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Ender's Game Reveal | Multimorphic P3

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·48m 4s·analyzed·Jul 27, 2026
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TL;DR

Multimorphic reveals Ender's Game P3: innovative sci-fi pinball with rotating disc, balance mechanics, and deep rule integration.

Summary

Multimorphic announces Ender's Game pinball machine, a complex sci-fi themed P3 game featuring innovative mechanics like a rotating disc with cannon, balance mech for character alignment (Valentine/Peter), and new translucent LED targets. The design team (Josh Coogler, Brad Albright, Glenn Waechter) discusses adapting Orson Scott Card's book with theme-first design philosophy, featuring nine trainings leading to battles and command school wizard mode, with multiple multiball paths and intricate rule depth.

Key Claims

  • Ender's Game is based on Orson Scott Card's book, not the movie adaptation

    high confidence · Josh Coogler and team explicitly state they focused on the book and intentionally avoided the movie, with Josh mentioning Orson Scott Card had specific requirements about accurately depicting the characters' young ages (6-8 years old)

  • The rotating disc evolved from a lazy Susan mechanism to a clear plastic version with improved visibility

    high confidence · Josh Coogler describes iterative development: initial flat rail concept, Lazy Susan prototype with ball bearings, then upgraded to clear plastic disc that spins faster and allows better playfield visibility

  • Orson Scott Card approved the design and has been enthusiastic about all iterations

    high confidence · Josh Coogler states Card 'pretty much loved everything we've done' and had no negative feedback, particularly praised Brad Albright character artwork for maintaining the children's young ages

  • The game features nine trainings with three difficulty levels each, serving as mini-modes

    high confidence · Josh Coogler explains trainings are typically 40 seconds, timed modes with 2-3 shot types; three are always active (maneuvers/combos, NOL-G P3 pass tracking, unknown third), six are standalone

  • Four of the nine trainings incorporate the rotating disc in different configurations

    high confidence · Josh Coogler describes targets facing player, targets facing cannons, cannons in opposite orientation creating safe mode, and flipper control of disc while cannon fires

  • The balance mech tracks player alignment between Valentine (compassionate) and Peter (aggressive) sides

    high confidence · Glenn Waechter and Josh Coogler explain music and difficulty change based on ball distribution; completing objectives requires specific alignments (friends need Valentine side, battles need Peter side, but optimal battle performance requires balance)

  • Sling locks are a new mechanism allowing balls to lock in inlanes using existing slingshot components

    high confidence · Brad Albright describes Stephen Silver idea to use sling struts to hold balls in inlanes, Jerry prototyped with tape, implemented for minimal cost, enabling four physical ball locks on playfield

Notable Quotes

  • “This is Jerry's dream theme. We're all very passionate about any of the projects that we agree to work on. Absolutely. We wouldn't do it otherwise.”

    Josh Coogler @ ~2:30 — Establishes theme selection philosophy: passion-driven, not purely commercial, sets tone for ambitious adaptation

  • “I'm inventing a whole visual language to try to capture what you're reading in the text, but also to convey all the emotional aspects of this particular story.”

    Brad Albright @ ~4:00 — Articulates ambitious design challenge of translating book-only IP to visual medium, emphasizes emotional fidelity over literal adaptation

  • “You have to find your aggressive side, you have to find your compassionate side, and then you ultimately have to find a way to balance those things if you're going to succeed.”

    Josh Coogler @ ~8:30 — Core game philosophy: mechanical systems mirror narrative themes, alignment mechanic directly tied to gameplay success conditions

  • “I proceeded to say, great. Well, what I want to do is put this big disc on the play field. And I thought for sure that Jerry was going to immediately just shoot that down.”

    Josh Coogler @ ~12:00 — Reveals design risk-taking: major centerpiece mechanism proposed within cost constraints, later enabled by dual-theme project timeline

  • “What do you think about if we put a cannon in that?... Who's going to say no to a cannon, right?”

    Josh Coogler (paraphrasing Jerry Kurtz) @ ~13:30 — Documents organic design iteration: initial disc concept snowballed through feature additions (cannon, ball diverter) in team meetings

  • “The music is also changing by itself... it's definitely more emotional than it is this driving game of pinball that you're going to tap your feet to.”

    Glenn Waechter @ ~20:00 — Sound design philosophy: adaptive music based on balance state reflects narrative themes, symphonic approach over high-energy arcade sound

  • “Jerry's what his first sketches, he had saucers and then those became magnets... literally the next day he took some tape and kind of wrapped it around and programmed it.”

Entities

MultimorphiccompanyEnder's GamegameJosh CooglerpersonBrad AlbrightpersonGlenn WaechterpersonOrson Scott CardpersonJerry KurtzpersonStephen Silverperson

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Multimorphic officially announces Ender's Game as new P3 game with full design team present for detailed gameplay walkthrough

    high · Podcast title 'Ender's Game Reveal' with extended interview featuring lead designer Josh Coogler, artist Brad Albright, sound designer Glenn Waechter discussing mechanics, theme, and development

  • ?

    design_innovation: Rotating disc mechanism represents novel P3 centerpiece combining ball direction control, cannon firing, target rearrangement, and visual theme integration

    high · Josh Coogler describes multi-revision development from lazy Susan prototype to clear plastic version, initially designed to reflect Battle Room geometry reconfiguration from novel, expanded to include cannon and diverter functionality

  • ?

    design_innovation: New sling locks enable ball locking in inlanes using existing slingshot mechanisms with minimal cost addition, replicable across future games

    high · Brad Albright credits Stephen Silver's concept, describes Jerry's same-day tape prototype testing, explains implementation using sling strut modifications to hold balls indefinitely

  • ?

    design_innovation: Translucent injection-molded LED targets with integrated PCBs, optical sensors, and flexible circuit boards represent new platform lighting technology

    high · Brad Albright describes targets with light-up effects synchronized to display, multiple sizes, flexible boards for curved applications like fight ring, explicitly states 'you'll see that used in other games going forward'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Game rules directly mirror narrative themes: balance mech reflects Valentine/Peter character duality, disc rotation mirrors Battle Room geometry changes, training progression mirrors book plot structure

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.032

0:00
Thanks for tuning into the Lizard Kid Pinball Podcast. I am Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain, Scott Larson. Not only is it Pinball Reveal Day, it is double Pinball Reveal Day. Are you excited? I got double the action right now. And yes, if you're looking for a pinball machine, go check out Flippin' Out Pinball. They have always been good to us to help out. However, on this one, go ahead and go to Multimorphic because they are the distribution. And if you're looking for Dungeon Crawler Carl, the link is here and you should go to that because right now we're going to talk about Ender's Game and we have Glenn Wechter on, Josh Coogler, and Brad Albright. You might know Brad from his work on Portal or if you knew way back when, if you're an early Loser Kid fan, he was on talking about Led Zeppelin and also early Loser Kid stuff. Josh Cooler was on talking about Hot Wheels back in 2020 before the big COVID crap. And Glenn Wechter coming at us with his sound design on this game. I'm excited to have all three of you on. How are you guys doing? Doing great. Yeah. Thank you, Paul. Yes. And this is exciting. Ender's game, I don't think anyone was expecting this. It fits well into pinball, the space theme along with the battles. And this just lends very well into pinball. Can you explain to me why Ender's Game for Multimorphic? Really one very simple reason why. This is Jerry's dream theme. We're all very passionate about any of the projects that we agree to work on.
1:40
Absolutely. We wouldn't do it otherwise. Yeah, that's a given, but it's still worth saying. Right off the bat when he presented the potential of working on Ender's Game, It struck me as a very ambitious thing to try to do to adapt a book, right? Something that doesn't have existing content to use. Well, for my role, I'm inventing a whole visual language to try to capture what you're reading in the text, but also to convey all the emotional aspects of this particular story. That's a really challenging and ambitious thing for the whole team to take on. And I think that really captured everyone's imagination. You guys have opted to go the book route, which personally I think that is the better idea. The movie I didn't feel did justice to the book. I'm going to ask each of you, when you're taking a book and you're translating it to pinball, how did you get into the material and decide to translate it? Glenn, you might start starting for us. There's a component to the storyline that does tie into emotion with the personalities of each character. And they're all trying to figure out who they are at a very young age, dealing with much, much older consequences than they should be for their age. But they're going to space. And with the technology and all the things, I knew that I'd have to channel a lot of synthesizer, a lot of technological sound effects, a lot of futuristic type of things. So I was excited that this game was going to sound different from the homebrews that I'd already made. So that was my first thought. I need to figure out how to capture a lot of sci-fi sounds that have energy and excitement. How about you, Brad? How did you take a very dark theme of a book and translate it into the artwork that you did? Well, just looking at it in the broadest terms, I knew that it was going to involve characters first and foremost, character designs, environments. The battle room is a significant part of this story, and that's what a lot of people remember doing this skirmishes essentially in a zero-gravity space. That's a really interesting, compelling environment. So there's the space station, the technology that's around them. There's the creatures of the buggers. There's vehicles and props and wardrobe, you know, logo treatment, all of these things. It was a really broad spectrum of things for me to tackle. And create a cohesive package for. So right off the bat, I knew that that was going to be a compelling challenge that I hadn't really had to do before. The technology spoke to me as a fan of science fiction, and then the character art spoke to me as a fan of illustration and cartooning. And then, you know, the emotional aspects of it sort of steered me in a way where it's like you don't want to be too exaggerated and cartoony. You want to be able to have the players connect with these characters and how you experience them through the gameplay. Now, you, Josh, how did you translate this into design and storyboarding for this? Well, obviously, theme integration is first and foremost in any game we do, and we really spend a tremendous amount of time, not just on the visual, as Brad's talking about, who did an incredible job in doing that. But how do you bring that story and how do you bring true to that story as you're also developing the rules and bringing it all together? It is interesting you made the point of, you know, love the book, did not like the movie. And that's actually a pretty common thread when you talk to people in Ender's Game. They'll say, oh, you know, I like the book. I didn't like the movie. So, you know, the nice thing about that is they said, let's all forget about the movie to watch the movie. That's not where we're focused on. We're focused on the book and how to bring that story to life. You know, whether it was both from the play field design as well as we started to develop the rules, you really try and pull yourself into the characters and what are those key elements that we're trying to bring through. And it's that that struggle that he's going through, that continuing of his development, developing his skills, developing those relationships. And we knew we wanted to craft things in the story and the rules to bring that to life, that you're going through this process, you're growing, you're developing, you're trying to find that balance in order to succeed. And to succeed in playing the game, you have to do those things. You have to find your aggressive side, you have to find your compassionate side, and then you ultimately have to find a way to balance those things if you're going to succeed. Right. So you mentioned Orson Scott Card. What did he think about making this into a pinball machine? And does he have much of a connection with pinball? I don't know if he has much of a connection to pinball. I think he was excited about it. I think he likes to see it brought to life. I think when Jerry made the pitch and shared with him things we had done in other games, that the way we approach theme integration, I think is what resonated with him, that we could bring it to life in the way he wanted. He had some very particular requirements of things he wanted to see or things he didn't want to see and how it was presented.

  • Multimorphic is co-releasing Ender's Game and Dungeon Crawler Carl simultaneously

    high confidence · Podcast intro references 'double Pinball Reveal Day' with both games announced; Josh Coogler confirms Brad and he worked on both projects with completely different rule structures and visual implementations

  • The game features new translucent injection-molded LED targets developed by Jerry and TJ

    high confidence · Brad Albright describes targets with PCBs and optical sensors creating light shows, available in multiple sizes, with flexible circuit boards for curved applications

  • Command school is the wizard mode requiring completion of all battles and collection of friends

    high confidence · Josh Coogler states command school is 'a multi-stage piece' requiring trainings to qualify for battles, then completing battles and collecting friends before reaching it

    • Brad Albright @ ~31:00 — Demonstrates rapid prototyping culture: physical tape mockup tested before final implementation, agile design iteration

  • “We have a couple of different sizes. You can make them whatever you want. It's actually pretty cool. The one on the ring is the whole circuit board is a flexible board to go around the curve.”

    Brad Albright @ ~36:30 — New technology announcement: flexible PCB targets represent manufacturing innovation, suggests modular platform expansion capability

  • “If you're balanced, you're going to be optimized to be most efficient in getting through it.”

    Josh Coogler @ ~26:00 — Rule design principle: balance mechanic creates optimal play path vs. single-attribute extremes, rewards strategic decision-making

  • “By the time we had our second or third meeting, it was clear that the direction that Wesley and Ian really wanted to take Dungeon Crawler Carl was completely different than what Colin and our team did with Ender's Game.”

    Brad Albright @ ~23:30 — Parallel development insight: despite shared designers and platform, two simultaneous P3 games diverged completely in rules/visual language, mitigating design fatigue

    • Colin MacAlpine
    person
    TJperson
    Wesleyperson
    Ianperson
    Paul Farrerperson
    Aaron Williamsperson
    Josh Roopperson
    Scott Larsonperson
    Flip N Out Pinballcompany
    Dungeon Crawler Carlgame
    Portalgame
    P3product
    Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization

    high · Josh Coogler explicitly states theme integration is 'first and foremost' in design process; all major mechanics traced to book elements (balance between compassion/aggression, battle room configuration, character development)

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Orson Scott Card provided creative oversight with specific requirements about character ages and book fidelity; approved all designs without negative feedback

    high · Josh Coogler confirms Card had 'very particular requirements' for character presentation, appreciated accuracy of youth (6-8 years old) vs. movie aging up, praised Brad's artwork, no rejections mentioned

  • $

    market_signal: Ender's Game intentionally designed at lower price point than Portal while adding major centerpiece mechanism, suggesting cost management strategy for P3 platform expansion

    high · Josh Coogler recalls initial mandate: 'Portal came out a little more expensive than we wanted. We want to come in at a lower price point.' Despite this, major disc mechanism added, enabled by dual-theme timeline efficiency

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic simultaneously releases Ender's Game and Dungeon Crawler Carl as dual reveal, leveraging shared design resources while maintaining distinct rule/visual identities

    high · Josh Roop opens podcast noting 'double Pinball Reveal Day'; Brad Albright describes deliberate separation of rules and visual implementations between games despite shared designers; Josh Coogler confirms roles (Brad advisor on DCC rules compliance)

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Nine trainings (3 always-active, 6 standalone) with three difficulty levels leading to battles and command school wizard mode, plus three multiball paths (victory formation, balance stack, bugger multiball)

    high · Josh Coogler outlines progression structure: hub mode → trainings (40-second timed modes) → battles → command school; mentions always-active maneuvers/NOL-G tracking; Brad describes additional multiball paths with choice/risk mechanic

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Game difficulty and musical tone dynamically shift based on Valentine/Peter balance state; specific achievements locked to alignment extremes (friends require compassion, rapid battles require aggression, optimal performance requires balance)

    high · Glenn Waechter describes music emotion tracking ball distribution; Josh Coogler explains gameplay consequences (friends unavailable if too aggressive, slower battle completion if too compassionate, optimized performance when balanced)

  • ?

    content_signal: Multimorphic conducts extended podcast reveal with full design team (3 key figures) providing detailed gameplay walkthrough rather than traditional press release or trade show reveal

    high · Loser Kid Pinball Podcast hosts 90+ minute conversation with Josh Coogler, Brad Albright, Glenn Waechter covering design decisions, mechanical evolution, rule structure, theme philosophy

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Multimorphic deliberately chose book adaptation over movie to preserve character authenticity and emotional depth; explicitly distanced from film version

    high · Josh Coogler: 'Love the book, did not like the movie... we said let's forget about the movie... we're focused on the book'; confirms Card's emphasis on accurate child ages (6-8) vs movie aging up

    • 6:46
    But he's been great to work with as we've gone through it. He's pretty much loved everything we've done. There really has been any I don't think any time he's come back and said, oh, I'm not crazy about this. I think they've been really excited to see it brought to life in this way. I think he really felt that we captured the characters. I know he loved Brad's artwork because one of the big issues was the age of these kids and being true to what the book is where these are six and seven and eight-year-olds. And in the movie, they're much older than that, and that's part of what takes away from it a little bit. So I think he was pretty pleased with how it's come together. With Portal, you really brought that down, and you made it feel, the geometry, very similar to any other pinball machine. Now, with this one, you even brought it up another level when you have this giant rotisserie mechanism that basically takes up the middle third of the playfield. So I want you to talk about the development of this theme and with this playfield, how that playfield works into it because this thing looks enormous. So we had our first kickoff meeting to start working on it. And I actually had probably a month or two to think about a lot of this from the time I said to Jerry, I'm going to come on board to do the project. And we actually launched because we were the rest of the company was focused on Portal at the time. And I'm chomping at the bit to get going. Jerry's like, just, you know, chill out. You know, we got to get Portal out. We're working on Portal stuff. And then the team finally got together to start and it was Steven Silver, Jerry, Colin McElpine, Brad and myself. And Jerry started off by saying, we want to bring this in cheaper than Portal. Portal came out a little more expensive than we wanted. We want to come in at a lower price point. And I proceeded to say, great. Well, what I want to do is put this big disc on the play field. And I thought for sure that Jerry was going to immediately just shoot that down. And, you know, I could tell he was a little like, I don't know about this. And I kind of had actually literally had a 3D mock-up here of it. And it was, by the way, doesn't look anything like the disc we have today, obviously. It was a much more basic concept of the flat rail being able to move to move to different positions. And I think Jerry in his mind said, OK, you know, that might be, you know, too bad price-wise. We can probably afford to do that. And then the next day, Jerry messaged me. He said, what do you think about if we put a cannon in that? And what cannon? Who's going to say no to a cannon, right? Yeah, let's put a cannon in there. And then I think at our next meeting, Stephen said, well, can we use the top to divert the ball? Well, sure, we can use the top. And so it kind of blossomed and grew from there to really be this incredibly flexible and capable thing. And then, of course, Jerry had to take that to TJ and say, TJ, can you make this work? And the first iteration we went through of it is for Jerry's like, all right, how do we do this economically? So maybe we can find something off the shelf we can use. And for the very first iteration, we actually used a Lazy Susan mechanism that we got. So it's still two metal bands with ball bearings between it. And we found one the right size based on the geometry, which is another whole thing for us figuring out what the geometry needed to be so that the shots would work. And that was our first iteration was that and we spun it and we shot it. We're like, wow, this is really going to work. And ultimately, through multiple revisions, we got to where we are now, where it's this clear plastic moves a lot faster, a lot quicker. So it was a really interesting evolutionary process that we went through, and TJ just amazing what he was able to do with that.
    10:36
    So the question Jerry said was, well, how does this fit with the theme? And I had to stretch a little bit on that part. The other mech in the game, that was easy to match up with the theme. But I think what I said, Brad, I said, well, the space station turrets. I think one of the major tenets that we were going for from the beginning was how can we change the geometry the way that in the battle room the stars reconfigure for the different battles to completely block armies from hitting each other in the same way. It's like how can we change the whole geometry but also have it be very flowy, right? I think that was the core basis of the disc, right, initially. And then it was just like all these other cool things that it could do. And for people who do want things closer to the flippers, as you've seen, there's one of the modes we move those targets and they're right above the slingshot. So if you want something close to the flippers, we have delivered on that. And it's actually one of my favorite modes is when we do that. It's actually a pretty cool thing. It's so comically close to the flippers. It's an experience. And you do get a good ball save to kind of protect you for the first training where you have to attack that. It seemed like it was more of a timed mode right Where you trying to shoot the targets but you have a generous ball save and then if you drain at the end of that is that the end of the ball or is that just the end of the mode No, it would be the end of the ball if you've drained after the ball save ends. There is also an extra ball save if you complete it, which is you have to actually complete all seven targets and it's fairly generous. On the first level, it's relatively easy to accomplish and survive. Maybe not relatively easy, but doable. It gets harder. So the base part of the game, there's nine trainings, each with three levels. So naturally, the first levels are a little bit easier and they get more complicated. And I think four of the trainings incorporate the disc in one way, whether it's the targets facing the player, the targets facing. And there's actually two cannons in the game. So at one point the targets are facing the cannons the other way, which is actually a completely safe mode. You're guaranteed not to lose your ball during that mode. So we give you a little bit. We make it hard over here. We make it a little easier over there as far as keeping you safe. Yeah. In that other mode, you're using the flipper buttons to turn the disc into the ball firing from the cannon.
    13:13
    Oh, that's way cool. So you can actually control the disc. Like, that's, that's, that's, I like that. At different times, right? So the, the other cannon is, the other mechanism in the game is the captive ball mech. We also refer to it as the balance mech because it's about that balance that I was talking about earlier with Ender. And you load balls into it by completing some shots and you're able to move the balls back and do the balls back and forth to change the balance and work the balance. And on one side, there's an ability for it to fire the balls back out of the balance right back at the player. Or when the disc is turned there, you're hitting the targets on the disc. As Glenn said, you move it with the flipper while the balls are firing at it. Like top down, you can really see through this disc and everything like that. But from a player's point of view, how did you guys make it so that way it looks easy to see what's going on on that lower play field? And it's not as obstructed. Jerry made a big change in that disc recently where it's a lot lower profile, blocking less of the view than the original. Well, I don't know how many iterations of the disc were there, Josh. Well, there are a lot of little iterations, but the biggest iteration is where we went from that lazy Susan to a completely clear disc where there's a groove in the disc. And there are basically wheels that mount that the disc spins in. And that allowed us to really improve the visibility. At one point in the project, you know, the question was, could we live with it if we couldn't make it any better? And in general, we felt, yeah, but if we can make it better, let's really try. And we carved out the time. And to be honest, I think the decision to dual theme, which happened, And flooring was well underway when we made the decision to dual theme. Probably bought us a little extra time of TJ's time in order to really take the disc to that next level.
    15:16
    And we really were happy with the ability to do that. It made it faster, more clear. It gave more time to really fine tune some of the things we do with the diverter on the top. So that was sort of a benefit for both games that we had a little extra time that we were able to do a fourth revision of the disc to take it up one more notch. If you were to play Dungeon Crawler Carl versus Ender's Game, they're completely different games. The rules don't resemble themselves at all. Brad and I were involved in both projects. I was pretty much just an advisor on Dungeon Crawler Carl because of my knowledge of the playfield and having listened to all the books. And part of my job is to make sure that the rules didn't end up being the same. And that was a non-issue. By the time we had our second or third meeting, it was clear that the direction that Wesley and Ian really wanted to take Dungeon Crawler Carl was completely different than what Colin and our team did with Ender's Game. Not just the rules, but the visual implementation. And not just speaking about my role, but the way that the information is communicated is very different. So within Ender's game, you've got sort of like a holographic projection across the playfield that's indicating your shot lines and your objectives and your progress versus... DCC has more of a traditional insert style design, sort of like how Portal did the hub mode in a more traditional insert presentation. And then you would go into test chambers and it completely changes the context of your screen to give you three-dimensional environments. So Glenn, you've done a lot of other things. You helped work out the Saw game. You did the Monster League hockey. You've worked on these other themes going on. How is it when you're doing a futuristic sci-fi dystopian theme, how do you choose the music and the modes and how it's going to make the role, you know, each mode feel a little different? Because I'm, it's not necessarily a happy story. It's a little bit more of a challenging story, like a lot of sci-fi books are. So what was your approach to the music for this game? So first off, I did sound effects and some call outs. And then I kind of helped with the music direction with Steven Silver and with Jerry. They were communicating with our composers. We have Paul Ferrer and Aaron Williams that did the composing of all the tracks in the game.
    18:11
    And we kind of took a unique approach to the base mode of the game. So when you're not in a battle, you're kind of in what a hub mode would be, I guess you'd call it. Based on the balance mech, however many balls are stacked on either Valentine or Peter, so Peter being aggressive, Valentine being compassionate, the music was going to change emotion. So it was going to have more compassionate tones, it's going to have more legato, more tied together, friendly, happy, loving types of musical interpretations. But when it's on Peter's side, it was going to be more aggressive and harsh and fit that emotion. And so as the game changes and you're now able to make friends if you're more compassionate or if you're more aggressive, you're able to win battles and win fights more. The music is also changing by itself. Yeah. And this this book is a very it's got very heavy source material. So we kind of felt like, yes, pinball needs to have some high energy and uptempo, but it probably does lend itself a little bit more to having more of a full symphony type of sound or almost like a movie score. And so I don't want to say it's cinematic, but it's definitely more emotional than it is this driving game of pinball that you're going to tap your feet to. Now, you might tap your feet to it, but you're going to feel a little bit more of a symphonic experience with that beat as well because it's there to convey the emotions.
    19:50
    Do you have to lean heavily on Valentin at points and lean heavily on Peter at some points and try to be more of a balanced, maybe an ender at some point? Yeah, if you want to make friends with the other students in battle school, you have to be compassionate. So you're going to have to make sure that the ball lock is stacked on the Valentin side. And if you want to go into a fight, you're going to need them stacked on Peter's side to make it quicker to get through a fight and win. But if you're compassionate, you're never going to probably finish that fight. You're going to end up losing. And these are all objectives that you have to complete in the game to progress. And how do you balance that? Is there a target that you're hitting that will shoot the balls back and forth because you're loading them, but they do interchange from each side? So the original vision for the mech was to be able to shoot balls in and lock them in and then newton them across. And in our testing, we realized that the ability to move the number of balls back and forth wasn't going to really work very well off the flipper. You'd have to have a really super clean hit. So what we actually do is we newton the balls, but we actually newton them from balls in the trough. So for those familiar with the P3, we know there's an infinity trough that actually has six bucks in it. What we actually do to newton the balls is we fire balls from underneath to the bottom of that mech to move the balls back and forth. And there's a stand-up target in front of each side that then triggers that ball from underneath to move it across. Between those is a scoop that you shoot into when it's lit to then load a ball into that mech. And each side of that mech has the ability to kick a ball out. One kicks the ball out at the player and the other can just drop it gently onto the playfield or can actually just remove it from the playfield. And scoring, and as Glenn talked about, the difficulty is based on some things you can't do if you're balanced. You're not going to be able to make friends if you're balanced to the Peter side. If you go into a battle, which is ultimately what you're trying to get to, you need to be balanced. And if you're not balanced in a battle, if you're too much like Peter, you're going to lose your troops faster because you're being overly aggressive. And if you're too much like Val and you're compassionate, you're not as effective in your battle and you're going to need more shots to get through the battle. If you're balanced, you're going to be optimized to be most efficient in getting through it. So is the basic rule structure, is there modes? Because it sounds like you do have battle training and stuff like that, and there's multiballs and stuff. But how am I progressing through the game, and what is the endgame? Well, the endgame is to save the earth, right? But short-term goal, you're trying to get to command school, which I guess you could say is the wizard mode, and it's a multi-stage piece to get to. So you start off in hub and you're doing trainings, and trainings qualify you for battles. And trainings you can think of as really mini modes because most of them are two or three shot types of modes. They're timed. I think they're typically 40 seconds where you have to make a couple of shots. There are nine trainings, three we call always active, so they're always running. The ability to do that one is maneuvers, which is a fancy word for combos. One is NOL-G, which is the P3 pass. For those who own a P3 know there's a kind of a technique you can use for moving the ball from one side to the other. This actually tracks that and awards you for doing that. And then six of the trainings are standalone. So you're only playing one at a time, typically because some of them use the disc. So we try to keep you focused on that. And then each of those have three levels that get more and more difficult. Completing trainings then opens the battle room, which are then, you know, I guess you can think of their modes, but they're obviously more complex modes that are typically playing more shots and different things to be executed to get through. If you can play through all the battles collect your friends win the fights you can make it to command school Now there also an extra layer of depth for each of these things If you complete a battle and you have enough of your soldiers left you can do what called the victory formation and you can go into hook multiball by completing four shots You can lock four balls into physical ball locks on the playfield, including the brand new sling locks. So there's that element of choosing to risk for more. Also, with Val and Peter, the mech, if you ever stack six balls on one side, you'll start that multiball as well. So that's two more additional multiballs on top of the main multiball of the game. There's one more multiball. Brad, you want to take it? Yeah, there's the there's bugger multiball. Buggers and Astronauts is a game. It's, you know, I guess you can compare it to like cowboys and Indians. How do you describe that in the context of the book? It's where you jump on your brother and you kick the crap out of him. Yeah. So bugger multiball is sort of almost like a standalone multiball. You use the inlanes and the outlanes to spawn buggers on the playfield that you then need to shoot to collect. And once you've collected the five or six that are needed for that level, it triggers the bugger multiball, which is just a great moment in the game. I do want to hit on something that Glenn talked about, which were what we call the sling locks. Len talked about the victory ritual, which is a key part of the books. In the books, to actually win the battle, you have to have four of your soldiers lock their helmets into spots on the gate, and then a fifth soldier needs to go through the gate. And that was something that from the start, Jerry wanted in the game. He wanted to have a way that we could lock four balls on the play field, have the player make that shoot, and start a multi-ball. It was one of his, you know, kind of must-have in the game. And so we were doing the layout. We were trying to figure out where do we do that. And Jerry's what his first sketches, he had saucers and then those became magnets. So we have a magnet. That's what's now what we call the fight ring. There's a magnet on the jump ramp. So there's a jump ramp that flings the ball off with a magnet. But we needed to have a couple other places to lock balls. And Stephen Silver said, well, it'd be nice if we could lock them in the in lanes like some other games do where they lock balls there to start modes. With up posts. Yeah, up posts, right? He said, couldn't we do something like that with the struts on the sling lock? And we later learned that Steven had a much more complicated idea in mind, but Jerry's like, that's an interesting idea. And literally the next day he took some tape and kind of wrapped it around and programmed it. And when we engage that to fire the sling, if we realize that we just hold that engage, we can actually, with a little extra piece on there, hold a ball right there in the inlay. Which is actually how we start the training modes typically start from either one in lane or the other. So basically we added two locks to the game for a few pennies and that gave us our four locks. So we have the two magnet locks and we actually can lock the balls in the in lanes using our existing slingshot mechanisms. And the nice thing is all future games can now leverage this and have this extra place on the playfield where you can hold the ball basically indefinitely. Talk more about the mechanism on the right side. It looks more like a physical ball lock and it dumps out, seems like it opens up and dumps them out during multiball. So the fight ring, which has a shield in front, right, so sort of has that AFM style that you hit and then it actually opens up and inside of there is a set of a ring with drop targets and a magnet. So the fight mode in the game is you first have to open that by completing that target bank. Then you're shooting in there, hitting the targets. So at some point you shoot in there, we grab the ball on the magnet, we lower the shield, and then you use the magnet like a flipper to hit the various targets in there. Josh mentioned the shield on the front. That reminded me about these new targets that TJ and Jerry basically invented for these games. And it completely changes the presentation of the P3. They're very brightly lit, translucent injection molded targets that have PCBs with an optical sensor in them and LEDs. It's creating a huge addition to the light show that you'll see there on the shield of the fight ring, along the disc. Right. So what it does is it's basically a light-up stand-up target that works with the display because it's all above the display. So it's actually pretty cool. I'm sure you'll see that used in other games going forward. We have a couple of different sizes. You can make them whatever you want. It's actually pretty cool. The one on the ring is the whole circuit board is a flexible board to go around the curve. How do they feel, though? Because I know like the standups on the side feel a little rigid versus what a standup target does. How do these feel when you hit them? The stand-ups on the side are rigid because they're actually not targets. When you hit the side targets on a P3, we're actually detecting from the screen. So as you know, the whole play field has an infrared grid over it. So in-lanes, out-lanes, and the side targets are really detected by the ball being there, and it is pretty solid. These are actual targets that move and have give when they're hit. So a very different type of a thing. So much more like a traditional stand-up target. When you hit it, it moves to complete the circuit. There is this like left ramp, but it's not really a ramp. You shoot, like it comes up around and a magnet catches it. It's got stand-ups beneath it. What is that and how do you involve that into the gameplay? So we call that the jump ramp. So it's a center shot ramp and it is a little ramp that moves up with the magnet there. We either can grab the ball on the magnet or we just accelerate the shot as it comes through and it throws it to the upper flipper.
    30:13
    And once it gets to the upper flipper, there's basically three different shots you can play off of that flipper, really four, the left orbit. There are the two targets underneath that little ramp that you shoot at. And then there's the what we call the left ramp, which is the side ramp that goes up and around and feeds back to the right. And you can actually also shoot the reverse-o-matic ramp, we call it the center ramp, from that flipper. If you hit it cleanly, you can actually get that ramp to fire from there as well. Another really satisfying shot in the game, and it's kind of hard to explain, but underneath the disc on the left side in a certain position, the ball will actually change course underneath it and fire it up around that fight ring and set up for a shot with the upper right flipper. And just based on the position of the disc, it will change where that feeds. Now for owners of this, they know that they're going to be swapping out different modules. So this appears to be two large modules that you're going to be storing. Is that a correct assessment? So you have your standard module in the front and then you have the plus part, which is just four screws and one connector. To take out. So if you wanted to, if you're going to swap out for a different game, four screws, unhook the one connector, that whole lower, that lower part comes off. It's just one big piece. And then you would just put back in again with four screws to put back in the normal side rails. Yeah, so the typical module box, you can fit two of them under the cabinet, like the Princess Bride that's behind Josh there. And then the L2, we call it like the second level that goes down, extends over the screen. That's in a much shallower box. So you're not like doubling your storage space for this. Yeah.
    32:09
    About the same overall dimensions of the module box. I have to say, shipping on these are very nice. It is super annoying to buy a brand new pinball machine and it show up and there's been a forklift that's been stuck through the side of it. I mean, these ship pretty quick. I think I spent like $150 on shipping. Like it was nothing compared to what I pay for. I mean, obviously there's some people that offer free shipping. Well, it's included in the price. I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah. You're still paying for it. There's no free lunch. There's a lot of companies that aren't including that anymore. Well, it's nice when my Whitewood was shipped up. I was actually at my league when that was delivered, and my wife was able to just go out and pick it up and bring it into the house.
    32:56
    She certainly wouldn't be doing that with her. It's like Amazon, like the Amazon delivery driver. It was UPS. It comes UPS, right? The UPS guy comes, he puts it on the port. Heaven forbid the module goes down and you have to repackage it and ship it back. It blows my mind. If you have an issue with a play field on another manufacturer's game, it's like, I don't want to ship back this whole thing. You might have to pay for a service technician to come out. With this, it's like, I literally click two things into place. There's a handle. I pull it out. I unplug the two harnesses or the three harnesses that are in there. I put it back in the box. Nick Baldrige, who's your technician, is fantastic on telling you how to package these things to protect them. So they come to them very well done and they fix it. They put it back in the box and they ship it back to you. And it's I think it was like a two week process. I had some issues with with Princess Bride and it was insanely quick how you guys got taken care of and shipped back. And no other company can offer that. It's amazing. I don't mean this because I did it this morning just for fun. But the way you were talking about how you disconnect the module and pull it out, I'm pulling out my flipper mechanism just because I wanted to try fiddling with my outlanes just to see how it feels different because there's several ways that you can adjust your outlanes. I don't know if you bothered playing with it. So you've got these little swivels, right? And they kind of close up or open up the outlane, but then there's also the posts. And I was curious how it would feel to move the posts with or without the swivel to see how it felt to me control-wise on outlay nudge safes.
    34:43
    And it's just so fun to fiddle with the flipper mechanism on this because it just slides out. Your flippers are mounted on this polycarb assembly. You just unplug that, slide it out the front, and you can do all of your maintenance or changing your preferences. This game is awesome. You guys have really outdone yourself with this one. I think it is very innovative. I know that we've seen turntables before, but nothing like this. A double-decker turntable with a cannon in the middle of it and changes the whole trajectory of the game. It's insane. This is really, really cool. Seriously, this looks fantastic. Brad, you outdid yourself again on art. It's amazing how much you can go from the different flow of different themes that you've done over the years and how they just look very well put together for each one of your themes that you do. Thanks. I owe a lot to the team for putting trust in me to capture this and Jerry, of course, for capturing his dream theme.
    35:51
    I mean, I talked a lot about the breadth of things that I had to figure out in this. You know you not just drawing something that been established over here Like this is what it looks like I purposefully avoided watching the movie because I just didn want that to inform what I was doing I wanted to come at it fresh.
    36:12
    But working with the team from the very first meetings, like Josh said, we do a lot of rapid iteration where I'll share my screen and scribble things. Is this what you guys imagine this stuff looks like? Or is this kind of touching on the vibe the right way? I do my best to not apply a style to everything that I do. Like inevitably people generally will recognize that it's my work and there's common threads because there's a certain sense of things looking balanced to my eyes and that I think leads things to look a certain way just based on my taste and what appears correct. But I like to try and approach each new game with an open mind to find what it is that that game needs to look like to be successful. I have to say Brad has incredible patience when he does that. I absolutely love in our meetings when Brad takes over the screen and starts drawing something, but it was actually on Sodium on Dungeon Crawler Carr at one point. We were working on the apron, and this was probably our third or fourth conversation on the apron, and Brad had this incredible apron. And then we still proceeded to spend like 45 minutes debating little color changes. And maybe that's not the right character. And Brad just in real time changing stuff, flipping it around. And so we came to agreement and it became a little bit of a running joke. There's some comment on Pinside like, do these guys ever think about these things? And you would be shocked at how often we will spend an hour or two debating the most minute little detail of something, Whether it's a rule, whether it's something in the art, whether it's about the mech, but the amount of time that we will spend on every little detail dissecting it. And then the next week it comes around again. We had over two meetings had a long discussion about the color of Ender's hair. It's too blonde. And it was blonde, but it's just the right blonde. And okay, Brad, in this image, it looks a little less blonde. Well, no, that's because it's this. And we literally had one point for Edna pull up. Here's the four versions. Okay, yeah, they're really the same color, but this is that. And so for people who think like we like don't we skip through stuff? Yeah, we every single detail is debated and argued back and forth in hopes of really coming up with and getting the best possible solution out of it. And that applies to the mechanisms in the game, the layout. Well, most of us are remote. And so we meet up twice a week and Brad's in every single meeting. I make the ones I can. I make a lot of them, but I don't make all of them. But I will have had a new bank or a new batch of sounds that Jerry will put in the game or sorry, Josh will put in the game and Jerry will play test. And then they'll end up on a video we all watch and we'll all discuss, well, this worked, this didn't work. Glenn, I know this is your eighth try at this. I don't have any feedback on what I want, but not that. So try again. And so like things just kept hitting the drawing room floor. And it can be frustrating, but it's also super rewarding to finally land on the thing that works. We were trying to do, we were all trying to do kids voices. I think I can tell the story because we don't have the type of budget to hire child actors like for every single role. So we're like, well, what are we going to do? Well, I'm going to download this this plugin called Little Alter Boy and we're all going to try our own voices and we're going to let Little Alter Boy change our adult voices to sound like, you know, eight year olds. And it didn't didn't sound terrible, but it didn't work. It wasn't close enough. So we ended up all finding people that were close to us that would be willing to record a handful of lines for the game. So we've got actual kids' voices recorded for the characters and the kids in the game. And Lucas Pepke. And Glenn. Oh. Glenn is one of the key voices in the game. Glenn does the voice for Colonel Graff. It's a major voice in the game. You wouldn't necessarily realize it's Glenn when you listen to the game because it doesn't sound like he sounds now. And he did an amazing job with the voice work on that as well as coaching the kids. And I'm looking forward to we've got a few more kids to get into the game right now. But the speech stuff has really come together really well using the actual kids and finding kids who could be all the different characters. The sound package is my favorite part of this game. When you step up to it, it's really immersive and it captures you. And it's also just really satisfying for me to kind of vicariously experience this game release through Glenn. Glenn, we worked together on Monster League Hockey last year, and I knew that he was just really eager to do some industry work. And it's not long ago that that was me, and Portal was my first opportunity. And so I was really excited for Glenn to be able to have this opportunity. No idea of my own what the game was going to sound like. But now when I walk up to it, I'm like, this game sounds incredible. And I'm so excited that it's incredible because Glenn got to do this with us and that we just all had such a good collaborative experience. Well, Glenn's enthusiasm on this game was second to none. And, you know, it participated. He does every aspect of it. He was just such a, I don't want to say a cheerleader, but such great enthusiasm as things progress. Anytime something new is released, you know, you can always count on Glenn really, you know, being really excited about it and really pumping everybody up with his excitement over the things we were doing. Sometimes you get lost in the weeds and it's great when you have something like Glenn who's watching the videos and saying, oh, I saw this. I really loved how that came together. And it helps you bring you out and see it from another perspective. And the other feedback on the sound that we got from the reveal is people really comment about the emotional feel of the game and the music and the sound effects and how that really made them feel when they were playing the game. And, you know, that shows how that sound package really came together with the voices, the music and the sound effects. And that's such a critical aspect of a game. When you work on a game for a long time before there's music and sound effects, it's dull. And then you put music in, you start putting sound effects in, and it really is what brings the game to life. And Jerry's tough. You know, if Jerry doesn't like a sound, if it's not working, it's not registering for him, he tells you and he wants it fixed. He wants it changed. I hear Jerry go, oh, it's okay. It's either it works or it doesn't work. And there were a couple of times I tweaked one of Glenn's sounds because I knew what Jerry was looking for. Is this what you're looking for? I'm like, great. Okay, Glenn, here's what I did. So now you know what he's looking for because of the iterative process around that. He's like, Glenn's just not getting it on this sound. I'm like, okay, we got it. Don't worry about it. Okay. Oh, that's much better now. Okay, great. Yeah, my feelings weren't heard at all. I appreciated that. Right, so he's got to interpret what he's looking for. I want a dull sound. That's not a dull sound. That's a, well, it is a dull sound, but not the one you want. I think that the sound package, I agree, is great. The art package is great. I think the rules are really good. I'm really happy with how the rules have come together.
    43:47
    You know, some work still to do there to make sure we get some elements in there for the competitive player. Make sure we have a few more things. And that's why we have a mutant on our team. Yeah, Colin. Mute is a term of affection I use for those players who have a skill level that is far and above the rest of us. They're like inhuman when I watch him play. It's like in three seconds he's completed something. I'm like, I'm still trying to figure out what the shot was supposed to be.
    44:18
    So having Colin on board is great with rules to really help make sure that we're putting things in the game for the competitive player They're looking at those kind of opportunities for the risk-reward stuff, while also maintaining that important balance for the right things in there for the enthusiast and for the novice to make sure that somebody who isn't a mutant, somebody who's a below-average player, is going to be able to step up, enjoy the game, make something happen, get to a multiball, and finding that right balance. And that's one of the things I like when Brad got to play the game. Long before I got to play the game, Brad got to play it. And his feedback was so valuable to understand what was making sense to him, what wasn't. Not to criticize Brad's playing, but Brad is not a mutant. No, I'm not a great player, but I will know in the development, like if something doesn't feel right, If the timing of, you know, a mode start or whatever, like I can be sensitive to some of those things, even if I'm not like incredibly accurate with my shots. Well, and Jerry is a really good player. He's not quite a mutant, but he's a very good player. And since Jerry does a lot of the playing that we didn't watch the video, we've learned we have to also recognize here's his skill level. And let's make sure that, oh, he's making it look easy. Well, that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be easy. You know, Brad goes in or somebody else plays and that really helps us say, you know what, that's probably a little too difficult. We need to adjust the rules on that or we got to tweak that a little bit to make sure that you don't have to be a great player to progress through the game, that there's something there. But if you are a great player, we're going to make sure there's things there to challenge you or at least give you that opportunity to score more by using your skills to do more complex things. And that's one of the keys. That's why I said balance is one of my favorite words. It's important to Ender and it's important to delivering a game that's going to be work for every, you know, it's going to appeal to everyone. Well, I appreciate you guys taking time out of your busy schedule to come join us today and to discuss Ender's game. This game looks fantastic. If someone wants to get a hold of you guys, what is the best way to get a hold of you? You can find me on Messenger. My last name is easy to find, but W-A-E-C-H-T-E-R. It's my last name. I am not on Facebook. I never go on Facebook. I prefer to never be on Facebook. But if somebody really wants to reach me, it's jadegoogler at gmail.com. I'm happy to give out my email address. If I don't like you, I'll block you. Yeah, I admire Josh being off of the social media, but I am not off the social media, so you can find me on Facebook Messenger or on Instagram at Brad Albright. And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. We have some sweet swag at SilverBallSwag.com slash Loserkid. And Brad Albright did our shoes. That's why they look amazing. We love that. Also, the Lose Hairs. The Losers, yes. And if you want to get a hold of us on any of the socials, at LoserkidPinball. Scott, give us our last words. You know, a friend of the show, Doug Porta, stopped by today and we had a good time. And I just want to give him a shout out. And thanks for coming up to Utah to hang out and go and play Ender's Game. And we'd love to hear from you.
    47:53
    Thank you.