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Dungeons & Dragons Pinball Tutorial (Flip N Out Pinball, 2025)

Flip n Out Pinball·video·24m 5s·analyzed·Feb 15, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Comprehensive D&D Pinball tutorial covering layout, character mechanics, mode progression, and gameplay depth.

Summary

Joel Engelbreth provides an in-depth tutorial of Stern Pinball's Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye (LE version), covering playfield layout, character progression mechanics, mode structure, city-based gameplay, and unique features like the shield mechanism and gelatinous cube multiball. The game is positioned as exceptionally deep with 12 unique modes, multiple dungeon types, and persistent progression via the Insider Connected app, currently running on 0.84 code with more features planned.

Key Claims

  • D&D Pinball features four playable characters with distinct stat profiles (hit points, strength, dexterity, wisdom, constitution) affecting battle mechanics and mode duration

    high confidence · Joel demonstrates character selection screen and explains how hit points determine battle survival length and other stats influence weapon damage

  • The game contains 12 unique modes spread across six cities plus a central hub, with three-level progression (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3) requiring completion of lower levels to access higher-tier modes

    high confidence · Joel explains the map system, shows colored mode indicators, and demonstrates how level progression gates access to upper-tier modes

  • Shield mechanism is unique to this game and activates when action button flashes orange to protect flippers during certain gameplay situations

    high confidence · Joel demonstrates shield activation and shows how it can be used to rest the ball or protect from attacks

  • Game uses persistent progression via Insider Connected app where completed modes save between sessions when logged in

    high confidence · Joel explains that logging in allows players to resume where they left off with completed modes saved

  • Dragon multiball can be pulled into regular modes for enhanced scoring, with up to eight balls available on Premium/LE versions

    high confidence · Joel demonstrates dragon multiball mechanics and notes ball count increases on premium tiers

  • The game is currently running on 0.84 code with significant additional features planned for future updates

    high confidence · Joel states 'this is 0.84 code. There's so much more they're going to put in this game'

  • Designer Brian Eddy is the same person who designed Medieval Madness, and similar catapult shot mechanics appear in D&D

    high confidence · Joel explicitly states 'this is made by Brian Eddie same person who made medieval madness' when discussing the catapult shot

  • Game features a risk-reward 'Tiny's Dice Game' mode where players balance chasing higher dice values against the risk of accidentally resetting to lower values

Notable Quotes

  • “And so far I've had it about a week and I'm having a blast with it. And there is so much to this game.”

    Joel Engelbreth@ 0:20 — Establishes early positive sentiment and indicates game depth was immediately apparent

  • “It's kind of a choose your own adventure where do you want to go you can travel around the map you can do different modes”

    Joel Engelbreth@ 8:48 — Highlights the game's non-linear progression design philosophy and player agency in mode selection

  • “Every mode is unique. Every mode will explain what you need to do.”

    Joel Engelbreth@ 11:39 — Emphasizes design philosophy prioritizing mode variety and player onboarding clarity

  • “The way you actually lose the battle is you run out of hit points. Your health, your entire party dies. They don't die. They get knocked out.”

    Joel Engelbreth@ 5:19 — Explains core battle mechanic distinction between draining and actually losing, affecting character selection strategy

  • “Incredibly deep game, and this is 0.84 code. There's so much more they're going to put in this game, and it's already incredibly deep.”

    Joel Engelbreth@ 23:02 — Reinforces assessment that game is content-complete at early code version with planned expansions

  • “If you're thinking about buying one, I think you'd enjoy it.”

    Joel Engelbreth @ ~33:00 — Direct recommendation to potential buyers, indicating strong satisfaction with the product

Entities

Joel EngelbrethpersonDungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's EyegameStern PinballcompanyBrian EddypersonZachpersonNicole MinispersonMedieval MadnessgameInsider Connected appproductFlip n Out Pinballorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Flip n Out Pinball producing comprehensive tutorial within one week of game access, responding to community demand for rules explanation from recent stream

    high · Joel states 'it was very clear that people were like, the sooner you can get a tutorial out for this game, the better. So here we are.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: D&D Pinball emphasizes non-linear progression ('choose your own adventure'), player agency in mode selection, and persistent progression systems that incentivize replay and character building

    high · Joel explains map-based city selection, level gating, Insider Connected app persistence, and character stat customization across multiple gameplay segments

  • $

    market_signal: Game positioned as exceptionally deep with 12 unique modes and multiple dungeon variants, targeting both casual players (via accessible character selection) and skilled players (via mode complexity and strategic progression choices)

    high · Joel demonstrates entry-level city selection alongside complex mode progression trees and explicitly recommends game to potential buyers

  • ?

    product_strategy: D&D Pinball currently on 0.84 code with significant planned content additions; game is feature-complete enough for tutorial but expecting substantial code updates

    high · Joel explicitly states 'this is 0.84 code. There's so much more they're going to put in this game'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.072

0:00
Hello my name is Joel Engelbreth and this is the Flippin' Out YouTube channel. Today I have the opportunity to film a tutorial for Stern Pinball's Dungeons and Dragons The Tyrant's Eye. So this is the LE, this is Zach and Nicole Minis, this is their personal game. Thank you so much for them for getting this to me as quickly as they can so I can play it. And so far I've had it about a week and I'm having a blast with it. And there is so much to this game. My brother and I streamed it last night. and I did the best I can to explain everything that I know about the game and it was very clear that people were like, the sooner you can get a tutorial out for this game, the better. So here we are. We're trying to do it as soon as possible. So we'll do our normal thing. Let's talk about layout first. First thing I want to talk about is this shield. This is a unique thing to this game, which is a metal shield that you have the opportunity to pop up and protect the flippers. That is unique, so whenever you see the action button flashing orange, That's when the shield pops up. Then you got in lane out lanes. Nothing crazy This is actually how you light the shield by rolling over those in lanes out lanes then over here. We have an interesting shot where Basically goes back in here. It's kind of like this catapult shot on medieval madness This is made by Brian Eddie same person who made medieval madness
1:16
That holds the ball and then it actually shoots the ball perfectly over this way and there's actually a magnet underneath this cube So it's kind of a setup shot not only do you have to hit that shot for certain modes? But that's a great way to set up the upper flipper shots The magnet will grab it and then the magnet will drop it onto this flipper and that's how you can hit any of these upper Flipper shots, so it's actually a super useful Shot in the game, and it's really fun. This is the left orbit by default it is just a left orbit But there is actually an up-down ramp here You can kind of see it's sticking out so there's certain times where that ramp will come down and then all of a sudden that orbit instead of being an orbit is actually a ramp shot and You're gonna hit that shot multiple times and that's how you start the gelatinous cube multiple, so I'll make sure to show that off Then underneath the dragon head there are three stand-up targets. You're gonna use that to spell dragon You can see it here on the playfield and that's basically how you interact with the dragon. You're trying to steal his gold That's what causes the dragon head to swoop down for you to hit it So yeah three stand-ups targets there that can be very dangerous so be prepared for that that. You have an inner orbit shot, which you can hit over and over again, and then you have this left ramp shot, which honestly trying to hit it off the orbit is a challenging shot, but the fact that there's a magnet here that stages that shot actually makes these two shots very consistent, which is a ton of fun. There are two stand-up targets here and here. These are the dungeon stand-up targets. Once you've hit those, you'll actually light dungeon here at the center scoop, and that actually pops up the dungeon mech which is a scoop that pops up out of the play field you can hit it in and it'll grab that ball and that's how you start the dungeon modes this the critical hit captive ball super valuable shot super important shot um what it is in dnd a critical hit means you've rolled out of a 20 sided die you've rolled a 20 which is kind of like a special unique moment well in this game whenever you're in a battle or wherever you're in a mode If you're struggling to hit a shot, what you can do is you can hit that captive ball. It'll start blinking. You can see the insert there blinking. And while it's blinking, if you hit the captive ball again, boom, it'll spot you a shot. So there are strategically times where you want to prioritize that over hitting the shots in the game.

high confidence · Joel demonstrates and explains the dice game mechanics showing value escalation and reset mechanics

3:30
Right up the middle is the middle scoop. It's not a scoop. It's kind of like a saucer more. But it has a spinner. It has an opto spinner. So you're going to be hitting that a lot. and that goes to a vertical up kick which will then feed the ball back on the right wire form here so very enjoyable shot that spinner is fantastic you're going to hit a lot during the game then you got this kind of loop around shot if you go this way this is another way that you can feed that upper flipper you can backhand that shot it's a very important shot that they it's labeled shortcut on the play field which is pretty neat and then you got the right ramp to me this is the hardest shot in the game but when it when you hit it it feels great um you actually hit that it goes around the back and then it will feed the left flipper so that is a shot that you could loop over and over again if you're really good at it and then you got the right flipper there's wow the right orbit right orbit's just an orbit shot nothing crazy there and then there's an under the flipper shot if you go in here uh you can light double scoring by hitting the stand up and then to start double scoring is how you roll behind that upper flipper uh plunge wise you basically have three main plunges you're going to plunge all the way around or you can short plunge try to do one of these or I think there's somewhere in there where you can you can hit it just right and the magnet will grab it and it'll spot you a shot I don't really know yet what distinguishes one over the other but that's a layout that's layout so let's dive into what this game is I'm just going to start a game without logging in and I want you to look at the screen for a second So you can choose your character up here. There are four characters in the game. You're going to ask yourself, what character do you want? Why does it matter?
5:09
Hit points, the way the battles work in this game is you can lose a battle by draining, but then if you're not on ball three, if you're on ball two, you go right back into the battle. The way you actually lose the battle is you run out of hit points. Your health, your entire party dies. They don't die. They get knocked out. So the larger the number of hit points, the longer that you're going to be able to stay in a mode. strength typically deals with your attack so a strength would be like a physical sword attack well male male well i don't there's any sort of physical attack is going to be strength um dexterity normally deals with range attacks like a bow um we're going to skip some of the other stuff wisdom and constitution that deals more with uh magic magic stuff so this guy right here he his hit points are high and his strength is high um if i go to the next guy Anya her hit points are low but her dexterity is high So her ranged weapon is actually more powerful than the last guy This guy is very similar to the first one. Hit points are high at 11. Strength is even higher at 19. But everything else is kind of low. So this is kind of a nice brute force kind of character. And then this is the magic items lady where her hit points are low, her strength is low. but the more powerful she gets the further you get in the game the range weapon is going to be more powerful and that's what's neat oh you can also see the perks so she has a longer shield time he's good against dragons that the rogue has more luck or more treasure and then he's good against undead so every character has totally different skills which is very unique so you can actually play through this game multiple times so with different abilities so the right flipper is how you pick your character. The left flipper, let's look down here. Let's look at the map. There are technically six cities that all have modes in them, and then there's the main city in the middle. No modes there, just kind of a hurry up. Initially, you can only pick between these bottom four cities, and the reason for that is because level one and level two modes. This is where things get fun. This is where things get very unique and interesting. This bottom city only has one level one mode. It's level one blue. This bottom city has one level one mode, level one purple. If we look at Cobalt Town, there's three modes in this city. There's level one orange, level two white, level two purple. So level two modes and level one modes are lit. They're available right at the beginning of the game. The level three modes, which are in the top two cities, So that city up there has level three orange and yet level three blue to play those modes You have to have done the level one in the level two mode of the same color It's not that hard. I know that was a lot of just mumbo-jumbo But really if I want to play and this is what's unique if I want to play level three blue If I beat that mode, there's a little sword next to it I get a really fancy sword if I want that really fancy sword what that means is I need to have beat or played level one blue and level two blue.
8:17
So to do three, so that means I should start in this city, Westgate, then I should travel up to Green Nest, play level two, and then I should travel up to Dragonspear to play level three. That's what's really neat about this game is what do you want to do? Are you trying to work towards artifacts, the one, two, three? Or the other side of it is you complete all the modes in one city and that's how you get to the dungeon of that city and there that's where the gold is that's where the points are that's where the other treasure items are so it's kind of a choose your own adventure where do you want to go you can travel around the map you can do different modes i would suggest starting at one of these bottom two modes because they only have one mode and it's a level one mode so let's start let's choose ardor and let's start in westgate so i'm going to go ahead and plunge so i have to travel so blue arrows mean travel so i am traveling right now so to travel you have to complete three blue arrows well i actually kind of hit a skill shot so it spotted some of those so now that i'm in the city to choose an action you have to hit one of the three yellow areas arrows this is also lit light blue over here because once again my skill shot spotted me a shot so I'm actually pretty close to gelatinous cube multi ball you just have to hit that you see the gelatinous cube didn't catch me so once again to get into gelatinous cube I'm going to hit the left orbit I'm advancing gelatinous cube I'm going to try it again and now it did catch me so gelatinous cube is all about the left orbit hitting the left orbit multiple times I could start that mode by hitting the left orbit or I can go to the right that same magnet now just caught the second ball. So to start gelatinous cube multi-ball, you have to hit one of those balls off. So I can actually do this inner orbit.
10:10
Let me see if I can do it. There we go. So that actually started the multi-ball because I hit one of the balls off. So this multi-ball is all about blue shots, you know, nothing crazy here. You can bring a multi-ball into a mode, but honestly, I'm just going to tell you. nothing crazy it is a cool mode same guy same character same thing so nice i'm in westgate i need to hit blue shots because i'm traveling here we go oh i'm in the path of traveling and now i'm being attacked red shots are how you attack a creature so i just hit the owlbear you can see the owlbear's health just went down another way i can attack is my ranged weapon So if I push and hold the button, you see a scrolling blue shot. If I let the shot go, that's how you do a ranged weapon attack. So it's either I'm trying to attack them or I can try to escape by hitting blue shots. There are my three blue shots. I've escaped. I've made it into the town. Now that I've made it into the town, I can try to buy something at FISMO. So we can shoot over here. Let's see what I can buy. Not much because I don't have, like, any gold. But the store is unique in each town. That's kind of a cool feature. But let's go ahead and choose an action. Let's start something. So I hit a yellow shot. This is where I have the option to travel if I wanted to travel somewhere else. Or I'm going to go ahead and start this mode. Blue 1. I'm going to start this mode. Every mode is unique. Every mode will explain what you need to do. This one's pretty simple. This one I try to hit red shots.
11:49
So you see two zombies on the screen. That's why there's two red shots hit. If they solid they not ready to attack but as soon as they start flashing that means they about to attack They about to attack And they going to attack me Come on And attack Boom So I just took damage If I took too long to hit these red shots I could die Or just drain. All right. So I drained the ball. Being that I was in the middle of the battle, if you drain a ball while you're in the middle of the battle, any progress, any attack that you've done against a bad guy, their health comes back. So the health is back. I have three zombies. That's why I have three red areas. There's one. Let's hit another red one. There's two. And maybe here would be another opportunity to show off what the critical hit thing is. So if I hit that once, do you see how it's blinking now? If I hit it again, oh, I got to hit it before he hits me. There we go. It gave me a shot. So it went ahead and did that hit. You can see over on the right, I have one more foe. So they're going to keep coming. So I want to keep hitting. If you see a yellow triangle on the play field, that means gold. So I just got some gold for that shot. Let's do another red shot.
13:05
And once you've hit enough of them, so I've technically defeated them, I've finished the mode. So now I know I've finished the mode because of the blue circles. To get out of the mode, you just have to hit a cyan circle. So I'm going to show this. This ball is going to shoot up there. It's going to feed the upper flipper. the magnet's going to grab it and then I have one shot here. Boom. It's so nice to do that. So nice. What's available right now is this is the dungeon. The dungeon of this mode is available. And the reason the dungeon's available is because I've played all the modes in this town. So same thing. I got red shots. I actually just lit extra ball. I just got my extra ball. So there's a red shot. So I need to keep hitting this red shot. Do more attack on them or I can do the critical hit shot so there's one it's blinking there's two that spotted it as well let's do it okay now it says right there shoot yellow shot to raise dungeon so the dungeon just popped up and now this i have a short amount of time here to hit that shot boom that's how i now get to the second phase of this dungeon i should catch the ball you know so i will still be in that dungeon That's what's cool is as I'm not kicked out of the dungeon even though I drained I'm still in that dungeon So Yellow shot is a way to explore the ship for this particular mode But I don't want to ignore the guy trying to attack me because he can hurt me Let's do that. So let's use our shield to protect ourselves. So my shield is up. This is what's cool I can let this ball rest here and flip Almost guaranteed shot to the left orbit if I let it rest on this side it's almost a guaranteed shot to that ramp. So I need to hit this upper flipper shot. So I'm going to let it shoot. I'm going to let it grab. And I'm going to hit the shot. It's so cool how they lay into each other like that. So nice. So let me keep attacking the guy with red. I could cradle up. I could use my range weapon here. Let it, boom, nailed him.
15:12
There we go. So I defeated him, but I still need to find the yellow shot. So let's, uh, Dragon Head. There we go. And finish the mode. Escape the ship. Right up there.
15:27
There we go. So that is a way to play a mode. So not only did I play the one mode in this town, I beat the dungeon of that town. And now I can go somewhere else. So being that I beat one, level one blue, let me go ahead and travel. Let me travel up. Let me travel to Green Nest where level two blue is. So when you travel, you have to hit three blue shots, but remember this is where you can be attacked. I'm being attacked right now. I can either ignore being attacked and just hit blue shots, or I can try to battle them. What I'm actually going to do is I'm going to hit the dungeon targets. Now, right up the middle, I actually have the dungeon crawl lit. Let me go ahead and hit that. Dungeon crawl is going to pop up the scoop, and now I can go into a dungeon, and this is another area that's unique. Dungeon Crawl is totally different than the Town Dungeon. Basically, you're going to hit a shot, and you're going to end up being presented with purple shots. This is the choose-your-own-adventure thing. So let's try right.
16:26
So now it says, where do I want to go? Let's try left. I'm just guessing. Oh, I'm still exploring. Let's try, okay, we're hitting that purple shot.
16:36
Let's try left again. Okay, got an exit. So what's cool is there's five levels to the Dungeon Crawl. So if I play the dungeon crawl later in this game, I will be deeper. And the deeper you go in the dungeon, the more difficult the bad guys get and the more valuable the treasure you might find. So that's kind of a fun side mission. If you look at the play field right now, I'm in green nest. So blue means that's where you're at. So I'm in green nest, but you see one white is lit, two orange is lit, and two blue is lit. So if I hit a yellow shot to choose my adventure, I can pick which one of those I want to do. So let's do two blue. So two blue continues on the storyline of what one blue was. So when you're in a mode, you can actually hit the dragon shots too. So I'm going to slowly spell dragon. There we go. And once dragon is spelled, I can hit the right orbit to start dragon multiball. So you can pull dragon multiball into a mode. If you're going to notice, he's going to start shooting a whole lot of balls at me. The way that this works is you have to hit him in the face six times before he drains 16 balls. So the way you do this is... I might just have to play the load. The way you do this is you want to seal his bowl I going to get his head to pop down I going to keep my shoulder up as much as possible I need to hit him five more times Here we go I need to hit him four more times Keep hitting him Keep hitting him Gold, his head's down. I think I just hit him again two more times. And the whole time the bow's going on, I just think I need to hit him like one more time. Hit him on this head's down. There we go. And one more hit. Come on. I'm going to shield him back up. Oh, I beat him. Okay. I'm now in Town Celebration Multi-Ball. So that's beating the Dragon Multi-Ball. On a Premium and LE, that can get up to eight balls. So let me hit my red shots because that's part of the mode.
18:42
I can keep draining. That's totally fine. Shoot, slash, and there we go. Let me hit my mode shots. Or I can hit Critical Roll or Critical... Wow. Critical Hit. I can't hit Critical Hit. oh my goodness there we go that'll spot me a shot there we go there we go let's see where we're at with this mode let me keep hitting red shots let me hit another red shot okay i just beat the mode i can get out of the mode i'm going to get down to one ball and i'm going to get out of the mode with the cyan shot and let's see there we go so that's basically the basics of the game ages ago it's all about playing modes completing modes within a city and that's how you get into a dungeon now tiny's dice game is lit it's lit up right up the middle it's purple let me show that off so instead of playing another mode i'm going to show you tiny tiny's dice game this is a points based mode dragon build spinner value so you'll see the scoop goes up and down up and down so right now my dice value is four so i want to hit the scoop i want to hit the scoop and it's going to go up my dice values now seven so while the dice is up that's when you want to hit the spinner this is how you get your points you can add time by hitting a purple shot but the goal is i want to get this higher i want to get the dice value higher so there we go let's get it in the scoop so now it's up to 10 let me see if i can get it higher let me see if i can get it higher come on pop up there we go now it's up to 13 so you can go the problem is i can get it all the way up to like 19 or 20 but then if i accidentally hit the scoop again the value is going to go way down let me hit the uh let me there's it rolled the dice let me add some more time to the mood nope scoops up let me see if i can get it in there nope oh i missed it let me just go ahead and spin it while it's there so the timer's running down so it's kind of a risk reward of like do you want to cradle up and try to get it in the scoop do you want to try you can see the purple shots aren't staying lit so now my value is up to 16 that's pretty good but i think it pops randomly so it's kind of a it's very much a risk let's see if we can get it without going without busting basically yeah i'm running out of time so i need to hit so it's at 19 if i hit the scoop now it's going to go down now now it goes down to two so my base value just went way lower. So it's a fun risk-reward game from a point standpoint.
21:18
Let's spin it one more time, and then you're out of the mode. So it's just a fun side quest that's in the game that, I don't know, it's just fun to play. Another side quest that's in the game, being that I've played two modes, there's a quest here in this middle city, if I want to travel to that. So you can see green means I've beat level one here, I've beat this city mode, I've beat that mode so I could stay in this city and play these other two modes and then try to play that dungeon mode or now I have three blue lit so I could go up to that that town play that mode and try to get an uh an artifact uh which would be more powerful for the rest of the game so I think that's the vast majority of it the truth is there's 12 modes in the game they're all extremely unique. They're all very fun to play. Each dungeon is unique and fun to play. The dungeons that you get further in the game have deeper levels that you have to beat.
22:17
You got dragon multiball that you can pull into the game. You got gelatinous cube multiball that you can pull into modes. You got the critical hit target, which you can utilize strategically. You can use the shield to save your ball. You can also use the shield to set the ball or rest the ball at and then hit either the left orbit or the right orbit you got double scoring over here if you care about points you got fismo shop if you want to upgrade or potentially buy other items there's a lot here oh and not to mention there's co-op mode in the game so you can play collectively with somebody else or if you log in if i was logged in at this character and i drained out and the game was over all the all of what i've accomplished would be there so when i start my next game, I can pick up in this town with two completed modes ready to go. Incredibly deep game, and this is 0.84 code. 0.84. There's so much more they're going to put in this game, and it's already incredibly deep. So nice. I don't know. I'm enjoying the game. I hope that was hopeful. That may have been longer than it needed to be, but there's so much here to explore, so enjoy it. Find one on location. Have fun with this game. If you're thinking about buying one, I think you'd enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to Zach. He's got some in stock. Appreciate you guys clicking on the video. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, all the things. Have a great day. See you guys.