Hey guys, Enzo from Gonzo's Flipperama and Pinball Underground. If you haven't seen Pinball Underground, it's a little channel that me and Ryan are doing down under. We are streaming games and drinking whiskey and talking pinball, trying to do it a little bit different. So check that out. Tonight, it's Perth time, 10pm. I've got Dwight Sullivan. We're going to talk about code and Dungeons & Dragons. Dwight, how are you? Hey, I'm doing great. Glad to be here. Thank you for joining us again. For those that didn't see, we'll link it somewhere. Dwight and Brian did a video with me and Chris Gonzo the day basically Dungeons & Dragons came out. So it was about six months ago now. It's been quick and not quick at the same time, right? Yeah, that's right. It's been, like it's been just, just seems like yesterday the game started, but tons has happened since then. We've had lots of updates. When it first came out, it wasn't even close to ready. We were shoveling stuff into the game as fast as we could. And, you know, it was hard to balance, well, people are playing this with, like, I know I need to get shit in the game. And now I'm still sort of in that mode, but it's much more stable and much more refined than it was. It's still pretty rough, but it's come a long way since then. Well, for us, it's like it just came out because it hit Australia about three weeks ago, so we only just got it here. Oh, cool. Well, you didn't see all the horrible stuff. The horrible stuff? Well, I don't know. To me, from my seat, it was like, oh, my God. I was in Pinball at the Beach, and I would just watch people play, and I would see bad, horrible things happen like one a second. and everyone was coming up to me telling me what a great game it was and how how new and original it was and they loved it but i was seeing horrible stuff every second like mechanical problems and software problems and it was a nightmare the joys the joys of pinball yeah um i will start off by one of the things that um whether you're a dnd player or not the game is very unique it's very captivating i was saying before we started that even for people that aren't into d d but especially the people that are um it's a very unique pinball because there's a lot of storytelling happening the narration and the voiceovers are very soothing very like normally people push the flippers to skip those yeah but in this even though i've heard it every time you play you know you play the same modes here and there and it still feels fresh all the time but the stop starting choose your own adventure it's a very unique you know pinball game and i think you know i don't think there's ever been a game like it to be honest um but you know were you guys when you guys started were you were you i mean obviously trying to get d and d like from book people's minds storytelling into a pinball game yeah if you always envision it would have to be kind of pick your own adventure stop start of course yeah of course it had to be it it a lot of that just sort of wrote itself like like we were already kind of on this path of well you choose a character like we've done that several times in earlier games um so of course on this game you're going to choose a character in this game so the thing that's new the thing that was like like that really made it click was you can pick up where you left off yeah right you can play the story and then you pick up right where you left off and then continue from there um that's what really seems really well in this game well especially for me because i'm not a great player and i'm not one to ever be able to finish a game or reach the end yeah and the other day i did and i was like and i was so chuffed about it because even though the wizard mode where you basically uh chase the guy you you know you open a portal opens and you can either chase him or chase the shaft and then you've got to battle all the dragons like it was tiring right but you know if i had drained ball three and then had to do all that all over again i probably would never have touched the machine you know but being able to kind of pick up where you left off the whole video game mentality um and obviously we saw that with venom as well um not to this degree though yeah not to this degree of course yeah but um you know it's cool it is cool but we saw quite a big code drop the other day i think it was only on Wednesday I was surprised because I actually reached out to you a couple weeks ago not knowing there was a code coming right um well there's code coming every two or three weeks yeah yeah yeah which is the game's getting a lot of love oh it is it is we've got a long way to go though we've got three major wizard modes yet to do I can't wait there's the battle of gontogram which is similar to the sand master fight where again you'll have a choice of what you want to do and you know and all that decides on which of the three final wizard modes you go to and again there are two of the three final wizard modes are still missing two of the climaxes of the game are are missing and and i can't wait for everyone to see them and those those wizard modes have a choice in each one so is that technically six endings no no no so sandmaster um the list of dragonsburg castle dragonsburg castle and the battle of golgogram they each have a choice and that and which one which choice you make sends you to one of the three final modes. So you made that choice, and then you made another shot, and you started Ritual of the Chosen. Right now, no matter what choice you make, you start Ritual of the Chosen. But once I have the Undermountain there, that Sandmaster choice you make will decide whether or not you play Ritual of the Chosen or the Undermountain. Right. And, you know, you've added quite a few things to the dungeon crawl. Do you want to talk us through that? Because I know there's something to see. So Dungeon Crawl, right. Right. So Dungeon Crawl was this, I mean, so again, early on, like six months ago, we were just shoveling stuff into the game. And we're like, well, Dungeon Crawl needed a feature. So it sort of had this skeleton of a feature that still needed some love. And that was the same with like lots of parts of the game. And slowly I've been trying to add a little bit of love to all the different parts of the game that were missing before. Dungeon Crawl recently just got love, like you said, like in .91. Now it's much more of a game that we envisioned. It's, it's you, you know, like it's so dungeon crawl just for people that don't know is, is a sort of part video mode, but mostly a pinball kind of wizard mode where every time you start a level now you get a ball save and then you make shots to go down, you know, to go down this dungeon crawl. And then every time there's a decision point, the shots turn purple and you make a shot and the ball is held. And then you've got like three or four seconds to decide if I want to go left, right, or straight. And then that stays the same now for the entire week. So you can learn, well, which choices am I making lead me to the trap or the stairs or the wardroom or to different monsters and so forth. And then eventually you're trying to get to the wardroom. So the other thing that we did was we made this set of legendary equipment that's very OP. It's very... It's OP, but it's also like limited usefulness. Like after about 10 uses, it's going to go away. So you can find this in the dungeon. It's the only place you can get this thing. So it's more fun now, and there's a reason to go and play the dungeon crawl. So that was the love that was missing. And that was like you've got a bow and the armor, shield and was there something else? Was it four? Yeah, there's four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sword, the sword. The sword we introduced at Texas. We made the sword, the glass sword of Unmaking and we went to Texas with it and we were giving it away in the tavern. But it's a much better place now in the dungeon crawl. It's interesting because the dungeon crawl, it's one of those things where it kind of like it pops, I always find it pops up for me when I don't want it to pop up. And I was like, wait, I wanted to make the shot behind the dungeon crawl. But it's a really like at first you kind of think it's hard shot to make, but it's actually not all three flippers. Correct. Yeah. And it's kind of fun and surprising when you make it from the upper right clipper. So you can track, like if you accidentally shoot the left eject, it'll then feed the magnet and the magnet will feed the upper right clipper and then you have another chance at it. And one of the questions, I'll feed in some questions I got from some friends and colleagues. But one of the questions one of the guys asked was about the map. I mean, the artwork and the map where it shows you what town you're in and why you're traveling. is there a sense of like do you want to add a bit more options in when you're i think it's when you're traveling where it doesn't show you the colors of the what you've done in those areas it only now it does in 0.91 it shows you it does yeah so when you finish right when you've completed um when you've completed a light now it it stays solid on the color of what it's supposed to be so that you can tell what artifact you're heading toward. And is that something that stays on all the time? I can't remember. I've only played it a few times since the new code, actually. No, it only stays on. It's the color. It's only if you've completed it. Yes. Yeah, there's only so much we can do because the most important information has to be shown at any given time. So when you're choosing where to go, it's going to just blink the thing that you're picking on the screen because I don't want to have 10 lights blinking because then you don't know what's going on. So I try to calm it all down. And that was one of the comments I made when someone asked that in the chat. I was like, well, you've got to understand there'd be a lot of lights. If you had to kind of show what you've failed, what you haven't done yet, and what you can do, there'd be a lot of lights. And where you are and where you're going. So it's finding that balance. Yeah. Fun fact, we were originally thinking about putting a screen there instead of wood and inserts. We decided that was a bad direction, but yeah. The screen would be pretty cool though as well. We don't see many Sternzut screens on the play field, to be honest. It's something that I'm like, oh, I like screens on the play field um the look i really like the artwork obviously with that map it's you know and it's really easy to kind of look at and pick where you are and you know it it becomes um a little bit addictive when you start coming back to it because you remember the the towns and everything um which path to go um the question i had for you that i i had was the dragon right so So Rath, obviously, he's there all the time. He's moving. Is there a vision on tying him more into the game in relation to – because I notice sometimes he's kind of there, but why is he there? Yeah, no, so he'll play more of a role here and there. Again, I'm slowly adding more love to different areas, and when I get to adding love to Ritual of the Chosen, where you fight five dragons, of course, he's going to be part of that fight of five dragons yeah yeah and at the moment he's kind of is the idea of the story telling that he's just flying around why you're um or you know he's in his cave and then he's flying around while you're doing the journey around the map yeah he's he's sort of always there always present that way he can add some comic relief and some more of that of course is coming but um in the story so so a big part of the story that isn't played up much because we had to we had to cut it just to make things simpler but a big part of the story was um this war of the dragons so the war of the dragons is this thing that tiamat started it just sort of accidentally started because she needs five chosen dragons she needs a red a white a blue a green and in a black and um and so soon as she announced that she needs these chosen dragons which she does at the beginning of the of the story um well all of the evil dragons said well i want to be you know the chosen and just just started trying to prove to her that they were the most worthy and and then that started and then so all of the good dragons had to come out of their hiding and began the war of the dragons there's this whole story that isn't told very much in the game that yeah that we we will see some of it later but um um you know he's part of that too he's he's like like so when he attacks a town that's him showing tmr he's worthy of being the chosen red dragon you know we could we could make all this into a little five minute stern youtube story like a little cartoon we could but you yeah so like in 0.90 i think or 0.89 um in the gameplay menu you can watch all of the cut scenes from the game yes and you can learn more about the war of the dragons and the cutscenes that's a good tip i have to tell people actually because i always forget about that um and i don't know because again i the new code dropped on wednesday thursday i only got a couple games in but um before that i had completed with actually i'll share my um i just bought this up because this is where i'm at the moment with the palette oh cool yeah um so what i found when i finished the the uh battle against the five dragons um everything the game i don't know if the game became harder because of that or because the new code dropped because i can barely hit the dragon multiball now yeah so is that the new code or is that because i'm really powerful wait wait wait wait do you really have 9999 gold you don't you don't buy anything from vismo no well i do but i just constantly like probably not enough to be honest i probably don't buy enough so i need i i should have a contest i need to add more things to fismo i think i think this mode is one of the things that needs some love but but um but your question was what was your question so at the moment like i don't know whether the game's gotten harder oh yeah yeah yeah so yep the new code the new well actually i don't know if it was the new code or 0.90 so i i write it a while back in it and they then they slowly come out but um the point the the objective was that that your higher level characters didn't didn't play dragon multiball as often like your low level characters would still play them the same amount and your first level characters of course would play them just like they did before that was the that was the point of what i made and i think maybe it's a little bit maybe i wrote maybe i added a bug and maybe i made it too hard so i will i will go back and fix some of that so but when i'm done when i'm done your first level characters won't see any difference than it was before and as your characters get higher and higher level, Dragon Multiball will become harder to start because I don't think you want to play Dragon Multiball. I think you want to continue the story as much. So I was wanting to make Dragon Multiball not in your face early on. Like if you're at the arcade, you walk up, you push start, you pull the plunger, and you're playing a first level character, I want you to play Dragon Multiball, and it's going to be easy. but if you've been playing a character for a while that character, then I'm thinking you want to not play Dragon Multiball as much but I think I made it too hard so I'm going to back down on how hard it is for the higher level characters but the other thing is when you do manage to start it, you start it at a higher level Dragon Multiball so there's like 4 levels of Dragon Multiball or maybe 5 so the higher level Dragon Multiball also scores more points which uh yeah look some of the feedback i've gotten between my circle of friends everyone's like oh it really hard to get it and they all got kind of these you know level 12 13s they finished the battle with the five dragons so yeah i look it is challenging but you right though it about that balance because at the beginning um i found i was getting it a lot and some people probably thought it could be too much right and yeah it's probably it must be hard finding that balance yeah so i think i think on some on in one way it's a step in the right direction where i went but but i made it too hard for the high level characters and and i think I think there's a bug where the low-level characters still don't do it sometimes. So I've got to fix all that, and I will. But when I'm done, it'll be super easy when you're low-level, and it'll be gradually harder and harder at your high level. But I also urge you to reset your account and play it all again. Well, I'm going to start with other characters, right? Right. Because I'll take the go with one. and I've got the bard now because obviously I unlock the bard, which is cool. And I'm hoping we're going to get some bard tunes in the character. Someday all the characters are going to get more love too, right? Especially the bard. The bard's my favorite character. She was so fun to write speech for and to think up for. To me, she's a lot like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? She's smart and aloof, and she's constantly asking people, hey, what rhymes with goblin? Because she's constantly like the party might be getting attacked by trolls or something, and she's writing a tune in her head. She doesn't really care, and so she's a lot of fun. And one of the things I did notice also in the character attributes, you've now added the intelligence and wisdom. Yeah, so now all seven stats do something in the game. By design they were always going to, but now they all just do something. Would you like to just touch on those? Sure, sure. Strength. Yeah. So strength adds to how much damage you do when you make a hit, when you're hitting monsters. Dexterity adds to your armor class, and constitution adds to your hit points. adds to your damage when you're casting fireballs and magic missiles like so the range weapon of the wizard um wisdom adds to all your timers yep and charisma adds to your luck okay yeah and like luck is in this is the one i wanted to ask you about so luck in in defining that exactly how luck luck is well luck is it has several things that control how much luck you have like if you're a halfling or a rogue you get you get luck if you your charisma affects your luck and then there's lots of items that affect your luck like anything that says up tamora change you know improves your luck like so if it says this up tomorrow tomorrow like they're right there javelins of tomorrow so your javelins of tomorrow are are why you have 45 luck right and when you when you improve your range weapon your your of tamora is going to go away sorry but and then your luck will go down so So luck just today, luck only affects how much treasure you get. I'm going to make it do more in the future, but I haven't really decided it yet. And are you planning, one of the questions I've gotten was, are you planning on expanding the way the characters and the stats interact more? So we do that all the time. So like when you're sneaking around, your dexterity is used. There's lots of modes in the game where different stats are used for this or that. There's lots of different perception roles. So we're getting a little D&D geeky now, and it's been a really hard balance, like from the beginning, trying to decide where the line is between too much D&D geeky and to keep the pinball people from rolling their eyes, right? Yeah. We don't want the pinball people to roll their eyes. We want them to have fun. Sure, they look at all this stuff that you've got on the screen right now, and they're going to go, I don't give a shit about all that. I just want to fight the dragon, or I just want to... I'll go friends like that. Or I want to know where the points are, and how do I beat that goblin? So there's lots of... We do use all of the stats. like so the in in the game under the hood everything is used as it should be as if you're playing dnd yep and just how much we expose to the player is is where we're drawing the line and um so like dexterity is used when you're sneaking around and you're playing those there's like three sneaky modes and um well i guess you haven't seen one of them yet spoiler alert um but but um so so etc so like like the stats are used for more than i just told you about but but the the things i just told you about are the are the main ways they're used yeah um and you just hit something as well i've got to look that up i've got a question i've got to find but um also a little bit about the tavern brawl a couple people want to know um how you actually the how the edible works to that? Well, it's having more. Oh, I think so we changed that around a little bit. And in the lap and the latest rules, I think it's spelling dragon lights the lights out of all. Yeah, I thought it was a spell dragon. It lights the lights the short loop. Yep, there's the short little loop back. And it's on a timer. I think that I think the timer's too short right now. I think we need to increase the timer, and we will. Okay. There, I found the other question. So the Darkhold bonus round with the goblins, you know, and you've got, like, the... That's another area. That's an area that needed love from the beginning, and I'm really happy with where it is now. And so how does that actually work in relation to you've got to kill however many goblins, right? Because it's quite a high-scoring mode. Yeah. I think it's probably a little too high. I'm going to turn that back a little bit. Yeah, okay. But is that just a point where you get in there and there's a timer? You can drain your ball as many times as you want while you're playing? Yeah, you can drain as much as you want. You have the shield as much as you want, and you just kill drog goblins as fast as you can before they kill you. There's no timer. like if you keep the goblins at bay then you can keep playing and playing and playing and playing there's no timer yeah well i went uh the other day i think it was that mode that actually set me nearly to a billion points but um i think i was playing that for a while i was like man these goblins just keep coming but i think you're i hit that point where i was keeping them kind of yeah you know i hadn't drained or i hadn't so i was there for a while and it was actually quite fun yeah because it just felt like they kept coming and coming i i want to keep all that but i want But I want to turn the dial back on the points. I think the points is a little too high. A little bit too high. Okay, fair enough. And for those that haven't got to this mode yet, how do you get to it? So you have to play... Darkhold? To light Darkhold, you have to play one of the six towns. And so when you play... So let's say you play the Aramel Dungeon, which is the crypt beneath the Temple of Temora. Or if you play the Trouble on the Docks or whatever. right? If you play any of the dungeons, you can then go play the Dark Hall for the bonus run. Okay. You don't have to win the dungeon, you just have to play it. Play it, yep. In relation to where the code is now, and like, the balance of trying to find that storytelling element versus the pinball, because obviously you guys make pinball machines, and keeping uh the just the user because i mean obviously like yes granted these are on site sure but there's an element of this where at home it is really engaging and captivating especially with your lights are dimmed and because this has got a great light show by the way um thanks remove that um like finding that balance of pinball game and not pinball game this is like it's really in between and i'm trying to find the words is that bad no that's the part that i really like right that's that's where i was going with it and i think that i think some people are turned off by it but i think that we can't walk the line i think that once we've chosen to do go down this path we needed to go down we needed to jump in with three feet and we and i think we did and um I just hope that we don't turn off too many people while we attract more. You know what I mean? I think there is an element, like I had said to you previously, that I've got friends that are really into really flowy games and they find this one not fun because it's two-stop start, right? Whereas I find it really fun because it's storytelling and the stop to start. Because for people like me that aren't really good at pinball, um you know fast games i tend to drain balls really quickly so um the fact that i feel more in control here and more um uh you know like they're well actually one of the things i really like and a lot of people struggle with is the two shots behind the dragon which is the ladder sorry the bridge shot and the jackpot shot which you can only get to those by getting the ball stuck to the magnet and off your right flipper right right at first i thought oh this this is like hard how do i get to that and then you strategically realize well i've got to hit the ball into the um exact source yeah eject and use that right yeah and or you know the left orbit where the advanced gelatinous cube is and then time it which is a lot harder to do right or but the short the short loop the short loop the ball the short loop is oh yep the short loop which is it's a hard shot though the short loop it's a hard shot to make right sorry i backflip it just the other day i backflipped it which i thought was amazing yeah from a dead stop i backflipped that short loop yeah so that's another question i was going to have so the the ramp next to that so between the short loop and the gelatinous cube there's the ramp that gives you the extra ball right? The road to town, right? Yeah. Someone's asked, are you meant to be able to backhand that from the right flipper? No. It's hard, isn't it? I think I've done it once. It's almost impossible, yeah. That's what I thought. Cool. From a dead stop, you can do it on a roll, but it's almost impossible from a dead stop. Even Jack Danger can't do it. and um you have you guys found the sweet spot or what kind of level this game should be at like 6.5 6.8 so that's a brian question and um but i think that somewhere between 6.5 and 7 is good it's good yeah that's what i thought too um i mean i think that's true for all sterns turns yeah yeah for sure um touching on gelatinous cube before um i really like the way that is done where you so you hit the advance right yeah and then that light turns off right yeah you've advanced the gelatinous cube the light turns off you you hit that again there's is there am i missing that there's no indication of what you have to do next after you advance the ball though light wise So, right, the idea is that the cube is going to randomly stop the ball, and right now, it's almost always four shots. Yes. You shoot the left orbit, which brings down the ramp. So don't look at the light. The indicator is the ramp. If the ramp is down, you could start to let this, you won't be wrong. The ramp is your indicator. Yep. And so if you, so you shoot the left orbit, the ramp will come down, you shoot the ramp, it might grab it, probably not. Then you shoot the left orbit and the ramp will come down and now you'll shoot the ramp again and now it will grab it. It's cool because I like the fact that like there's been a few times where I've had two balls, well, one ball stuck and then I've accidentally knocked it before I've locked the third ball. Right. um and it's cool that you can do obviously one above one below and then knock it and get three yep um but it's it's a it's unique because obviously you've got full control there but then that's so you've got that multiball you've got the dragon multiball obviously town celebration multiball right tavern brawl yeah and the tavern brawl so tavern ball one of the steve was one of the guys in the chat i had said to me ask him how to start that because he couldn't work it out And I was like, well, I could tell you, but I will ask Dwight because then you can watch the video. So Tavern Brawl takes the three main toys. You have to play Dungeon Crawl, Dragon, Multiball, and Gelatinous Cube Multiball. Yeah, which is on the Tiniest Tavern sign. I've told everyone, read that sign because it does say it at the top. And I think a lot of people look down. they never read up because i think it's human nature to go uh dragon dungeon gelatinous cube and then at the bottom it says tiny's dice game so everyone thought you had to do those three to start tiny's dice game yeah but there's a the the sign has like a delineation there's like there's two parts to the side yep so tiny's dice game requires three three modes in the game yep yep and then how do you start that is that through gizmos no you start it through from the the buck shot the spinner shot oh through the spinner shot yeah so that's if that's lit though right yep i can't remember this now i shouldn't remember this it'll be like lit i think it's like lit purple or purple might be yeah but yeah um and tavern brawl uh so you complete all three then again that gets lit by hitting the spinner shot as well yep so if you've done all three how does it know is there a um a pecking order yeah in relation to like yeah so i think it picks it's going to pick one over the other um it probably picks tavern brawl over a Chinese dice game because like you can also start dungeon crawl there so um right and and so it there's a whole shopping list of things that you can start there and there's some kind of packing order I think it's um tavern brawl then tiny size game then dungeon crawl it's uh it's a shot that gets used a lot uh in the game some people think too much but I think that it's good to have that safe shot as long as we're using yeah i agree i think it's it's used to start things so that you can't count that because you want the easiest shot in the game to be the thing that starts things because you want players to start things yeah but so if you remove that then it's not used too much i think is i think is i think all that really matters is that all the other shots are also used yeah um the the moment i unboxed the game uh the first thing i said and everyone else because we have a local distributor here that unbox and checks them before he delivers them to you yeah which is quite a unique model shout out to joe kids just want to have fun um so the first thing we all said was how big is that dragon because i don't think in the photos it does it justice in person it's huge like it's huge yeah you know like my hand is i mean it's huge right so and even the cube is big um like it's yeah the cubes i would like that if it was made out of jello and wobbled, but that's okay. The dragon is an impressive mech. And I think, I don't want to say for Stern, it's an impressive mech because you guys have always made pretty cool mechs But it a mech that we hadn seen It probably came at a good time It was a mech that was like it big it moves it spits balls at you It tracks the ball Like when, is there times, I feel that it mocks me at times where I've got just one ball, right? So I'm not dragging a multibar or anything. And I'm trying to hit the ball, the ramps near the captive ball. And his head happens to always block my view. Is that just bad timing or is that on purpose? He tracks the ball. So you shot over there somewhere, and then he looked over there. He's going to look wherever the ball went. Right. Yeah. So he's mocking you, sure. He used to do it much more. He's always in the bloody way. In a good way. Okay, because it used to cross the line and be worse. And then early on, that was one of the things I noticed when we were at Florida, was that his head was in the way way too much. So then we backed it off quite a bit. yeah yeah and um look i think he's great i i personally would like to see him involved a bit more i'm a sucker for dragon mechs and big dragons and it's kind of like um i know there's times where um in certain okay so i was trying to explain this to a friend of mine so there's obviously in certain modes where you're underground because it's not considered a dungeon crawl but you're underground or you're going to the second level of the ship or the third level of the or you're going down some steps right yeah where the dungeon is still accessible but technically you're underground right so is that a little kind of um holding the story a little bit if you know what i mean i'm not trying to make a negative out of it but there are times where your character is in modes underground yeah but the dragon is still active oh i see yeah yeah that's that's again that's pinball right so that's he's always going to be omnipresent right he's regardless yeah yeah i'm sorry but you what i mean is that you can hit him and and still try and spell dragon but then in certain other underground or dungeon crawls you can't hit him at all so yep so if you're in a if you're in a wizard mode like yeah like if you're in anything that i'm considering to be a wizard mode he will not be accessible yeah you can you cannot spell dragon you cannot start dragon multiball so and that's what you're doing because i don't think you're starting dragon multiball in the middle of a major story point yeah okay that's a good point yep um that makes sense so um now okay so i'm trying to remember some of the questions okay So Craig had said in relation to during Dragon multiball, right, if his head's down and the ball hits his head, right, that obviously I assume counts as a shot, right? Yeah. Because you've obviously got to shoot him before you drain his balls. Yeah. And then if you hit the targets, the three targets under him, that obviously counts as a shot as well. It does not. Only if you hit him in the face? Only if you hit him in the face. Okay, cool. I was right there because I thought I was wrong. I might make it so that on easy mode, well, so if your dragon is broken, like if you've disabled your dragon, then hitting the targets will give you hits in the jaw. But most people haven't done that. No. And I might make it on easy mode, hitting the targets, hit him in the jaw. I haven't done that yet. But hitting the three targets makes him come down because you're collecting gold. You're stealing his gold when you hit him in the targets. and that's how you got your 9999. But he'll then come down, he'll move down to protect his gold and that's when you get him in the face. And that's why I think some people, probably more the pinball people that aren't following the story as much, aren't realizing that that's what's happening. You're stealing his gold, that's what the targets are there for. There is gold on the decals though and he's obviously trying to block you from stealing his gold. it is a super cool mech and uh it never gets old like you think of and also you know um wolf's voice is very captivating yeah as well michael doran michael doran was great yeah i always call him um so is there an element of that dragon that isn't in that never made it in the final because obviously i'm just assuming is there what is there was the dragon always going to be the dragon or was there something else that you know the dragon the dragon was one of brian's first ideas um he wanted a battle against the dragon that's why the the shield is there and the dragon is there and that's why the dragon is as big as it is because it's it's the smallest it can be and still spit out balls and look correct um but originally the dragon had a whole body the body went all the way around the game and like its tail its tail its tail came down to the to the to the to the gelatinous cube so like it had four legs and it's and and its body went all the way around the game at the back of the game and um for for reasons you know we we said no that's not gonna work we made it a cave instead yep although i did buy a mod the other day which is a claw oh i saw the claw i i have to look at it some more yeah um no look i think it's a it's a fantastic um i couldn't picture the game without the dragon to be honest um so i'm glad that it's there um was there anything that you want to touch on that like obviously because i know you guys hear the general public and like positive feedback i don't think there's much negative feedback at all to be honest but there's there's no one to bring up yeah i just want to emphasize that um the game is still there's still tons coming like like there's so much more coming just stay tuned and have you um uh oh actually one of the other questions was are you finished with venom code oh i'm not finished no no not by far no um we we just did a venom released um a couple weeks ago yeah maybe three weeks ago and um there's more coming cool so that was one of the other questions um my um so i lost my help with that for now but um so the the venom will slow down a little bit but where's your help gone to to work on something else i don't know you can't tell us people you can't tell us everyone's going to be start speculating um so one of the i'm just going to pull up make sure i haven't missed any of the other questions but um where is it I wrote a question down for you. So obviously your code, cause you're renowned for risk reward really, you know, I don't want to say like deep code cause everyone always connects deep code to being not fun because I think there's a misconception that Avengers was too deep and then hence not fun because it was hard. I don't agree with that. There's amazing amounts of content in D&D. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, but do you find that like there seems to be a shift toward like more player agency and progressing through quests and multiballs? Like, can you walk us through, this is where I was trying to go before the question and I had written it down. Like how you balanced accessibility for casual players with deep progression systems for veterans, right? Because I'm a veteran, sorry. Because like there is, I was saying the other day to someone, I was like, it must be hard for you guys knowing that like 70 of your games are home use but you guys in america have a very big arcade presence like right 30 for your population is huge right for australia like there's only in perth there's only one arcade that has stern games in it and there's like there's like 10 in there or no actually i think there's 15 in there in melbourne and sydney there's a few more but it's not like america is just next level when it comes to arcades but finding that balance between like the population of pinball players that are probably over 50 that are real traditionalists and trying to get those guys like do you always second guess how much you've put in versus oh but i want to go more dnd way um we it is a tough balance we we spend a lot of time thinking about it i think one of the things that we're close to doing correctly in D&D is, sure, you can pick up where you left off. You can, you know, you don't have to go back and play the whole game again. But that challenge, that wizard mode, you know, like Ritual of the Chosen or the Sandmaster mode, those are still very challenging and hard to get through. And there's still some amount of banging your head against the wall to get through that. And I think that's where some of the balance comes from. Like, sure, we can lead you up to the lake, but drinking that water might still be hard to do, even for the average player. I think it's well balanced. I think, yes, those modes are hard, but it's okay because the people that aren't like the veterans or really good players, they can keep coming back and trying. Yep. And I think it is very well balanced in that sense. Yeah. And your tournament players, wait. And your tournament players are always going to start from the beginning, right? So in a tournament, you never pick up where you left off. You always start from the very beginning. So getting to those deeper modes, you know, are still tough to do for tournament players. For tournament players. And when you do finish, let's say you do the five dragons, you finish that, and then you've kind of finished the game in that sense. To get there, you've obviously completed things or modes in the towns to do, right? Yeah. Do those towns and I've had enough attention to this I need to go back Do though all those modes reset now and you start again or have they been completed and that's it now No, no, they're all when you finish when you finish the campaign not the game. Yep, when you finish that campaign The campaign resets. Yeah, and and you lose you lose all your artifacts you go back to you don't you don't lose your level or your equipment, but you lose your artifacts and and you go back to the beginning, you know, like choosing where you want to start again. And, you know, all of the modes are reset. They're not done yet. And so that you can start the whole campaign over again. Okay. What level were you when you finished? 13, I think it was. Okay, yeah. I thought 12. It was 13, yeah. Yeah. Okay, I thought 12 was going to be pretty average. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is what I brought up in the chat the other day with my friends. I was like, oh, I think you get around 11 to 13, which is about right there. Do you like that? Do you like that you can see your character? Yeah, look, I think that's great. And I think in – That was a lot of work for a lot of guys. Yeah, I can imagine. But it's cool because, like, already a lot of my friends have screenshotted. They've sent it to their friends. Oh, cool. Yeah, that's awesome. There's a bit of talk. But that is purely more for the people that are heavily invested in the theme, I think. Which is fine. Which is fine. Because I think that brings new people to pinball, right? That's the whole point. Yep, exactly. In a way. So now there was a question that I'm going to find it because it's disappeared that Don had asked me. Oh, yeah. Speaking of quests. Now, at the moment, there's like obviously the quest says number one, number twos. they're obviously the quests that are harder as the number become um are we going to be seeing more number one like a new quest so there's more variety of choice no there's that that's pretty much it i mean the game i mean the game the game i mean for pinball right the game already has like 20 some odd modes which is my next question which is a lot of modes right so yeah so it's it's it's actually more than we can normally do in a pinball machine. We push the boundaries. Like, normally artists, you know, like normally one of our certain pinball machines uses like five or six artists. We use 12. Yeah, right. Right? So we have way more content in this game than ever before. We can't add more content. They would... And... George already told me that. I slipped one by him. Yeah. No more. But I heard I don't know if this is true or not, but it's like and I know you guys won't disclose this But I heard modes can go up to like six figures to make oh Yeah, I think I've spread that rumor. Yeah I'm numb and I'm talking like wizard modes. So People kept saying, you know, when are you gonna do DLC? Of course, you're gonna do DLC and of course, we're not Right because we would never we would never make our money back from it It would always cost us because like how much you gonna charge for the DLC you can charge $1,500 You know, you know, how much you gonna charge for the DLC? So so if you charge like the normal amount that DLCs cost like 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 dollars We would we how many people would buy that a hundred five hundred. Yeah, we would never make our money back No, we're never gonna do the LCS ever There was a rumor in one of the chats. So obviously when you guys in the app, you can see your character. And the other characters, there was the character that came with the topper. And everyone's like, that's going to be DLC. And I was like, no, it's just going to be a character with a topper like Venom. Just like Venom. Right. So that's the only way we can do that. So we can charge, you know, I don't know how much Venom topper costs, $1,500. bucks so we can charge we can charge fifteen hundred dollars for that topper because it comes with a whole bunch of other stuff it comes with cool hardware and cool software like whenever you ever bought something for fifteen hundred dollars that didn't come with cool software so so that's in my mind that's not a dlc per se that's that's buying a topper and coming with cool shit yeah getting your getting getting your fifteen hundred dollars worth getting your 15 worth that's for sure um in relation to the code that you've just i'm just going to make sure we're not missing anything um uh where is it so obviously um where is it there were some polishes in the game obviously i've touched on the live shows great uh tiny's darts game different color by the way that's my son my son is the one doing lots of stuff behind the scenes my son is my only helper right now on dnd and um he's working you know his his 50 hours a week adding right we're working on all kinds of stuff including polish and light shows and so forth i just shout out to david because he just he started working at stern right yeah this is his first game this is he started um awesome yeah yeah yeah it's i mean obviously to have a mentor as you as uh as a dad and as a as a work colleague is phenomenal i yeah it's scary i hope i'm doing justice oh i'm sure you are mate you you've got i have to say dwight you know not blowing smoke you know as i say but um there is a lot of people in the forums discords that love what you do oh thanks man and especially your storytelling and you know how passionate you are and all the interviews you've done and even people that have met you there was a guy that met you at pinball at the beach and he said that you spoke team for like at least an hour and he was like i thought i was keeping dwight but he was keeping me but in a good way right he's like and obviously you know because i think when you you love a passion project you you just could talk about it forever you know yeah yeah um i'm sure technically you don't really work a day in your life if you enjoy what you do so um i feel like a lot of what what I do is work. But I do I do I know what you're saying and it is true. You have no Yeah, I don't know what's happened there. That's a bit weird. Let me switch to the other. There you go. I must have accidentally knocked my camera dropped out I use the laptop camera Not as the good camera but hey that all right Um so map indicators obviously uh completed side quests now light up in their respective colors you got white yeah i saw um i saw that when somebody said that when you um somebody suggested and i don't know if it was on pin side or what i saw a really good suggestion of like like until you get the artifact they're to do like they do so the lights will be purple white blue or orange depending on there's a camera yeah are you there okay there'll be blue white yellow orange depending on you know what path you're on but then once you get the artifact or you fail to get the artifact they all three turn red or all three turn green and that i might i might do that that that's that that'll again add a little bit more complication to it but once you understand it it's it's it's then less complicated. It quickly tells you you know, oh, I have that artifact or I have that artifact. And the random number generation I noticed in the code list. So previously, each sub carrier had their own RNG seed. Can you what do you what do they mean by random number generation? I couldn't work that out. Yeah, it's complicated. Sorry. Um, so that's a thing that I'm trying. and I think it's working pretty well. And now I think it's even better than it was. So it's everything that's random in the game. Like, and the thing that's the most visibly random is the dungeon, right? The dungeon crawl feature. So the dungeon crawl feature, whether or not you're going to get a left or right or, you know, a room or whatever, a door, that's telling, you know, so nothing in the game is really random. them. So I was making, I roll, when you power up the game, I roll all the random numbers. And then that's what you get for that day and the next day and the next day all week long and then it changes on Sundays. But I was keeping each save character, I was keeping their set of random numbers constant so that as you played that guy, that character that you were showing a minute ago, as you were playing him throughout the entire campaign, You know, FISMO would sell extra ball in this one location at all times, and it wouldn't change from week to week. And I thought that maybe that was a good idea, and now I think that was a bad idea. So now, because what I really want you to do is I really want you to communicate with the rest of the community, like, hey, where's FISMO selling extra ball this week? You know, what does the map look like in the dungeon this week? And then on Sunday it changes and everyone can talk about it. And I want everyone to talk about it. And so I'm really liking where it's going. But there's nothing random in the game almost. There's a handful of random things, but they're very cosmetic. They're very small. One thing I noticed that did change was that the stairs in the dungeon crawl no longer end the mode. Yeah. So that was part of the original design. And I thought it was brilliant at the time. And then I didn't do it. And then I regret it not doing it. And then I, so now, so now, because I played D&D in the 80s. I played D&D a lot. I founded my own D&D club in the late 80s. And anytime you find stairs, that's exciting. That's like, oh, I found stairs and now I'm going down to the next level of the dungeon. And now I get to keep going. And I get to keep finding out what's, you know, what's next. And like when you play like Diablo, games like Diablo, when you find the stairs and you go down a level, that's fun. Right? And so I wanted to bring that back to dungeon crawl so that the mode just keeps going. And the ball save kicks in again. So every time you go down to a new level, the ball save will kick in again and give you at least 20 seconds of more dungeon crawl. Which is cool. I like that. I do like that. So is there the long distance weapon? That hasn't changed, correct? I'm sorry? The range weapon? The long range weapon? it it hasn't really changed um so the artifact gives you two lights that move back and forth yep and the legendary glass bow of of all shot that you can find in the dungeon crawl so in the dungeon crawl you can find the legendary bow and the legendary bow lights all eight shots and then you just hit them all just get them all okay yeah but and you collect all the points for all of them you I'm sorry if like four of those red arrows are lit and you use that obviously it wipes out all four of those shots it doesn't wipe them out but it hits all four I'm sorry hits all four yeah not work them out so obviously you collect all those points and then you but then but you and you can only do that like 10 times and then you know then your bow it goes away okay I just realized the other i was going to ask um uh luke wanted to know this the whole secret oh wait wait let's go back wait go back um so the wizard is different the wizard has missiles you know at levels one through six she fires magic missiles and and and from six and above she fires a fireball and the higher level you are the more damage you can do so like like the legend you know if you have the legendary glass bow and you're a high level wizard you can kill like all eight characters all eight monsters at once it's extremely powerful like in the goblin mode like if you take a high level wizard with the glass bow to goblin mode you can kick butt so in other words choose the wizard dungeon crawl well choose the wizard get it high level right choose a wizard get it high level then do the dungeon crawl get the bow then play a wizard mode without using your look your bow and then go to the goblins and use the bow 10 times no okay we'll keep that in mind write that down everyone um so a few people did ask so the right upper flipper has the um secret door uh and the the hidden temple what's the idea behind that so you you enter the hidden temple right and then so do you have to hit those yeah no it's a simple little mini little mini one and right now i think it's way too easy easy but because you just sort of accidentally get it and i made it so that you can accidentally get it again this is a fine line between i don't want people to like look especially the tournament players right they're gonna if there's a 2x out there a 2x play field out there well the first thing they're going to do is go after it and if there's too much wood chopping to get to it they're going to be bummed so i wanted it and i didn't want it so that only the good players could get it so i wanted it to be accidentally had but right now i think it's slightly too accidentally had but the rule is the question you're asking is how does it work and it works like this you you hit the target and then that lights the target and then the target's timing out and if you hit the target while it's timing out it lights the lane and it's timing out And if you hit the lane while this timing out, you get to explain for some amount of time. So secret door is the stand up target. Yep. And then you hit that twice and then go down the lane. Then go down the hidden temple. Yep. And then you get double scoring. Cool. Yep, double playful scoring in wall wall is looking because you you can only get and again, you want that then so then let's add that to our list. So you want that to the wizard? Yeah, yeah, you want a high level wizard. a select wizard make it really high level and then and then um what do you got to do you got to do dungeon crawl to get the thing you got to get double play full scoring and then go to the goblins and use your use your bow ten times yeah yeah the best way for tournament players to get lots of points or somebody yeah yeah or somebody um the um captive ball right so obviously you hit it once to activate it twice to do the critical hit yeah that rule like if you're not if you're just sitting in the town that goes towards the dragon it spots everything so like every single every single rule that's running right now like wherever you are it's contextual right so so whatever you're doing it it it goes one by one and asks you hey a critical hit just happened do something if you want to so if you're in a mode it'll help you with that mode if you're you know and then the dragon rule says oh i'll give you a dragon letter and and it also starts you on the path toward 2x playful multiplier yep so so it spots you that target makes the lane lit or if the lane was already lit double double scoring is now lit oh right okay right cool yeah um yeah that that's a that's a cool um the jackpot um so with dragon multiball once you complete him you get into town celebration ball you cut you have to collect all the gold first before jackpot's lit right yep super jackpot super jackpot sorry yeah and then i've noticed that changes so the one at one point it's like 30 mil and then it becomes like 15 what what changes that variable the super jackpot the the how much it's worth probably you had double scoring running oh yeah Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Okay. And is the gold, I'm just trying to remember the other thing, the gold that your character collects, is it capped at 9999? Yes. So you can't get any more than 9999. Okay. You can't get any more than 9999. Your pocket's too heavy. You need to spend some money. Yep. Yep. Go to Fizmo and spend some money. Yep. Yep. Okay. Well, yeah, look, I mean, I, you know, I don't think there's anything I haven't covered. I wanted to go over the new code because I thought there was quite a bit in there. Was there anything that we haven't discussed that you wanted to touch on? Nothing that I want to touch on. There's things you didn't discuss, but that's fine. There's like gems. Like what the hell are gems? Oh, sorry, gems. Yes, I did want to discuss gems. Yes. What do the gems do and why are they in the game? We're going to do something cool in the future. So gems and then there's all the equipment. You know, like every single shot has a machete or a fishing gear or, you know, torches and iron spikes and a backpack like um so right now those are all just part of your bonus and they might not ever be anything else but but gems and equipment might do something later on and that's yeah the um i was trying to work out a way the other day i was looking at them going well the equipment's there obviously they're going to be for something possibly if not obviously they're They're just part of the, like you said, the bonus. But there'd be a cool way to write that in. But obviously, again, like you said, it's a lot of extra work. Part of it is, well, but part of it is they're there so that if I want to. So in the past, I've made games that I was frustrated with later on because the game I made didn't have enough bones, didn't have enough skeleton and structure and hard points to attach things to later on. yeah and um so now i try not to make that mistake again i try to give the i try to give the base set of rules plenty of hard points and structure and skeleton to to add things to later because like you asked me a minute ago um is am i still working on venom and yeah i'm still working on venom i think there's only like like one or two games that i'm done working with like game of thrones like i think game of thrones is done right i think maybe maybe that's it maybe that's the only game i'm done with and gamestron's gamestron's premium is one of my favorite games it's a great game yeah i'm really really happy with where it's at and unless there's some bug that you know needs fixing there's no more work going to happen on it yeah um um but otherwise i i want to be able to go back to games later and add things if i want to and i need places to do that like like gems and that equipment gives me places to add things and that's an interesting balance because you need to then go okay well i've got to tell the artist to put that on there because i may need it one day yeah but then if those weapons aren't on there how would you then ever tell that story right yeah exactly so it's a really so i add it into bonus and just to justify its existence and and then later i can add things to it if i need to i wonder if like in a mode like one can just be lit because you you're when you're traveling it could be lit and you happen to find a uh what was the other one yeah is in the cave and you shoot that to collect the machete or something yeah um yeah i do i do like the traveling elements of the game i think they're cool especially the cave one with the gems and the crystals yeah um that's cool um sorry you're gonna say no no i'm done yeah so yeah look that's yeah for me it's um it's one of one of my favorite games at the moment i i just constantly push start because you get addicted to that character building and you get addicted to the storytelling and you get addicted to i failed that mode i want to pick up where i left off from um and i'm really excited to see where the game goes because obviously there's so much more that is going to be coming as you said and uh i guess the one of the questions i would like to i try and ask everyone who's working on the game or has worked on games if there's a game you could go back to um that you would like really want to kind of take to the next level what would yours be so not so not counting dnd because it's not there yet no i don't know that's not that's not counting So I did this with Ghostbusters, and I did it with Game of Thrones. I think that Star Wars could use some love. I think there's been tons of innovation that has happened since I did Star Wars that I could bring back to Star Wars. It needs gameplay menu. It needs lots of the fun stuff that a lot of my other games just automatically have now. and I think I wouldn't mind doing that to Star Wars. I really like Star Wars. I know it cops a bit of flack because for Star Wars fanatics, it wasn't Star Wars-y enough or there wasn't enough toys or necks, but it's a really fun game and it's not as hard as, I think some people maybe haven't dialed those in properly, but I don't find it a drain monster. I don't find it hard at all in relation to keeping the ball alive. um it keeps me pushing star and it is really fun uh i love the fact that you can get up to like 40 times unless you accidentally hit that button and then don't realize that it's off it's kind of like you know like yeah i think that would be cool a lot of your present stuff like you said if that went into star wars yeah it'd be cool and it's a popular game right like i think it's obviously one of stern's best-selling games we put it we put it in the vault but that doesn't mean I still won't touch it. Well, I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. But if I did have all the time in the world, I would go work on Star Wars. You might have to pay your son some extra pocket money to do it after hours. Yeah, yeah. Like another hot dog or something. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, Dwight, thank you. I won't keep you. We've gone over an hour. I know you're a very busy man. But, you know, thank you very much again. And we'll touch. I mean, I'm sure there's code in another month's time. and I'm sure we can talk again. Maybe we'll wait a few months and see where the code's at and do it again. Yeah, anytime you want, Enzo. Yeah, no worries. Thank you very much. Guys, don't forget to like, subscribe. Tell your friends about Dungeons & Dragons. If they haven't played it, please play it. There's a history of games that get criticized. Those people have never even played the game. So please do it. And don't forget to like and subscribe. Pinball Underground, that's the other channel that we've started as well. Is that with Ryan? That's with Ryan, yeah. Ryan, who was with Head2Head? Ryan Barry from Phantom Teal. Oh, okay. Different Ryan. Yeah, yeah. Never mind. No, so Ryan lives in Perth as well, funny enough. Okay. I thought you were talking about the Ryan that lives in Melbourne. Oh, no, no, no. No, no. That's a different Ryan. Good dude. Well, shout out to Martin Robbins and Ryan from Melbourne. Yeah, definitely. And yeah. So, guys, thank you very much. Again, like, subscribe, and we'll see you on the flip side.