There are days where I had things literally in customs when the the tariff got put on it and it was taken off by that late afternoon, but I still got dung for it. Like it's just it is what it is. But again, this comes down to um a situation of I can't just look at my feet. I got to think about what our long-term goals are. Like, yeah, this hurts us. We're going to eat it. We're not going to pass it on to the customer, but it will level out by the time we get to the end of it. For those for those people watching that don't know that you sent out an announcement stating that the tariffs would not increase the cost of the at that point unannounced Dune. And I think that's super important because as I've said on the channel previous times that I think that Barrels of Fun is is very much a consumer focused company at least currently and that there are other companies out there I won't name that had sent out similar emails from the other standpoint where they were like hey we're cranking up the cost because tariffs are affecting us. And so people will say that yes we did have a $1,000 price increase on this game but that wasn't due to tariffs. So, one of the things that we learned on Labyrinth, there were multiple things people were complaining about and requested us that if we could add these to the games as add-ons, they would really, really appreciate that. One, shaker motor. Two, by the way, the list, the list is way more than $1,000 worth of components if you bought them from another company like Stern or if you bought them on Pinball Life. Sorry. um the dual coin slot door coin door, but I did not do that because I would rather put the extra $40 onto the playfield than onto the onto the uh cabinet onto the coin door itself. However, we will have an opportunity to if they people want to add a coin door, a dual coin door on it, a dual coin slot door on it, we can do that. Um they people said the lighting on Labyrinth was too dim for them. Okay, that's where the how lighting system came into this. Invisy glass is something that people were asking for. Um, the cabinets was not something people asking for, but my frustration of like I wanted something nicer and I was playing around with different stuff. So, it was one of those things of this is something we can add on. And with the success of Labyrinth, our buying power got a lot better. So, all of a sudden, now I had an opportunity. I can now include a shaker motor. I can now include invisy glass. We can now include a lighting system that will actually help us tell the stories that we wanted to do in Dune. Like there's so many moments that we wanted to create an emotional environment that that lighting system allow us to do now. And it's not even just marketing crap cuz when you and I talked early before, well, not really early, like literally seconds before we went live, but the how lighting system kind of blew me away. I I expected it to just be like Penn Stadium lights or or similar to Stern's like John Wick thing, but it's not like it's recessed in a way that the lack of a diffuser, which I had originally was going to be critical of, is totally irrelevant. Like they are they are almost completely transparent to you as a player when you're standing directly in front of the machine. And it really does add to the experience in a way that I was just like, I've seen plates. Who cares? But no, it's it's really well done. Well, we didn't want to have it where it was attached to the playfield. And B, I didn't want it to be because you've seen them installed on the side of games and you can see the LED strips. Yeah. So, we really wanted to make sure it was built into the cabinet and twisted away. So, when you're playing it, you weren't I mean, you can still technically see the LEDs on the metal on the wire forms and stuff, but you cannot see it from the top to bottom. So, it's not affecting the game play. So, it was one of those things of we had to build that into the cabinet and it was something that we knew that we'd always want to continue on forward. Um, we had to, you know, we had cabinets getting, you know, cabinet decals being damaged in shipping. So, we wanted to solve that. That was one of those things of, well, can we add on a product like that? And we played around with multiple versions of how can we make it better? And obviously, our Everglass uh became the winner. and that debate that we had. And then also the audio system is like as much as I love our audio system. Dune demands bass. Like it demands a massive sound package. And I will say the sound package that's in this game is actually a stepping stone to our next game's audio package. So we're actually taking it another step up this one. There is a very large amplifier in the back glass. For those of you who don't know and haven't opened a barrels of fun game, uh it's in the center is their is their Linux- based hub which controls basically everything's brain. Then you have your driver boards around it. You have your sound amplifier in the upper left and then there's the display kind of HDMI bridge output that goes to the to the playfields. It's well done. It fits and the lighting is Yeah. Uh Silver Silver mentions he's like, "Would the camera footage exacerbate the effect you've mentioned?" Something that's really important that people don't understand about the video footage and and it's here as an example on the screen. I don't know if you have the Twitch pulled up, but you can see the h the how lights reflecting in the glass and stuff and also from the edge of the cabinet, but you're looking at the game from like standing on the side and it's not where you play it. It's not. You stand directly in front of it and then the that experience is totally different. Like the lights are are they're just not there. They don't look like they're there. It just magically appears onto the playfield. It's it's really cool. Yeah. And you know, it's just again, we wanted to provide a product that you don't feel like you have to add a single thing to it. In fact, we had a conversation. I was like, are we putting too much in our game? Because one of the things I loved about Pinball getting into it was making modifications. I mean, that's why I got back into it because I wanted to fix it. I wanted to add things. And I was wondering, are we pushing it too far? Because there is a whole modders market there that people really gravitate towards games when they can make it personalized. Sure. Um, I started buying Ellies because I'm tired of doing the same four install bullshits that you have to do on every Stern game. I'm tired of putting a shaker motor in. I'm tired of putting art panels in. I'm tired of putting in speakers in from Pin Sound. You know, like they aren't sponsors, by the way. I just that's the ones that I've been putting in my games. Anyways, like I I understand what you're saying, but I would prefer that the mods that go into a game that you do be cosmetic and by choice and not something that is a fundamental part of the pinball experience in my opinion. Yeah. Well, and when we looked at all the stuff that we wanted to add on that people were asking for, we looked at the price points because if we could not like when we added up what everyone else is doing that are either add-ons or a part of their level package that they're selling, like when we did a comparison between them all, we were still cheaper than five of them with everything included with add-ons and stuff like that. So, it was really important to us to come in at a price point that when you compared us to everyone else with the add-ons or what they included in that level package, it was a very good value for money. We want to be when you look at ours, you're looking at a very, you know, the one and only exclusive version of that IP of that game. You do not need to do anything to it. And if you do, I can't wait to see it because if I didn't think about it, then I must have been sleeping or something. I think you've checked pretty much every box of something that you would want in it. But I am also I'm curious what the maker community is going to make for to expand into the Dune, you know, into whatever they're going to add to Dune. I mean, uh, that's funny. By the way, Stumbler is going to be on the podcast soon. And, uh, as somebody who is legendarily known for making pinball modifications, I I just can't really think of anything. Um, we got to talk about the worm. Yeah, I got I was really impressed with Labyrinth that the the amount of mods on that game are pretty much zero. So, uh I mean I've seen people put little statues and Sarah and stuff which are really cool. But nothing that like you know Stumble I mean he's like the king of all mods, right? Um and maybe doesn't like Labyrinth. I don't know. You should reach out and tell me. Um but I think it's probably more that they couldn't think of something that would really improve the game. I mean, you think of his other modifications, those like the Jaws uh like buoy lighting system. Obviously, Godzilla is the biggest example. Everything on Godzilla has basically been replaced, but that's cuz those plastics are cheap and they look bad and the stuff that he's done make it look much more like that threedimensional world under glass. And like you already have that threedimensional feel to it. I mean, the harvester is is big in a satisfying way and not in the way like, I don't know, the dragon on D and D. And the, you know, Bowen himself said that the the rock sculpts are the best rock sculpts in pinball since Flintstones. So I always think of White Water, but he is right. I love Flintstones with the whole rotating apron where the balls like that was a holy crap moment when I I mean Flintstones, it is what it is. But when that whole ball passes down, it goes around the apron comes up the other side. I mean, talk about a pinball moment. Like I got to figure out how we down the road. I just that that cool I actually honestly the loop on um on Labyrinth where it comes down and around was kind of inspired of that make you think it's going past the outside land and coming back in. that was kind of inspired to create that moment of like, oh, was it going to go out? But that something else that I do like about Barrel's games is that when you look at the playfield, it's initial like simple is not the right word, but when you look at the path of balls that are on the playfield initially, you think it's very obvious, but then as you start playing it, ball paths start to manipulate in ways that you're like just not expecting. like diverters and stuff occur and you really do get to explore the game and start to reveal like oh wow this is like a lot more layout and path ball path situation going on here than I expected as very obvious in Labyrinth and as I'm getting into Dune it's definitely happening more too um so worm we're going to talk about the worm you you couldn't make Dune without a worm and and I mean this endearingly when you put a worm in giant prolapsed anus not the first thing that would have come to mind having played The worm is awesome. So, can you What was the design process behind coming up with the worm? So, we had a lot of different ideas for how we were going to make the worm do what it does. Now, what it comes down to again, we do blue sky. So, we're thinking about we can do X, Y, and Z, but the reality is we have budgets and there's only we there's only so much magic you can do on a playfield. So, you know, so do you want to make the worm sideways like it is in the movies? like how can we make this happen? Um so we came up with an idea of like well it's got to eat the bowl so how are we going to do that? Magnet toten is a really good example of that of the ball going get pulled into the playfield. So it's like well how can we take that to the next level you know and then you think about well you want to ride the worm. So okay well now if we can suck it down how do we rise it up? So again, so okay, well let's take what would it take to take the ball that sucks down. Now we got to put a mech around it and make it rise up. All right, well that's kind of interesting. And then someone made a comment, it would be really cool if you can make it rotate. I'm like, okay, well let's figure out how we can make it rotate as it rises up. And Travis and Paul would go to work and they would just come up with little ideas and stuff like that. And then um I remember the day that came in like, David, this is going to cost too much. like it's going to be $600, whatever. It's going to be expensive. 4 to600. It's a complicated mechanic. There's a lot underneath there. Has its own little board. I mean, it's got its own little brain. And it was one of those things. And it's terrifying. Like, it's just everything that went into we put a lot like a very complex mech into this game. And when they approached me with this, they were like, "Well, it's just going to be too expensive." And I'm like, "Well, we haven't built it yet. Like, let's just build it." Like we got to have a moment in this. And we've got these little things off the side that we're doing, which is fun, but we need I want to have a moment when people go, "Oh, it did that. Oh, it did that. Oh, like I wanted that constant leveling up of like, oh, we've seen that trick before." It's like a magician. Like a magician does never does the trick twice unless he can totally redo it again. So it was really mental capacity of how can we keep adding on to the moment. Um so they went away, they designed it, they came back and yeah, I mean it's still an expensive mech, don't get me wrong, but something I learned on Labyrinth, there were many things that we were able to fine-tune and just iterate on to make it better and cheaper. Like, oh, we could we don't need this part. or when you shoot it and you practice with it, you realize you can modify this and modify that. So, it was able to get the price down to where it was reasonable and it created a moment that like when you hit it that first time, you know, it was funny when I had someone play for the first time and the first thing they did was like when you do the harvester battle, you kill you kill the Omnicopter, you kill a Harkinan, and then once you've destroyed the harvester, you have an opportunity to dispose of the Harkin bodies, which is you shoot the the worm and it sucks it down. So, there's that moment of people like I saw people go, "Oh, wow. That's really cool. That's from this game." And then they just playing the game because they don't think of it doing anything else. Um, I remember the first distributor said, "Oh, you've got a magnet or a spinning disc there. Oh, very nice." And then that moment where it rises up and well, first of all, the ball sinks a little bit, so you think it's going to do the same trick. And then it rises up like that. Yeah, it was like, "Oh, now you get all of those experiences almost in order when you play the game, which is really smart." Cuz you know, it's easier. One of the easier things to do is or first kind of task you are presented with is destroying a harvester. So, you get to see what it looks like when the worm grabs the magnet and sucks it down. You're like, "Okay, cool." And then later, you know, when you get to uh uh what's the main multiball called Rackus or the Desert Power Multiball? Yeah. And then Desert Power multiball. So when you get to that, that's when the actual mechanic rises up and then dumps it onto the wire form and you're just like, "Oh my god, like what's up?" Um, then you have and then you have ride, which is the moment when Paul rides the worm. And in that mode, you've got to set the thumper, but you got to like in the movie itself, there's multiple times that he's trying to find the right frequency for the thumper to call the worm. And like he puts it on top of the mountain, then he brings it down a little bit more. And you basically you're doing this in the game. So there's three shots that you got to find to set the thumper in the right position. And then you got to shoot the thumper to make it start happening. And then you've got to lock the ball up onto the mountain just like in the movie as the worm's coming towards you. And then you've got to the ball will release. This is a T. So let me back up on the rules. I'm not a rules guy, but I get really passionate about when I talk about this mode. Sure. A lot of the uh the prophecy modes, the modes we see Paul become who he is are set in two tiers. So you have the first tier that is a set amount of shots and then you shoot it up into the into the siege where the ball will get held and then you can choose to cash out your jackpot from that mode and just go on keep going on the game or you can go to tier two which is the next section of that mode. So the first section of ride is calling the worm to you. The second section is now mounting the worm and setting the hook. So the second time is you put the ball onto the worm, it rises up and then you got to hit the worm to set your locks like to find to stop yourself from falling off of it. And then you set lock one, lock two, which is your, you know, your your hooks. And then you get to rise it up and you get the whole moment of the frameman going, "Yay, successful." and then you get a nice hurry up and steering it. I mean, there's there's so many movie mechanics or like movie moments that you sync to do it. One thing I like the Thumper's light show is one example I think of something that's really uh engaging about the game too when you when the Thumper happens and it's setting up and whether it's uh uh from the harvester right before you dispose of bodies or when it goes into the multiball, the thumper happens and you see it kind of like cascade throughout the like rest of the playfield and uh that's neat. I do wish from what I've seen I do wish that there were more lighting effects. Like it feels a little barebones in that capacity now, but again it's it is early and it's released. So I'm curious what are things that are not in the game that are coming so people don't have to be like man I wish it had this. It's like it's coming. So currently right now the game has desert power multiball. It has your battle harvester uh modes. It has pain box. It has. And the guys will tell kill me on this. Survive and escape. You got escape. Yep. Uh ride and escape. Uh survive and um ride. Um right after that, we're going to have train. We've got uh awaken, rescue, and fight. They're the modes that will be coming next. And then you got Battle of Araken, Fall of the Siege, Liberate Aracus, and Voice from Outer World. So those are modes are still coming along. So those are those are the wizard modes that Bowen talked about that where you get to collect Dune letters through some mechanic and then once you spell Dune you get to do one of the many wizard modes and progress through those to the final tier which is the voice from the outer world if I remember correctly. And I will never be that good and that's why you have those people talk about it because I just I just live to get to like three modes and I feel like I've completed it because then by then I've lost the ball for sure. And if people wanted to learn about the modes and rules and stuff, they should go watch the other podcast with Bowen. Like that's not what we're here to talk about. Uh but kind of if we had a bigger team, I would have, you know, nice layouts of the mo of the road map of what we're doing. And we are working towards that. But, you know, keep in mind we are still a very small group that are working on multiple projects plus running, you know, we got 30 people, you know, full-time employees running a facility of we just expanded our facility by 13,000 square ft. So, congrats. How many is that now? Under Yeah, we're over 30,000 square ft now. And it's just like growing the company to where we need it to be comfortable so we can create products at the demand. So no one's waiting too much. Oh my focus back. I literally bored your camera. But again, we want to get the company to a point where we don't have a delay too much getting games out to customers, but also sustainable enough so if the the economic environment or something happens that we can weather those storms as well. Dracula asked earlier, I did I remembered if you're still here. Uh he asked about international shipping specifically to the UK. What is what is the shipping landscape look like? I know that you're on record of saying that all of the dunes are going to ship by the end of the year. What does that look like for an international customer? So the certification that you need to send overseas is uh you know in place. So like Labyrinth um a lot of people don't realize that certification is very rigorous and when we started doing it ourselves it was changing and it still is changing um but we we did not intend to have labyrinths take so long to get over to Europe but again I wanted to sh games that were safe and tested to be safe. Um, so regarding Dune, we actually put this game into testing literally in December. So we wanted to be in a position when the orders came in, we'll be able to ship them. Normally what happens, we air freight a couple of games into people. Um, Stefan, who's one of our u distributors over there, he already has two of them. Uh, Freddy's getting his I think this week or next week. It's a short week this week. And then England. um they're getting theirs I think the week after that. So we're shipping individual games to get into the rooms, but typically what happens is they have they want to fill a container worth of them. So we try to pack them all together so you know 20 of them will go at once. I mean that makes sense. You want to optimize international shipping. Empty space in a container seems like an absolute waste of money. Oh it certainly is. Now, also the the thing is we can't control is um now with the tariff situation, they actually cancelled a lot of the container boats. So, now we're seeing about a 30% increase on containers now. So, um which is nothing we can do about it. It gets passed on to customers and it sucks, right? And it's important people that are waiting for their games and mad that they haven't arrived yet. It's like again like it's not like you're intentionally trying to delay the games to be shipped overseas. It's just Well, and that's why we can even talk about the launch of this game. A lot of like we had media day. We had everything planned out to the day that we launched it to, but there are so many outside third party things that we couldn't control. Like we're very strict on our QC. Um, and for example, Labyrinth, we said we're going to make up to,00 units, right? So that gave us the right to cancel it off if game two was ready to go and we didn't get as many orders we could lock it off and then move on to the next game or if the demand was high then obviously we got to you know make some extra money and help develop and build a bigger company. Sure. And um we learned from that we lost a lot of parts due to products that just was not good enough to go in our games. Um and that's why for example um Dune is up to a,000 units because over that 1100 units out of Labyrinth we lost pretty much 950 pieces due to games worth because of just quality that I would not put into a game. Interesting. So when we were building up for game two a lot of the stuff that we were expecting to come in to be right cuz you again this is all scheduling. This is all planning how things go and I can't control again that comes down to like I try to be ahead as possible cuz we invest in the games before anyone else does. Like we put the money in to build the games, not our customers. And again, we've already paid for all the parts. It's just a matter of all coming in and hoping it's all good. And if it's not, then we work with the vendor to get that corrected. And sometimes a whole batch can be bad and it's like I can't I'm not going to put that in a customer's game. I'm just not. No, I mean it would harness the reputation. It only frustrates the people that are there to enjoy the game. And I I would as a if I got a game that had busted parts in it, which has happened unfortunately quite frequently over the last three or four orders, not with Dune, but just in other games that if you follow the channel, you you'll know something's something's going to break. And that's where like our 12-month warranty is like we can't control when these games get on into their boxes and go onto trucks and uh boats and planes is that's why we have a 12-month warranty. We will take care of you, you know, within reason. There are there's a couple of things that we've had like did you put a third party mod in this and that completely fried the system because what you're explaining is not right. And we still took care of them, but you know, I'm a collector. I want to be treated with respect. I want the best product I can within reason and I will work my best to make sure that the experience is worthwhile. It's also funny to be providing a warranty on a product that inherently is designed to destroy itself. I mean, it should be making I can't pull that toy because that would give away the next game. Um, uh, by the way, I'm I don't know if you've announced this yet, but your next game should obviously be Conan. your own your own artist has said that they want to do Conan and I think I speak for a large majority of myself when I say that I want the next game to be Conan. Okay. So Conan like so I am like when I saw Conan for the first time as a movie like I think it's the best representation of that world done in cinematic history period. I think like it's just plus the Basel Ballador score is amazing. Yes. But my thing is is like that could be difficult for licensing. Would you accept a world of Conan where it was more animated like the video game series like was that would I mean but for example if you took the music from the film like you I could get the soundtrack. I'm not saying I can, but I'm just saying sure, you know, marry those worlds together because Conan, yes, we love the movie, not the second one as much, but I still enjoy it. That's a guilty pleasure. Yeah. The Destroyer is not a great film. It's one of those things of like if I can't get the movie because I'm a fan of Conan, can I tell that story in a different medium? Sure. And I think that's an excellent question, but people and I imagine this is something that you have to deal with is IPs and memories attached to those specifically other forms of media like movies you're talking about sell. And in the end, like you are making pinball machines because you love pinball, but you cannot make new pinball machines if you don't get money. And in order to run a business, you need to make money. Yeah. No, we're not, you know, we're self-funded and um every sale that we don't get does absolutely hurt us. But that's why we try to do different categories of games. Like again, I do want to see original games exist. I I want to see games exist that shouldn't exist because a lot of the ones that I love should never existed, but I love them. But they've they've become classics over time that people get to experience them, right? So again, it's part of our strategy of getting IPs that we know will really resonate and do very well and feed the company and feed the employees, but let's have some guilty pleasures in there. Right. To answer your question though, because you asked, you know, would would I specifically and I think largely let's direct this at chat too. Would you be happy with a product that didn't pull from a movie, but if it had other source material, you could build it on that? And I think we're already seeing that because if you look at Stern's King Kong, King Kong isn't based on the 1933 film. It's not based on any of the weird Frankenstein hybrid films. It's not based on any of the weird Japanese illegal makes of it. It is based off of the free to grab up IP of Kong and they decided to skin it with its own style and some people love that and some people did not. Personally, I think Conan has a lot of like artwork that defines what Conan's vibe and mythos looks like or whatever that it would still make for a playground for the right artists and the right animation team to kind of have fun with. So, for that, I would be totally down with it just because like you're not betrothed to video footage, but you know, yeah, but you know, like, you know, what is best in life? Like there's some really iconic moments and iconic sound bites that you would probably want up on the tree eating the eating the Yeah. Fighting the ghouls in the weird desert. I mean that shaman guy like his those call outs of that shaman guy. That's the kind of like fidelity that I think call out should have. And I've been critical of Stern on its call outs where it sounds like they're reading off a script. And you know, when you're making a call out, it's got to be listened to hundreds of thousands of times. You know, hundreds slash thousands, not hundreds of thousands. That would be a lot. You'd be playing a whole lot of Dune if you were hearing that that many times. Um, but, you know, the performance needs to be there. So, if you can't get those sound assets because you're not doing that, that's got to be a design challenge. Well, I'd say, let's give Stan uh some credit here on King Kong. Like I mean when I look at King Kong, the easiest way to do it, get Peter Jackson's Kong, you know, pull from that film, get all the actors involved. I mean, that would be the easiest, most straightforward license. But to Stern's credit, they totally went with an original idea with a fantastic designer to tell their own story. And again, that's not too different that we're trying to do with the IPs that we have here is like we want to tell a story like this. Dune is your plan is the Fman. You are a part of the Fman. You are battling the hearkenins. You're battling you're destroying harvesters. But while you're doing that, you're seeing Paul become who he's meant to be in this process. Right? That's the whole point of what we're doing is we're trying to create skate that world of you get to experience the movies and the assets you love, but we can unlock little side adventures that get you a little bit more deeper Easter eggs into that world. Right. which is great. I mean, that's the exploratory nature of expanding into a game and enjoying what it reveals itself to you is part of the experience of playing pinball. At least for me. Kong is a great game, by the way. I'm not shading on [ __ ] Stern because I think Kong is bad. I just the artwork is a point of context to talk about getting an IP that is not a movie asset license. Um, so yeah, Kong is fun play. If you can find a Kong, you should play it, but if you can find a Dune, you should play that even more. Uh, Dracula also everybody wants to see Fifth Element, which is another great film. So, you know, yeah, that would be also another great stepping stone, but we're not here to try to dig for hypothesized products that are coming out of barrels. Um, that we have with simple as that. Say I'm sorry, say that again. I was I was talking over you. No, I can I can't confirm or deny that we have spoken with the rights holders of that. It's as simple as that. There's your There's your answer. Maybe. anything. But again, I've I I have relationships with nearly all the IP holders out there. Um it just comes down to what opportunities there where it creates a win-win for both of us. Sure. Uh all right. Uh this has amazingly gone so much longer than I intended and uh I really appreciate everything that you have told us about the the process and where your company came from and how you've arrived at your second game. Congratulations, of course, on releasing Dune. We're not done yet. I do want to throw it to chat if there's any questions. Uh I know you guys have been captivated by the stories of what it's like to to be a crazy person and start a pinball company. What were you thinking? But uh throw it if you got questions, fire them off. Absolutely. And maybe I've got something I can give away here. So, let's you randomize someone who asks one of the top questions in there. I don't know how you want to do it. And I'll give them away something. Putting putting me on the spot. I need to figure out how to randomize this. Uh, all right. Give me