a little bit, and we'll get into that. So if you look at the display, that matches what you just saw in those inserts, where all these dots represent your travel in between different rooms. And when I say board games, I mean look, for example, at like Ticket to Ride, you know, for example. God, I love some Ticket to Ride. You played some mean games of Ticket to Ride, I bet. Oh, yeah. I love to hear it. I'm a board game type guy, too, by the way. if you somehow couldn't guess that from my level of insanity, right? But anyway, enough about me. So here's the user interface, and you're going in between different rooms in the game. There's the travel phase as you go in between the rooms, and then there's the mode phase, the rooms themselves. And back to the risk and reward thing, so you can shoot particular colored shots on the play field to progress to there. And all of this is obvious in the game. You don't have to look at the user interface. I'll show you what I mean in a moment. So, for example, here it says look at all the different rooms you can go. If you shoot the center hall, you go to that room. If you shoot the right hall, you go to the servant's kitchen. The right orbit goes to the twin dining rooms. If you have a key, and you notice there's a key here, one key it says there, you get that key through the key drop targets, and then you can hit the action button, and that uses your key to unlock the basement if you want to go to that room. So you can go to all these different rooms in different ways by hitting shots or pressing an action button. and that's how you go to these different rooms. Or, if you want, when you start the game, you can just skip past the room and continue traveling. If you don't want to do all that stuff, you can continue traveling. And the more you travel in the game, you have to make a bunch of shots to travel. And the more you travel in the game, you build up the value of the mode when you play it. And you could play this game completely two different ways. For the score chasers or speed runners of games, you can go back to the layout all the way from the foyer to all the way through without even playing a single mode all the way to the final room called the witch's cap or in the attic if you wanted to it would be really hard to do you'd have to make many shots to get there and avoid modes but you could do that and you could get to that final mode I don't want to say beat the game because there's a lot in the game but you can get to that last room quickly if you wanted to and build up a huge mode score when you get there by skipping rooms. Or you can play the journey of the game, and you could play the different rooms as you go, and there's different scoring opportunities in each direction. And so you could decide how you want to play. There's no linear pathway. As much as it looks like a map, like you think it's going to go, oh, I have to do this and then that and then that, it's not at all, actually. It's not linear at all. You can go in many different directions. I'm going to pause there, Cale. Any questions on that before getting in even more detail? Yes. Can you go back to the display? Yes. Oh, you know what? I want to show you what I mean by this. I'll show you. It's going to be more obvious, I think, when I show this picture, for example. So this is earlier on, on the white wood, obviously. But I want you to note that there is, and maybe it's going to be too hard to see, I recognize on this, but there's a green light here, for example, and there's a yellow light here, for example. Can I convince you of that? Yes. And so here it says if you want to go to this room which is the seance room Even I going to get confused There it is sorry You could go to this yellow light or even I going to get confused by myself, but I've already confused myself, and I apologize. But what I mean to say is, and I don't think I took the perfect picture of this, but it's a lot simpler if you watch it and you're playing it. There's going to be a color for different shots, and the different shots will be represented by the same color on these inserts. And so let's say you just look down and you're like, I want to go to the blue one. Then you shoot the blue shot and that's where you go. So it's not as confusing as it might seem. You could also use the user interface, but you don't need to. And I think I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it is that way. You basically look at the room and if you want that room, find the color somewhere on a shot and then hit that shot. Did I make that make sense at the end? I sort of, I didn't, I hopefully landed the plane. I didn't, I didn't start the plane well yeah no no i think i think if i it was a little windy yeah but um so when it says action button unlocks path i'm guessing that's because you have three keys yes see this one has three keys if you press the action button uh shoot uh you can use key to unlock the seance room for example and so certain rooms are only unlocked once you press the action button if you have keys other rooms you can get by shooting this thing called advanced tour by the way, which is like these inserts that say advanced tour all over the play field. I'll show you what I mean here. See it says advanced tour right there, but it's on many shots. There's another one probably too zoomed in, advanced tour. There's another advanced tour. And so these shots help you progress and those are going to be different colors and those colors will correspond to the color on these inserts in the center. Okay. And there are 13 different unique room modes across multiple house floors where a challenging spirit is in each room. So every mode is a room, and every room has a spirit and some challenge that the spirit's going through. And the game has an overarching villainous spirit in the game called Henry that's controlling these other 13 spirits. And you have to defeat him ultimately as the big boss of the game and help the 13 spirits along the way in these rooms as you do. So there's a lot of thematic immersion there. Even in the theme of this random haunted house, there's a lot of 13 all over the place. They have 13 orbs in the stained glass, for example, there, if you go check it out on a tour. So there's great breadth here because you can go to all these different rooms. There's great theme immersion, obviously. I'll pause there. What say you? Yeah, that's amazing. I originally wanted you to go back to the display. Oh, yeah. The first image you showed, it looked like from the way things were colored, maybe a lot of stuff was opening and this person had played a lot and you only have like 2,000 points. I was like, oh, no, is this another low-scoring game? It's not. But then you subsequently showed the other screen. I'm like, yes, 2 million points. Let's go. I mean, 200 million. Yeah, no, this is not a low-scoring fiasco. So Carl is not the type to have an own goal like this. I love this user interface and how all of the art just makes sense. Absolutely, absolutely. And he's already programmed six of the modes in. That's what he said. I'll tell you about some of them just to give you a sense of how the modes work and how thematically immersed he's thought through them. Are you saving this for later, or can you tell me now what the spirit meter is? Oh, I'm going to tell you. We're going to get into that. Yeah. So there's a bunch of modes in the game for each of these different rooms, for example. So, for example, there's this daisy bedroom here, right there. And there are these creepy seven creepy dolls, for example. and you have to match the dolls to help the spirit in the room get out. There's the servant's kitchen as another example where you have to make blue shots to extinguish these oven flames in the kitchen while the spirit Agnes isn't looking. When she looks at you, then the shots don't count. And when she does, I think it's going to work in the back board display. And so when she's not looking at you, then you can make the blue shots. That's the kind of theme immersion and modes that I'm talking about. That's amazing. And that's like Hideo Kojima really made that popular in video games. Death Stranding, Metal Gear Solid. Death Stranding, Metal Gear Solid, the sneaking elements. That's right. Sneaking is good. And they did it in Dungeons & Dragons, too, with slingshots that lower your stealth meter. That sort of thing is great in pinball, just the theme immersion using the game, the mechanical game to do that. There's the Venetian dining room, for example, right over here. and that has a spirit that's like staring at a lit candle because she can't move away from it and you have to help her light all the candles so she could be free. For example, there's the basement which is like a spirit yells at you and you have to hold down the action button which activates a light and then that defeats the spirit but then that happens over and over again and so you have to like, if the spirit catches you, you're done and you're kicked out of the basement and I bet you that's where the UV lights turn on because the basement's like dark and then you'll have the UV lights turn on and give you that theme immersion for one of the big moments of the game, you know, as an example. And so there's the basement there, you know, as an example. So I'm just, I'm impressed by the modes. That's all I talked about so far. But as you know, we talked, we're going to go through the four M's of pinball when we talk about code. Modes, multiballs, multipliers, and missions or side quests. Does that make sense, Cal, as we continue to go through this code breakdown of this game? Yeah, I am so stoked about this. Let's keep going. All right. There are two main multi-balls of the game. I've already described them a bit. One is in the seance room right here. And so to get that, you have to hit the drop, then hit the captive ball right here to call the spirit, and then that can allow you to go behind it and then get up to the top and lock your three balls. And you do have to do that three times, of course, to get that. When you are in the multiball, you're going to have jackpots. You have to get enough jackpots. which lights the captive ball for your super jackpot. And then if you hit that, the tower falls down, and you have to go behind the tower in that secret shot for your super, super jackpot, if you will, for example. It's just a lot of depth to the rules, which I like there. Do you happen to know if these drops are independently controlled, kind of like in Bond 60th? For example, where a skill shot would get all three down? I happen to not know. Okay. So I can't help you there. I mentioned earlier the second multiball of the game is the wheelbarrow ghost multiball, which is you get the open inlanes, 1, 2, 3, 4, like that, and then the diverter moves so that the upper flipper can shoot into this thing, the magnet drops it, it brings it into the subway, and then you're into that multiball where you have to help the spirit Clyde fend off other spirits before the boiler explodes in the basement. and your multiball ends, and just cool things like that. So that's my multiball breakdown. The playfield multipliers, I see them on your inserts here, and I like how simple it is, by the way, simple in a good way. There should be playfield multipliers. There shouldn't be 40x multipliers, in my opinion, and I don't want a complex system of shot multipliers and playfield multipliers on every game. It serves some games. But here it seems like there's a 2x and a 3x playfield multiplier, and actually I have not been able. I admit, to glean the rules from how you start those play-filled multipliers. I will admit that to you. I sometimes wonder, part of me wonders if it has to do with the stand-ups, the musical stand-ups around, and then musical stand-ups maybe starts a timer. So that's my intuition, but I do not know that, and I would not claim to know that. When I look here on this particular screenshot, I see the music instruments. It implies to me that that's the multiplier, but I'm not sure. Fair? Yeah, so on this image, where are those – oh, that's on the secondary screen. Yes, these are two – so he's looking at two screens in other words. So I'll show it here. That's on this, for example, which can show you all these different things. And I also have a picture of it, the thing I just – it being on the screen rather there. Okay, gotcha. You know, as an example. And then missions. So there are two side quests in the game. One of them I could tell pretty quickly and pretty definitively, I would say, is, let me get to it again, is this. See on the top right? It says loops and targets and webs and summons and combos. So you need to get 13 of each of those things to unlock, like, think of like a cyborg multiball, in Iron Maiden, but the same version in this game. That's what I believe would happen in that scenario. And so, for example, on the inserts, if I zoom in back to... Let me do it better. There it is. So you could see the loops and the combos and the summons and the webs and the targets, for example. And so what that means, combos is obvious. You just make the game flow and you shoot that shot and that shot. And so every time you get a combo, it adds one. targets. I can point to there was an X target, for example, over here. And so I believe it's X targets like that that progress you towards it. There's webs and there's two places where web is lit. I don't know if it's going to be clear enough. One is over here and the other one was over here. And so you have to make those shots for webs. And so you get the idea, though, that you could build it up. The other mini wizard mode I think has to do, I'm guessing, with the spirit meter. And my guess is that that, and I don't know, I'll admit here, but I guess that's a switch hit based meter that goes up with progressive switch hits, but total guess on that one. And anyone can feel free, Carl, etc. to come in and tell me how wrong I am, or don't tell me. So anyway, that's my answer for that stuff. This is your side quest progress. And the game is going to have the two mini wizard modes for those things. It's going to have these three memento wizard modes, they call it. Another mid-game wizard mode, a final wizard mode. So, like, paced well with lots of things along the way. So that's my... That's basically my code breakdown of the game. I think that covers it, right? Those are the four M's of pinball. And I think I covered it. What do you say, Cale? The 13 on the display, is that a counter or does that always say 13? No, it's not. This always says 13, and as you hit things, these numbers will go up. I wonder if I have an image of that. There it is, for example. Can you see that? The 13 stays, but here it tells you you've hit five targets and 13 combos you've filled out. And there's six webs, et cetera, and that many loops. So basically, it counts up around here. Have you seen an image of the display where the spirit meter has changed? I have, absolutely. And there it is, one. You know what? I'm always there for you, Cale. And so here it shows you that you've gotten all 13 combos, for example, but the spirit meter is high. I just don't know yet exactly too much about the spirit meter. I still guess that it has to do with, like, switch hits, mini wizard mode, side quest kind of thing. Not so different, maybe, from the insanity modes on Evil Dead, which are also switch hits along the way. And I think that's all the code that could be in this game, even at this present date. Right. To kill, did we do it? What do you think? I think we pulled it off. I think people are going to be very excited. This is going to drum up some more chatter about this, what seems to already be an incredibly stunning game. The last time I talked to David David Van Es on the phone, and I don't think he'll mind if I say this. before we got off the phone, he said, listen, I didn't stun you with Dune, but I promise you I'm going to stun you soon. And he didn't tell me any more than that, but I'll be damned if he didn't do it. You are stunned, aren't you? Yes. I'm a Barrels of Fan, big time fan. Love it. And this entire podcast, Sneakily Kill, was to try to convince you and Rachel to get one of these games for the Electrobat. I don't know if I was successful, but that was the actual reason I did this emergency podcast, and hopefully it's worked. I don't know. Yeah. Rachel is probably already trying to get her hands on one of these. She stoked about this because she has been to this Winchester house. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, and she's a massive fan. and so when Jamie called me after he released his video and he says you have to check this out and I was like what's the theme and he's like so it's about this Winchester house this haunted mansion and I said Winchester house and Rachel turned and looked at me and was like excuse me she is she's a fan she's been there incredible Incredible. Well, I hope you two get to play it this coming Expo, and you have a great time, and you love how it plays, and I wish them nothing but success on this very cool game. Yeah. All right. Does that wrap us up? We're super excited. Yeah, thank you so much, Serge. Let me get this edited, and I'm going to get this out tomorrow morning. All right. Well, Pinpal fans, thank you for watching. Thank you for enjoying. And thank you for embracing the craziness that we can bring on this podcast. Right on. Thank you all for joining us. We'll catch you next time. Bye bye.