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DPP #160 "EVIL DEAD gameplay impressions!"

Don's Pinball Podcast (regular feed)·podcast_episode·32m 30s·analyzed·Nov 22, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Evil Dead gameplay impressions: densely packed with innovative mechanisms, fair shot design, Franchi art excellent.

Summary

Don's first hands-on gameplay impressions of Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead machine reveal a design philosophy centered on mechanical density and interaction. The game features numerous innovative mechanisms including a sling flipper, double-barrel shotgun shells, animated deadite heads, possessed cabin flap, lower playfield with full-size ball, and servo-controlled character toys, all integrated into a widebody layout that plays like a narrowbody without feeling cramped.

Key Claims

  • Evil Dead is Spooky Pinball's 13th game

    high confidence · Don's opening: 'It's a first gameplay impression of Spooky Pinball's brand new game, number 13'

  • The sling flipper is a new innovation to pinball machines that Don had never seen before

    medium confidence · Don: 'Can we just start with the things that I've never seen before in a pinball machine, such as a sling flipper?'

  • The lower playfield uses a full-size ball and full-size mini-flipper rather than micro-balls

    high confidence · Don: 'This does use a full-size pinball down there, a full-size mini-flipper, not a micro-flipper'

  • Evil Dead features multiple sculpted pieces including deadite heads, shotgun, shotgun shells, porch swing, and reel-to-reel tape

    high confidence · Don details each sculpted element throughout playfield description

  • Public playability will first occur at Pinball at the Beach in February

    high confidence · Don: 'it sounds like the pinball at the beach in February will be the first time the public will be available to come in and play'

  • Spooky's design philosophy for Evil Dead focused on mechanisms that interact with the ball

    high confidence · Don: 'I'm coming away from my first playing of this with the theme being mechanisms. Let's do a game loaded with as many mechanisms that interact with the ball as we can'

  • The widebody design serves gameplay purpose rather than being gratuitous

    high confidence · Don: 'This thing also feels and shoots as well as a narrowbody game, but uses the extra area' for hand mechanism and double barrel shooter lane

  • Christopher Franchi's artwork on Evil Dead captures the theme effectively

    high confidence · Don: "Franchi's art is great it's Franchi art it captures everything you needed to. I think if you're a fan of this theme, this is how you would want it."

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't even think I stood up from my chair. I think I just levitated to a standing position”

    Don @ early episode — Expresses excitement at being invited to see the unrevealed game

  • “You guys have done it. You guys, you made the evil dead. You made the evil dead.”

    Don @ early episode — First reaction upon seeing the machine

  • “Millimeters matter. You know, that's the difference between making a shot satisfying and making it frustrating”

    Don @ sling flipper discussion — Core insight about sling flipper design precision

  • “This is a wide body. It didn't play like a wide body. It didn't feel like a floaty hobbit.”

    Don @ widebody discussion — Praise for widebody implementation avoiding typical floating feel

  • “It came off as I'm having fun hitting these mechanisms”

    Don @ overall impression — Summary of gameplay feel versus punishing design

  • “They put the world of Evil Dead into a pinball machine can you believe it”

    Don @ conclusion — Final impression of thematic execution

  • “Everything felt like a fair shot. Some shots were easier than others, and I think that gave a good mix for the game.”

    Don @ shot design evaluation — Assessment of difficulty balance across playfield

Entities

DonpersonSpooky PinballcompanyEvil DeadgameChristopher FranchipersonBugpersonBenton, WisconsinlocationPinball at the BeacheventJohn Wickgame

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball at the Beach in February announced as first public playability event for Evil Dead machine

    high · Don: 'it sounds like the pinball at the beach in February will be the first time the public will be available to come in and play'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Widebody implementation deliberately avoided 'floaty' feeling typical of widebody games by maintaining narrowbody shot geometry and feel

    high · Don: 'This thing also feels and shoots as well as a narrowbody game, but uses the extra area to allow them to do things like this mechanism'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Spooky Pinball establishes specific design theme for each project: Halloween (two upper playfields), Scooby-Doo (largest upper playfield widebody), TCM/Looney Tunes (flow-focused), Evil Dead (mechanical density)

    high · Don systematically outlines Spooky's project themes: 'When Halloween was made, they wanted to make the best two upper play field game they possibly could'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead emphasizes mechanical density and ball interaction across entire playfield, representing explicit design theme for the project

    high · Don: 'I'm coming away from my first playing of this with the theme being mechanisms. Let's do a game loaded with as many mechanisms that interact with the ball as we can'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Evil Dead game incorporates multiple film elements including character names, plot points, and thematic references requiring Evil Dead franchise licensing

    high · Don references cabin, shotgun, deadites, character references (Debbie/Annie), and Evil Dead film plot elements throughout playfield

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.098

0:00
The book served as a passageway to the evil worlds beyond. It was written long ago. And the seeds ran red with blood.
0:17
It was this blood that was used to ink the book. You guys. In the year 1300 AD The book disappeared They did it
0:41
It's been heavily rumored And here it is Spooky Pinball is going ahead and making the Evil Dead Can you believe it? That's right, everybody. It's a special episode of Don's Pinball Podcast. It's a first gameplay impression of Spooky Pinball's brand new game, number 13. It's here. My mind is still trying to process everything that I got into, but I'll give you some quick gameplay impressions. Let's go.
1:21
Grab your boomstick, everybody. even though it's technically Army of Darkness. Let's get into the dead.
1:32
The Evil Dead. Man, so I was graciously invited on in, and I thought I was just going to hang out, because nothing was revealed yet. We knew the people had been down there filming, we knew the ND days had been signed, and some media folks were there, but I'm like, I'm just going to go, I'm going to hang out with my friends, I'm going to film the factory, we're going to have some pizza, hang out in Benton. and I'm sitting around a table and then all of a sudden they look at me and they're like, so Don, do you want to see the new game? And I don't even think I stood up from my chair. I think I just levitated to a standing position and I grabbed my stuff and I'm like, let's go. So I didn't even think it was real, man. I didn't even think it was real. We opened the door. We go into the office where, I mean, I knew this game was located. And then as I walk in, I take in everything. So I'm assuming by now you all have seen the trailers, the reviews, the interviews, the blockbuster. or IMAX presentation, whatever else they had recorded that launched on this launch day. I have not seen any of that. So I went into this completely, completely ice, frosty, cold. I heard the rumors of Goonies. I was expecting Beetlejuice. I was expecting Ghostbusters or something magical or Animaniacs or something, something. And Evil Dead had been in the Rolodex that they'd been producing it or that would be coming out at some point. I know this is probably the theme as long as I've been following Spooky Pinball. that I've heard from people in the community, particularly horror parts of the community, like when are you guys going to make this movie or this game, make this movie into a game? Well, it happened. All right, so I walk in, and instantly I'm like, you guys, you guys have done it. You guys, you made the evil dead. You made the evil dead. The first thing that I saw, I think, was a cabin and a 12-gauge double-barrel Winchester 311C shotgun, and I was like, this is it. This is it. So probably this is how everything was revealed in the reveal. The first thing that people see, I broke it down here because there was a lot of things that my eye instantly went to. Okay, lower play field. Yeah, we heard that was coming alluded to. So, yeah, that's their shotgun mechanism because, of course, that cabin looks awesome. I don't see everything hidden by a giant upper play field, you know, so that's a good departure. It didn't even dawn on me later that there's a lot more that's in this game. And so I want to kind of convey all this. I haven't had hours and hours to play it. I want to give you first impressions, but in a somewhat organized manner, similar to how I discovered this game. So let's go. This is all presuming you've seen the shots and layout and the people have talked about it and the trailers and the official things and everything that's going on. I want to start with kind of the crux of what Spooky Pinball is in terms of design and their approach because they absolutely have a theme approach. And I'm not talking strictly about the theme of the game itself, although those are, of course, awesome. I don't think they've picked a bad theme at all. It's Halloween. Come on. Rick and Morty. Jeez.
Medieval Madness
game
Jawsgame
Looney Tunesgame
TCM (Texas Chain Saw Massacre)game
Avatargame
Halloweengame
Scooby-Doogame
  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball conducted coordinated media reveal with trailers, reviews, interviews, and blockbuster presentation launched simultaneously

    high · Don: 'I'm assuming by now you all have seen the trailers, the reviews, the interviews, the blockbuster or IMAX presentation'

  • ?

    community_signal: Christopher Franchi continues as artist for Evil Dead after previous Spooky titles, maintaining visual continuity

    high · Don: "Franchi's art is great it's Franchi art it captures everything you needed to. I think if you're a fan of this theme, this is how you would want it."

  • ?

    announcement: Evil Dead officially revealed as Spooky Pinball's 13th game with launch trailer and media coverage on announcement day

    high · Don references official trailers, reviews, interviews, and blockbuster presentation launched on game reveal day

  • ?

    product_strategy: Evil Dead uses full-size ball on lower playfield with half-size mini-flippers rather than typical micro-ball approach, improving shot satisfaction

    high · Don contrasts with typical lower playfield designs using micro-balls; this approach provides more satisfying gameplay

  • ?

    product_concern: Scoop exit on Evil Dead shoots balls dangerously close to center drain if not nudged correctly; requires player skill or sling flipper usage to safely manage

    medium · Don: 'This may have been a leveling issue, but it would shoot balls dangerously close to right down the middle if I didn't react and nudge in just the right way'

  • ?

    product_concern: Early production units use resin hand sculpt rather than final plastic version; some coding still in development for ball release mechanics

    high · Don: 'the one I played was still pre-production, so it wasn't like the final plastic sculpt, so it was a little bit of resin' and 'they're still working on coding in a way for that to be released'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Introduction of sling flipper as novel pinball mechanism under sling area with secondary button activation

    high · Don describes sling flipper as new innovation he had never seen before, located under sling, operated by second button on right side

    • 4:24
    But when they go into a project, it seems like they have a theme for that project itself. When Halloween was made, they wanted to make the best two upper play field game they possibly could. Right? Or two? Yeah, two.
    4:38
    And that's what they did. And there you go. When they did follow up was Scooby-Doo. They wanted to do a wide body that didn't feel like a wide body, which absolutely they accomplished. And they wanted to make the biggest upper play field they possibly could. Probably, aside from the Dark Knights that ever existed, or Black Knights. And so they did that. So that was the theme for Scooby-Doo. For TCM and Looney Tunes, they wanted to make a game with flow. Four ramps, four flippers, under flipper shots, every shot flows into the next. And that's what they did. With this one, I'm coming away from my first playing of this with the theme being mechanisms. Let's do a game loaded with as many mechanisms that interact with the ball as we can. That's what everybody's complaining about. These games are coming out. John Wick came out. It's got several ramps. It's got orbit shots and things. It's very light on things that are actually ball interactive. A car, a captive ball, and a drop target is essentially what you get. Oh, you get the batch up in the case too. But it's not completely loaded. There's a lot of open area. So although looking at this game, it looks like a traditional kind of two-flipper game, fan-ish layout. Every corner of this thing is packed, and it's not all evident just from the first time you look at it. All right, so let's walk up to this game. So I walk up. Of course, I see the double-barrel shotgun. And, you know, anybody else, I would expect a detail like this to be two stand-up targets that you would hit, light, and then life goes on. Maybe we would get a drop target or something. They went with sculpted shotgun shells that load into a sculpted double-barrel shotgun.
    6:18
    And the trick, the game mechanic with this is that you want to load one shell, then the other, and then slam them both shut. And the way they do that is by literally hitting the one shotgun shell, load it, the other one, load it. These load, they're an adapted drop-target type mechanism, so they go in and lock, and then they can be released and pop back out. And so, you know, if you don't lock them in order, they reset. So you can do it until you get it right. So lock one, lock the second one, and then they'll both pop out. And then you have to hit both of them in one shot with one ball. And it's fun to do. I think most of my early games playing this, I think I played it about eight times total the time I was there. I think most of the time I just spent just playing with the shotgun, just loading it, hitting, you know, hitting those shots, the shotgun shells both at one time to just kind of load it in there. It felt good every time I did it. and it wasn't difficult to do. Even though I'd only played the game less than a handful of times, I still felt like I was aiming well enough, the shotgun shells are big enough, that they're not frustrating like, oh, if I could only just get this one here. They weren't like narrow little stand-up targets that you see on either side of a ramp. These are right there, and they didn't feel like they were rejecting right down the center, so I appreciated that. I believe that then opened up the flap in the middle of the game, but I'll get to that in a minute. What I have is a list of everything I noticed right away. I'll go over those first, and then we'll go over the other ones that when you look a little bit deeper, you start to see everything else that's packed in here. What I want to convey is you've seen the video, but until people get their hands on this game, which sounds like the pinball at the beach in February will be the first time the public will be available to come in and play, unless something changes, how do these things actually feel when you shoot them? All right so the next thing of course I got the hand right You see that hand over on the left side It operated with a belt drive and limit switches It had pretty smooth action going up and down and the hand is a bash toy It registers hits. And it's behind eight drop targets, you guys. Eight drop targets all in a linear array, spelling out, I forget what they even spell out, boomer or something.
    8:25
    So hitting that thing was fun. It did some cool things. Of course, this is probably the earliest the code will ever be that I played with it. I didn't play with it a ton, mainly because I was playing with everything else that was there. Sometimes it was behind drop targets. But, yeah, it felt good to hit it. It is a sculpted hand, and the one I played was still pre-production, so it wasn't like the final plastic sculpt, so it was a little bit of resin. So the final one may have a bit more of a robust design. But, yeah, it felt good in registered shots and didn't seem to be making or having any issues at all. Occasionally a ball would go on the other side of it, and they're still working on coding in a way for that to be released. Um, but yeah, felt good playing with it. Um, there was a one mode that bug got to where you're actually shooting holes in the wall, trying to find the hand as it was scampering around. It's so registering that hit felt very satisfying, especially from that hidden third flipper, which I'm going to get to. Okay. The cabin. Can we talk about the cabin? So there's a fully sculpted, uh, three dimensional piece. It's not a sculpt. It's, it's made with plastics. Um, but did, I think it had a sculpted front porch. It definitely had a sculpted front porch swing. Okay. And I'll get to that because there's a cool little detail there. So this is where balls physically lock. They're right in front of you, right where you can see them. They're not hidden along the back wall. You know, they're not locked up top like some other games do. These are, you know, fresh front and center right in the cabin. There are two inline drop targets that you drop in order to access the locks back there. None of these shots felt tight. I played, actually, Alice Cooper later on after, later in the day I played this. and those shots are classically tight, especially in the orbits. It feels like with this layout, they probably could have squeezed in one extra ball path, but everything would have suffered and felt tight. This didn't. It was very much a medium shot. It wasn't wide open and super easy to hit, but it wasn't tight and felt unforgiving either. So it did feel good to get up there, hit the inline targets, and then start locking balls, the VUK up into the front porch of the cabin. So that was rad. But otherwise, obvious things I have. I'm trying to go to my list here. Shotgun, the hand, the cabin, the lower play field. Right. So you walk up and here you have a lower play field. This is the basement of the cabin. This is where you go to collect shotgun shells for other modes. Or you go down there to, I don't know, I think we were digging a grave for a woman at one point. Full disclosure, I have not seen all these films in their entirety. Yet, culturally, I'm aware of the plot points. I've seen bits and pieces of it in high school and college when roommates were watching it. But I think as an adult now, I need to sit down and watch them all to get everything that's in this game. But the lower play field down there, it felt fun. So first off, I know lower play fields don't have the highest caliber of joy and inspiration amongst people. And that's because for most of the time, we see things like ACDC or Munsters or the Stewie pinball machine or Donkey pinball machine where they use those little micro balls that seem to bounce around randomly and aren't very satisfying. This does use a full-size pinball down there, a full-size mini-flipper, not a micro-flipper. So it is one of the half-size mini-flippers with a full-size coil.
    11:35
    Shots down there, it looks like there's two stand-up targets and then an orbit that you can loop from either side. And then you can shoot back out the entrance of where the balls come down in. And each one of those shots seem to register. code wise they're still working with this so I can't comment as you know if it feels like you play down there too long play down there too short I can tell you that the shots are easy enough to hit I wasn't able to fully trap up the ball and I think that's by design you can slow it down but if you try to trap up it will slowly creep off the end of the flipper so it's not a park down there all day and you know you have all day to dial in your shot I mean you got to go fairly quickly so it played fast it played fun because it's a full-size ball. It wasn't just this tiny little micro ball bouncing all over the place. Mechanistically, this is its own self-contained play field with its own ball that's in there. So this isn't the physical ball that you were playing with that's down there, but they did this cool little trick. When you do shoot into that scoop flap from up top, the ball will drain, and then immediately it comes out in the lower play field, and it's staged. So it seems like your ball just rolled down there. Really clever effect, but without needing an extra vuck to put that ball back up on the main play field, which means that you won't have to go digging around in there for a stuck ball because that ball lives down there and there's no transit between them for things to get stuck. So I appreciate that. Afterwards, your physical ball will follow a subway and then come out of the scoop that's over there to the right, which that scoop can be nasty if you're not expecting it. I'll get to that here more in a moment. So those were the major mechanisms that catch your eye right away. And already, you know, four good, fun mechs like that would seem to be where most people would probably say, this is probably enough, you know, maybe one or two little stand-up things, but this is it. But they said no. They said hold all of my beers, my root beers, my ruby red grapefruit juice, my grape bludini Kool-Aid, because they went more. And these are the things that I discovered as I was playing. Can we just start with the things that I've never seen before in a pinball machine, such as a sling flipper? A sling flipper. All these companies are coming out with games with new innovations, and this one is like super fun. This is a third flipper. It sits under the sling, okay? It's invisible when you first look at it, and there's a second button on the right side that activates it. And every time I used this flipper, I was having fun with it. So as the ball's coming down, it'll go to the right flipper, or you can catch it early on that upper flipper there. It tends to send balls over into the stand-up targets. It's a great way to hit the hand. But this is the difference, okay? I mentioned before with pinball machines, millimeters matter. You know, that's the difference between making a shot satisfying and making it frustrating and having it rattle. The fact that the exit for the wire form directly above the sling flipper is just over that flipper means that you can hit that second button, extend your sling flipper, and when the ball is coming down the wire form, it'll stop on top of the flipper. You can just hold it right there. So if you're in a multi-ball situation and you want to hold that, you can. Or you can just kind of trap up until you're ready and then drop it and release it. It's probably one of the funner parts of Jaws was catching the ball on that upper flipper that's there. But in this case, the ball is physically stuck, almost like a cerebral lock, only the player controls it, right? So that was satisfying to play every time I shot a ball with it. It was cool having that extra thing when I remembered it. I still have to play and learn that mechanism and train my brain that, remember, you have an extra flipper that's right there. Remember that scoop exit that I talked about earlier? It was shooting balls. This may have been a leveling issue, but it would shoot balls dangerously close to right down the middle if I didn't react and nudge in just the right way. Bug showed me that if I would extend that under sling flipper when the scoop was going to eject, the balls would instead glance off of that and head safely over into the stand-up target. So that was fun. It turned a situation that was pretty dangerous and made it safer if you know to employ it in the right way. And every time I shot a shot up to that wire form, it would come racing down fairly quickly. But when I did remember, I can go ahead and hit that flipper and it would stop that ball right above it. And then when I was ready, I could drop it and then let it roll to my lower right flipper or take it off the sling flipper. Cool little mechanism in a really cool area. And it's just interesting that we're seeing flippers in areas we haven't typically seen flippers before, in left out lanes, and in this case, under a sling. It's fun. It was fun every time to use that. Most of the time I was playing with that flipper and the shotgun to be honest and I was having a blast. So what do you guys play it What do you guys play it This was then pointed out to me that there a double barrel shooter lane in this game Spooky games tend to use the launch buttons And in this case it used in effect to fire the double barrel Winchester what did I say 3C11 or something double barrel shotgun So starting the multi-ball, two balls will stage in the shooter lanes. Typically, when you shoot a ball, it's just the one. But two of them can sit in there. And then you watch the video. and when Ash is getting up and he's like, ready, aim, fire, it gives the player a signal like, now, shoot now. You hit the launch button and then both of these balls shoot out from the auto launcher into the gameplay and then the third ball is released somewhere and it's like now multi-ball mode. That was a fun gimmick every time it happened. It's like, okay, cool, watch this. This is cool. Let's go shoot, ready, wait for it, wait for it. Now, boom, double barrel, shooter lane, wild. This was the time that I looked down and I'm like, this is a wide body. It didn't play like a wide body. It didn't feel like a floaty hobbit. It didn't feel like some of the other games that were really wide and worldly. This thing also feels and shoots as well as a narrow body game, but uses the extra area to allow them to do things like this mechanism with the hand on the left side and the double barrel shooter lane on the right side and just have some extra real estate for those wire forms to course and travel through where they otherwise would have been too narrow. And I think that's what allows them to have as many shots as they do in a fan-ish type layout without having things feel crowded. That's a great reason to go to Widebody. Go to Widebody because we want more real estate, because we want to use it in a compelling way, and we want to use it in service of the gameplay instead of just saying, look how wide this is. Isn't this fun? And balls are kind of floating around everywhere.
    17:58
    All right, so Double Shooter Lane. The main flap. This was fun. So looking at a top-down view of the play field, you're not going to notice this, but there's three mechanisms that pop up from the underside of the play field. In the center is the scoop, the portal, the dungeon to the basement, to the stairs that go down there. There's stand-up targets that come up, that go down, and then you can shoot in there. There's also a mode in the game where the cabin that you're in is possessed by demons and laughing at you, and this flap will go up and down like a laughing mouth at you. as well. So yeah, that's fun. It's got elements of Attack from Mars in the fact that you've got those drop targets that are up that you can hit, and then they also fall down and you can get in there. I've got to spend more time playing with this to understand the ins and outs and how that translates into gameplay, but it was fun. When it's open, it's big and wide. It's easy to hit. It's not a tiny scoop, so when it's up, that's where you're going, right? Super fun. I dug that. next to that there's the two deadite sculpted heads that come up and this is where you know they've obviously borrowed from other mechanisms that have done this such from medieval madness right with the trolls so these were fun they're individually controlled I saw them used in a couple of different ways I think it was a multi ball mode that we were in where both of the heads popped up they both block ramps if you notice each one is in front of a ramp entrance and so to collect the bonus I think it was during a multi ball you had to hit the head, the head would drop momentarily, allowing you to shoot through and then get the jackpot up the ramp. Otherwise, if you hit a different shot or you didn't return there in time, it would pop back up and you'd have to repeat that. So that was a fun little mechanistic way to have that work. There was another mode, the Laughing Cabin one, where these things would pop up and down and mock you as well.
    19:47
    Otherwise, there was modes where they popped up and you just have to hit them to drop them down. So it's something interesting that's there. I think one of the facts that people have an issue with lower play fields is they kind of take up a lot of real estate that otherwise could be used for other things. I like the way that these are situated because there's not really anything else that would be there anyway. And it's just kind of like, here's a spot. We can put fun things in here. Let's make them sculpts. Let's not make them just stand-up targets. Build the materials is just spread around everywhere. And you can see it where you look. there's that mechanism with, I forget what the lady's name is because I haven't seen the films recently but there's like a good Debbie and a bad Debbie forgive me on the name, I'm probably getting it wrong but that is also on a servo that can turn and face either direction and when it's good then you can trust the inserts and what the game's callouts are telling you to do when it's bad, she's trying to trick you and maybe she'll tell you there's a ball save when there's not really one, then you accidentally drain and say, oh, you jerk, you lied to me or have you shoot a ramp that ends up dropping your multiplier or something. So fun little gameplay elements. And just from a mechanistic aspect, a lot of fun things in this game that are doing things, which is awesome. What else do I have on my list? What else? Deadites, the main flap. There's a center post on this game. This game, many times I would employ that. I like that we've kind of gotten back to not every game needs a center post, but when there is one there, if you do have a shot coming straight down the middle, You can nudge, pop it right back up. I do appreciate that. I'll need to play this game more. It didn't come off to me as a brutal playing game. It came off as I'm having fun hitting these mechanisms. And through my plays with it, I didn't find that there were shots that were immediately punishing and sending balls straight down the middle there. So I know it's an early impressions. I only played this game for just a couple of times over a few hours and really poured over all the detail that was in there, but just wanted to kind of convey that. So those are some of the main obvious mechanisms and the not obvious ones that you come to play with and my impressions of them. Otherwise, going around the rest of the layout, the orbits are fun on this game. The left orbit goes to a 180 ramp to a little wire form that drops in the middle of the pop bumper nest. So this game does have a pop bumper nest that has a single exit back into the orbit. But it was fun to hit it from the left and have it go in there. That being said, I love orbits just like Orbital Albert. my good buddy.
    22:16
    And fortunately, if you hit the orbit from the left side, it makes a full orbit and comes right out that right. The way they did this is with a branching ball path. So if the ball is hit on the left side, it goes to that 180 ramp. On the right side, the ball guide continues it around. So you have a nice juicy orbit from the one side. And from the other side, instead of getting another orbit racing back the opposite way, it drops into a pop bumper nest, which can kind of break up the gameplay a little bit and slow things down. So that was fun to play with. Captive ball makes its return. sits right there in the middle between the two center shots.
    22:48
    And it was a very satisfying captive ball to hit. I know John Wick, where that continental building is a little bit on the right, you can hit it with a glancing blow from the left, from a standstill, from like a drop catch on the right flipper. Sometimes it doesn't go up hard enough to register just from that. This one is dead center right at the play field, hittable from any flipper.
    23:10
    Well, maybe I didn't try from the sling flipper. But from the main flippers, it was generally fairly satisfying to hit. And because it is a captive ball behind it, you do have to hit it with enough inertia that it goes back unregistered. I didn't notice any shots that seemed fair that hit it that didn't register. So I like that. I hate when I hit a captive ball and, like, it's not quite hard enough to register. It's like, ah, dang you. John Wick is, like, probably one that does that. And to some extent, I have some of that problems with Looney Tunes TCM because of the angle that they had to put that in. that even a moderate shot will sometimes not send the ball far enough. This one didn't seem to have that issue. Hidden right behind it, this is fun, they didn't have to do this. I mean, I think there's already enough stuff in this game. But again, hold my beverage of choice. There's a magnet in the orbit back there that can activate, stop a ball, and drop it into a Vuck that pops it up into a wire form. We've seen this mechanism with other games. I know Jersey Jack likes it. It's in Avatar. It's in Guns N' Roses. It's in Godfather, where the ball will then drop into a ball lock or something. So that is back there. So when the time is right it can grab your ball and put it in when it needs to play a mode or what have you What else do I have Magnet with the Vuck Ah the porch swing Let talk about the porch swing So we heard a lot about the difficulty with putting sculpts in games If these are unique sculptures or sculpted pieces, they require expensive tooling. It's like, do you really want to spend the budget on this thing? That's why we may see, you know, one or two sculpted things in games, and sometimes they tend to only be in the LE and pro levels, and we see a lot of plastics in the lower ones. There are a lot of sculpted pieces in this game, both dead-eyed heads, Debbie's head, or forgive me, whatever her name is. The shotgun and both shotgun shells are sculpted, and also the porch swing, the porch swing on the cabin that eerily swings back and forth when balls are ready to be locked or approaching in there. Just a cool little detail, and it swings out of the way to allow the balls to drain into the buck and then dispense the multi-ball. Super fun. There's a ramp flap that goes up and down. It's a ramp that can flip up and also be a scoop. That's your mode start. I think we've got a spooky scram over here. I like that scrams are being used more.
    25:24
    So that was fun. Instead of just being strictly a ramp, there was a flap up, and that's your mode start. With the action button, you can actually cancel that mode start and keep playing. And I'm trying to remember off memory where that ramp went, but it went somewhere fun. Into a wire form or some such. I have to look at the – I don't mean – I have no photos to go on. The trailer's not released yet, so this is all from memory. I wasn't allowed to take photos.
    25:50
    But it was fun when I wanted to hit that ramp instead of just starting a mode. I could cancel it with the action button. A good use of that action button that's right there. Give me some player choice over what's going on. Game code-wise, what that would do is as you're hitting shots to activate the potential to start the different modes, you could have one activated and the flap will flip up. You can cancel it, activate another one, and now each mode will be activated, so then you won't have to worry about hitting shots to activate the next one. You can just play from one to the next. So I thought that that was interesting. There's a reel-to-reel tape, a sculpted reel-to-reel on the Playfield apron, which when there's a character, a narrator that's speaking, it's as if he's coming off of this tape-to-tape reel recording. It's motorized, and it looks like it's lit up as well, so that's fun. and the dual in-lane drop targets that go up to the cabin. Right, so that's what I want to get to. All right, so I think that covers most of the things that I saw with the shots and with the layout. I can say that nothing felt like it was rattling and rejecting. Everything felt like a fair shot. Some shots were easier than others, and I think that gave a good mix for the game. There was no ramp that was like, man, that's just really frustrating because it's got to be such a good shot in order to get up there. every shot if fair shot seemed to reach the top of every ramp reach into every Vuck the mechanisms all seem to work well with each other this is very early code that I'm playing so I want to see like how that develops but man they put the world of Evil Dead into a pinball machine can you believe it Franchi's art is great it's Franchi art it captures everything you needed to I saw a butter cabinet with this on it and yeah I think it's awesome I think if you're a fan of this theme, this is how you would want it. This looks like how you want it. I can't say anything bad about it. I saw art blades that were in there. They may be the final ones. They may have been work in production, but they seem to service everything. The play field itself did not feel cluttered with inserts. I think probably having a lower play field helps with that. The mode start lights and you building up to your wizard mode are on the back wall of the play field in the cabinet. You can look back there to see where you're at. There's some cool little lighting effects with some eyes that light up on the back left part of that. Did they show you guys the topper? The topper is nuts. Now, what they were telling me is that the aftermarket add-on topper, the upgraded one, will be available at the start. And I think these guys are taking the absolute award for the creepiest, most unsettling pinball topper that I have ever seen. The thing is, motorized was going off at random times. It has RGB lighting in it. and it's grotesque and it's quite scary, and I think it's absolutely perfect for this game. I did have a little peek at the plastic one. It looked great as well. I didn't have a long time to look at that, but it will ship with a plastic topper, but there is this aftermarket one available. Your other option will be butter cabinets. I haven't heard on the updated price for butter cabinetry, but if you've touched one at a show, you know it fits for you or not. They do look fantastic. I think the decal art is fine as well. So there you go with that. What it sounds like, and this may change as well, but they want to stick to the same pricing of being under $10,000, and they may be going only with one version, just a CE version. I think that makes absolute perfect sense. It's what I would do, but it's their company. I don't have my eyes on the numbers of how many standard editions or bloodsucker editions are ordered, but I kind of see just going to the best version and just putting it out there for this product seems to be a great idea. What else did I want to talk about? We talked about the art. We talked about the shots and the layout. We talked about the overall feel. Code-wise, is this game fun to play?
    29:44
    Yeah, it was fun to play. I'm going to not be, man. Look at all the mechanisms that are in there. Oh, so this game covers Evil Dead 1 and Evil Dead 2. Similar to what we've seen with Alien, where you can play Alien or Aliens. Now, they didn't go with two different coding teams for this game. There's one coding team behind it, one programmer, Mr. Ben Heck, who's doing some cool animations. What I found out that gameplay-wise, you pick which one you want to start with at the beginning of the game, the VHS tape for Evil Dead 1 or 2. When you play through the four modes, the mini wizard mode, it will then flow into whatever edition you didn't pick. So if you're playing well enough, you can get through both sets of content in one game, but it doesn't seem like they play concurrently where you can play a mode from Evil Dead 1 and then a mode from Evil Dead 2 in your same physical game playthrough so you'd have to finish the four modes of the one and then go over the other one. Or when you start just pick the one you want to go to. So man, you guys this game has been long rumored or it's not even like rumored like we know it's coming but like asked about. There wasn't a time when I saw the spooky folks in a thread asking for people talking about the themes they want them to do where someone didn't mention this. So I've got to imagine that this is a sought-after theme. Bruce Campbell himself did custom call-outs for the game. I mean, they got Bruce. Bruce owns some of the rights to Evil Dead, so everything in the game had to be approved by him as well. So, like, if you're a Bruce Campbell fan, not just Evil Dead, but Bruce Campbell in general, he's got super fans that are going to love this. And having him do custom call-outs, plus everything grabbed from the movies and put in here, and the fact that Bug, Corwin, Emery, is a huge fan of this license, and he put everything in here that he would want from one of these games, should tell you everything you need to know. If you are looking for something that's completely family-friendly, this is probably not the game that you would want to put in your house, because this will scare your grandchildren. If you want something that services a license, and is mechanistically fun to play, yeah, dude, this is totally it. I mean, come on. Um, yeah, I had a blast playing it. I can't wait to go play it again. And I think I will be dragging this into my game room. Um, but basically as soon as possible.
    32:05
    First impressions. So you people in the future, you're watching the release trailer and everything right now. I haven't seen that yet. You can probably go out to a show and play this game by the time they announce this. So I'm a little jealous of you in the future, but from dawn in the past, those are my first gameplay impressions from having played it. hopefully by now I've played it again you'll hear about it on an episode of Don't Spend My Podcast until then this one's going in the basement Boomstick