Episode 378: Jim Henson’s Labyrinth pinball from Barrels of Fun

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·30m 38s·held·Oct 24, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Barrels of Fun reveals Labyrinth pinball at Expo with strong collector response and 10-year expansion plan.

Summary

Pinball Profile 378 features an extensive interview with David Van Es (CEO) and Phil Grimaldi (lead rules designer) of Barrels of Fun at the 2025 Pinball Expo in Schaumburg, Illinois. They discuss the development and reveal of Jim Henson's Labyrinth pinball, a highly anticipated debut title from the new manufacturer that has already generated significant collector interest and won Best Vendor at Expo. The conversation covers the company's origin story, team composition, design philosophy, theme integration, and future roadmap including locked licenses for games two and three.

Key Claims

Barrels of Fun has 15 full-time employees and operates from Houston, Texas with additional remote team members across multiple countries.
high confidence · David Van Es stated: 'We have 15 employees right now. Full-time employees. Obviously a lot of people on contract.'
Games in boxes were ready at launch, with 10 units at Expo and additional inventory in Houston warehouse.
high confidence · David Van Es: 'When we launch, we're going to come out, games in boxes, ready to go.' Jeff Teels confirmed seeing video of Houston warehouse with games in boxes, plus 10 at Expo.
Barrels of Fun won Best Vendor award at Pinball Expo 2025.
high confidence · Jeff Teels: 'I know you guys are very modest but you did win best vendor here at Expo.'
The first game (unit #1) is going to Kickback Pinball Cafe in Pittsburgh this week.
high confidence · Jeff Teels: 'I know elizabeth cromwell got game number one it's going to be at Kickback Pinball Cafe in pittsburgh this week.'
Development took approximately 2.5 years from initial concept to Expo reveal.
high confidence · David Van Es: 'We came here to reveal our very first game, and that was Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and it's been a label of love for two and a half years.'
Phil Grimaldi began writing the rules document approximately two years before the Expo reveal.
high confidence · Phil Grimaldi: 'Two years ago when I started writing the rules document for this thing, I didn't think we'd get this far.'
Licenses for games two and three are already locked and planned.
high confidence · David Van Es: 'You wait till you see what they've got lined up for game two and three. Like, the licenses are locked.'
The game features a hidden spinner mechanism behind the Newton lock forks that increases scoring exponentially.
high confidence · Jeff Teels: 'Phil Grimaldi...put the spinner behind the Newton lock bolt...the spinner increases the number of spins you do and the points are exponential.'

Notable Quotes

“I thought David was nuts. First, I mean, David is super passionate, and we share a lot of the same likeness for pinball and the same kind of themes and the same movies and things like that. But he approached me because I'm one of the better pinball players in the area... I'd like to be involved. And two years ago when I started writing the rules document for this thing, I didn't think we'd get this far, but now I'm just like completely in shock.”
Phil Grimaldi @ ~3:50 — Captures Grimaldi's initial skepticism about the project and evolution to becoming a core team member and co-designer; shows organic growth of company culture.
“When covid happened and i kind of had to stop and reassess what i was doing and uh what am i going to do for the rest of my life... when I stepped back and tried to recess what I was going to do I had a really good friend of mine...my mate would go Dave why don't you do it yourself and I'm like dude pinball's hard like it's stupid it's difficult like it's not easy.”
David Van Es @ ~6:00 — Explains Van Es's pivot into founding Barrels of Fun during COVID, key inflection point for the company.
“What if we made a premium, one model, premium machine, limited with a great IP that no one knew about, People can get excited about that... So we kind of sat down and was like, well, are we going to do this? Well, if we're going to do it, we've got to have games in boxes. So Brian and me, we sat down, we had the plan, and we just went to it, started building.”
David Van Es @ ~9:00 — Core business strategy: single-tier premium model with surprise IP, and commitment to inventory-ready launch (differentiating from crowdfunding-heavy competitors).
“The whole point was to have every shot has multiple shots... when you've actually hit enough shots to spell Labyrinth, the back of the wall drops down and you shoot through it to start your mode.”
Phil Grimaldi @ ~22:15 — Design philosophy: multi-layered shot design with thematic progression, demonstrates integration of mechanics with theme.
“What I've loved out of being here, A, first of all, I can finally talk about it. And I can tell you there's probably a few people out there that are not happy with me right now because I didn't bring them in. And it's just because you've kept the secret from me... but what has made my day is seeing the diversity in the crowds that are lining up for this game. When I see kids and mothers and their daughters playing this game.”

Entities

Barrels of Funcompany David Van Esperson Phil Grimaldiperson Brian Savageperson Bowen Kerinsperson

Signals

?
announcement: Barrels of Fun officially revealed Jim Henson's Labyrinth pinball as their debut title at Pinball Expo 2025 with 10 playable units, Best Vendor award, and immediate sales/delivery to locations.
high · David Van Es: 'We came here to reveal our very first game, and that was Jim Henson's Labyrinth'; Jeff Teels confirmed game availability with unit #1 going to Pittsburgh.
?
product_launch: Barrels of Fun launched with games already in boxes and ready for shipment, distinguishing from crowdfunding-dependent competitors; demonstrated production readiness.
high · David Van Es: 'When we launch, we're going to come out, games in boxes, ready to go'; Jeff Teels witnessed Houston warehouse inventory and 10 units at Expo.
?
manufacturing_signal: Barrels of Fun operating Houston facility with 15 full-time employees and ~30 employees total (per KB context), producing 10-20 units weekly with global remote team (New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, US states).
high · David Van Es: 'We have 15 employees right now. Full-time employees. Obviously a lot of people on contract'; mentions team members from New Zealand, Ireland, Canada.
?
design_philosophy: Rules designed organically from IP source material, with theme integration as primary design constraint; multiple shot layers and mechanics derived from movie scenes/characters.
high · Phil Grimaldi: 'Everything was thematically appropriate and well integrated...The rules wrote themselves, really'; discusses each character (Hoggle, Ludo, Didymus) having unique gameplay roles.
?
design_innovation: Novel mechanical innovation: spinner placed behind Newton lock forks, hidden from initial observation; activated after lock staging with exponential point multiplier; kinetically satisfying design.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.092

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it's time for another pinball profile i'm your host jeff teels you can find everything on pinballprofile.com twitter instagram at pinball profile we're on facebook as well email pinball profile at gmail.com and if you'd like to show your support on patreon that'd be very kind patreon.com slash pinball profile don't worry the show will always be free but we appreciate your wonderful support here at expo in a quiet part of the corridor here in schaumburg illinois i've been having a ton of fun some would say barrels of fun here at expo playing all kinds of games oh and speaking of barrels of fun look who's joining me right now the ceo of the new company david van s along with the lead rules designer in phil grimaldi david how are you i'm doing well jeff How are you? It's good to see you again, my friend. And, Phil, it's been a while since Texas. Glad to see you're still doing the pogo dance, especially after this weekend. Heck yeah, heck yeah, Jeff. We're having a great time. So what brought you to Expo? And tell us a little bit about Barrels of Fun. Why are you here, David? Well, first of all, I always thought your intro was prerecorded. And just to see you knock that out in one hit, I am deeply impressed. Muscle memory. So, yeah, we came here to reveal our very first game, and that was Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and it's been a label of love for two and a half years. And you should ask Phil how he felt about it when I brought him on the team. Yeah, that's a good question because you have quite the team, and we're going to definitely talk about all these members, but I've known Phil from the competitive scene. So, Phil, you get the call from David. What were you thinking? I thought David was nuts.

1:49

First, I mean, David is super passionate, and we share a lot of the same likeness for pinball and the same kind of themes and the same movies and things like that. So we share a lot of commonalities there. But he approached me because I'm one of the better pinball players in the area. Slow down. Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right. Yeah, you are. All right. As a guy who's beaten me several times, okay, Phil. Yeah, and he needed somebody to come in and just give him an honest opinion on how the game's shot, how can we improve things, and how can we make the rules fun and enjoyable. but also enticing and make people want to press the start button over and over again. And so I said, yeah, sure, I'll help you out, David. You're nuts. I don't think you're going to get 5% of the way there, but I think it's a really fun project and I'd like to be involved. And two years ago when I started writing the rules document for this thing, I didn't think we'd get this far, but now I'm just like completely in shock. I'm so proud of Dave and everything he's done and actually making the game come to life. seeing the rule document that I wrote actually become a game and seeing everybody enjoy it and have fun it's just been a blast I'm so glad that David asked me two years ago I know you guys are very modest but you did win best vendor here at Expo which is again pretty good out of the gate but let's go through the history of this barrels of fun because one thing I love about first of all the game but just this company is that we didn't see this coming that where did this was a big surprise this is and a pleasant surprise and it's not just talk you're actually giving us a game and people are flipping the game and people are leaving the show with the game i know elizabeth cromwell got game number one it's going to be at kickback cafe in pittsburgh this week it's real david it is legitimately real and it hasn't been easy but when uh covid happened and i kind of had to stop and reassess what i was doing and uh what am i going to do for the rest of my life because I've been in the service industry just you know doing my daily grind and when I stepped back and tried to recess what I was going to do I had a really good friend of mine because I did a lot of licensing I'd have licenses come to me and go hey Dave what do you think of this IP for a game and because I wasn't working it was like oh I can I can point you in the right direction and my mate would go Dave why don't you do it yourself and I'm like dude pinball's hard like it's stupid it's difficult like it's not easy and just over a period of three months it would come because i'll tell him oh i had this person call me up i had this opportunity because i would be happy just passing the license on to someone else and if i got a free game and that'd be awesome because i love pinball and uh i finally got to the point it's like well you know i'm going to draw up a business plan i'm going to show him this is not going to work like let's do the numbers let's let's do this let's see this out and when we did the analysis, it was like, wow, this could work. So then we started looking at the market and was like, what is missing? What were things that we as collectors really wanted to see in the market? And things that we enjoyed being collectors was finding out a new game that was coming out that day. Because everyone seems to know what new game is coming out or there's a hint what game is coming out. So when a game comes out, there's no more excitement. So that was one thing. And the other thing that we saw was there was always this fraction market of a pro and a premium. There's all these different model trends. And as me, as a pinball collector back in the late 90s and in the 2000s, we always were on the hunt for a pinball machine because there wasn't multiple models. You had to go and find. You wanted a Williams Indiana Jones in good condition. You had to hunt for it. I see. It's the hunt. So we thought, what if we made a premium, one model, premium machine, limited with a great IP that no one knew about, People can get excited about that. But, of course, we've lived in a whole last few years of companies starting up, taking a lot of pre-orders and just fizzing out because they didn't have a good business plan or something went wrong. So we kind of sat down and was like, well, are we going to do this? Well, if we're going to do it, we've got to have games in boxes.

5:54

So Brian and me, we sat down, we had the plan, and we just went to it, started building. We're going to have games. When we launch, we're going to come out, games in boxes, ready to go. I may have seen a video from the Houston, Texas warehouse where I saw a bunch of games in boxes ready to go. Plus, you had 10 here at Expo. It's a real thing. I think, Phil, when you got here on Friday night, was that the first time you actually flipped it in this capacity? It's been a while since I flipped it. The development on this has been going on for a while, but it's really come together in the last few months. I've been outside of Houston for the last few months, so the last time I flipped it was on earlier code, and now the code has much more progressed. It's much more stable now. You can actually play full games. You can get through all your modes, do all of the things that we were designing it to do, and it's really just taken on a life of its own. And he's also responsible for putting the spinner behind the Newton lock bolt. Oh, my goodness. I want to talk about this feature. So, yes, you can lock the ball on what looks like the left orbit. Two pegs come up. Pogos? Pegs? Forks? Forks, yeah. No, no, no. Just the pogo thing. Phil Grimaldi, all my Texas peeps and TPF friends know what I'm talking about. You've got to see this guy play. It's something. But anyway, these two pegs come up. And, okay, you've got a ball there. But there's a spinner behind the ball. and I'm playing with Bowen Cairns who also helped you Phil with the rules and he showed me how the spinner increases the number of spins you do and and the points are exponential in some sense so you really want to smash that ball into the spinner it so cool it is awesome When we were playing early Whitewood at the game one of the things that was missing was a spinner And I said, David, we have to... Your exact words, like, yeah, David, this is really, really good, but you know what this game's missing? A spinner. And he's just looking over the game. I go over to my shelf of prototype parts, I pull out the spinner, he's like, go and put it somewhere. And he goes, dude, we're trying to lock this down. I was like, it just screws onto the payfield. Figure out where it goes. So we were looking all around. There's only one place on this play field to put a spinner. It's right behind the forks. And David's first reaction is, no, we can't put it there. That's where the lock is. This is not going to work. And no, actually, it's going to work perfectly. We stage a ball on there. We crack that captive ball into the spinner, and it is so satisfying. It is. The kinetic satisfaction is just perfect. So all the real pinball players love that kinetic satisfaction. when you do something, when you do the thing. And there are multiple things on this wonderful game. In fact, I'm playing a game with Bowen, and I'm looking at what looks like a U-turn. I'm like, oh, I'm going to hit that and be prepared because it's going to come back. Whoa, where'd the ball go? Where did the ball go? It was supposed to come back in the U-turn, but the ball's disappeared. It's almost like it's thematic. Well, the whole point was to have every shot has multiple shots. So in that horseshoe, there's actually a drop-down horseshoe backing of it. So it's a traditional horseshoe, left and right, but when you've actually hit enough shots to spell Labyrinth, the back of the wall drops down and you shoot through it to start your mode. You've got all the movie assets. You've got, first of all, a lot of David Bowie fans that are thrilled to have this game, and the wonderful Jim Henson world, too. And you and I were talking before this, and what a wonderful license to work with. it was magnificent and it was one of those things of when we showed them the concept they understood that we were approaching this as if this is the world of labyrinth this is not from a linear story of sarah this is your experience your opportunity to find your friends that can help you go to the goblin city you know you can get them and they'll help you go quicker to the goblin city to see the goblin king or you can do it by yourself and you got to travel the underground or above the ground you got to see the knockers the four guards the cleaner, the oubliette, the fireys, the bug of eternal stench. We all love the bug of eternal stench. Phil, you've been standing there at the booth for over a day now and watching a huge lineup of people wanting to play these machines, and you've actually spread out some games. You had four to start, and then you had a big party on Friday night, and there were six more games at the party, and now there's a few more on the floor. You get to hear the reactions of people. It's great to hear pats on the back, and you're getting to tell them, but it's also nice to get some maybe criticisms. Well, I've been there in the booth with you for a while. I haven't heard any yet. Not a lot. People are loving the game. You see people drain and they smile because when you drain out the left out lane, a little fiery head pops up and taunts you, and it's fun. You see people laughing when they drain the ball rather than, you know, storming off and stomping off. And seeing the smiles on people's faces, that's like one of the best feedback we can get because ultimately that's what we were after. We wanted to make people happy that they're playing pinball and bring that joy and magic back. It's a very nostalgic movie for sure and a wonderful world, like you say. And when this game first was shown in the teaser trailer, I'm now seeing it obviously in person, but you looked at it and you went, oh my gosh, they didn't miss anything. They have everything you can imagine. That is a true world under glass. And I know that was something that you were very conscious to make sure we put a lot in there. Well, absolutely. And one of those things of when I approached this, I wanted to make sure that we represented exactly what the IP was. And it was IP first all the time. It's like how can we really tell the world that they created in a platform where people can actually truly interact with it? Like, you know, choose your own adventure. And, you know, so that led to me like what else can we add to this? And who are the best people that we can access? So there's Johnny Allen Fraser who works down at Weta. He's a huge Labyrinth fan. and he's actually has a full size he made his own full-size hoggle he has two full-size uh four guards in his own collection that he just made himself and when i told him what i'm working i need to do the sculpts for you like this we're going to do this we're going to make this a real world on the glass i need to do the sculpts i can see people buying those toppers if you will just to have whether they have the pinball machine or not so the funny thing about the topper like we had that original concepts and Johnny, like he, he was doing it. He was in the mock-up. So, cause he's in New Zealand, he didn't see all the process of the production. And he honestly thought the topper was never going to exist. And let's just say he was over here two months ago and he had never seen the machine finished. And when he walked in and saw that topper, he was like, holy, I didn't think you were even going to do that. I thought, look, you seriously made that topper? I was like, well, dude, it was in the concept art. What else do you think I'm going to do? He's like, you're crazy. Was he thinking plastic or something? He's like, dude, you're crazy. We've just made one of the best love childs we ever could have made. Because him and me have such a passion for Labyrinth. He's like, dude, I can't be more happy. Because, again, it's like if we draw it, I'm going to make it happen. We just got to figure it out. So I assume the two of you have known each other for a while because you've been in Houston for some time and doing what you've been doing. We've seen much of your work on other games. And it was kind of, you know, my good friend Marty Robbins, a fellow country mate of yours. we were talking like, you know, I hope David's doing okay. Where's David? And little did we know that this little child of barrels of fun was being created. And again, Houston, a great place to manufacture. I know a lot of your North American people are going to be super happy. It's going to be easy to ship these games. You've got distributors already lined up. But Phil, tell me about your connection with David in the Houston area. I mean, how well did you know each other? I mean, David was one of the first people I met when I moved to Houston. There's a pretty avid collector community i came in they kind of took me they took me in when i knew nobody in the area and i got to learn everybody who was who and uh you know we established the space city pinball league years ago and we just have a very tight-knit community in houston in general with the pinball community and we all know family the drone a family there's a lot of very talented people and we're all a big pinball family we all trust one another and that's you know ultimately why Dave was able to pull off this big secret is, you know, we all got each other's back and we're all eager to help somebody who's willing to go out there and try something new and exciting. And, yeah, it's great. Well, let's talk about some of the staff and what they do. Talk about Brian Savage. So he is my friend. I met him by selling him a home documented Doctor Who that I didn't want to sell. But he really wanted it. And he talked me out of it over a month. That's where our friendship began. And then as we got into it, because he was into pinball, we kept buying machines and talking and doing all types of stuff. And his background at that time, he was under license of Hasbro running the Transformers and G.I. Joe Collectors Club. Not bad franchises. No, it's good because he's had experience making toys for the Transformers Club and the G.I. Joe Club. So he knew a lot about running conventions and running collectibles. And he actually retired just in 2019 because it was just done. and that coincided with me taking a step back from what I was doing just trying to figure out what I was going to do and uh you know he was the one that kept pride of me he's like do it yourself dude like you're doing some pretty cool stuff why don't you do it and he pushed me over the edge it a big leap of faith and there had to be some sort of epiphany for you to to make this jump I had the experience And when you do something like what you doing it really does involve a lot of people like Brian like Phil like Bo and like all the other people we're going to mention in a second. But also, really, not to micromanage and hire the people, let them do their job. And that's probably something that you have done successfully in this short period of time at Barrels of Fun. Well, talking about micromanaging, it's like something I learned in the film and TV stage. for about 10 years, by being behind the camera, you want to be in control of everything because that's how Hollywood wants you to be, make you think that you've got to be in charge of everything. And I had a real difficult actor I was dealing with and I got to a point, I called my heads of department, my DP, he's like, I need you guys to do what you do while I deal with this person. And that turned out to be one of the best projects I ever worked on because I actually just let people do their job. So from then on, what was the tools I could give people to be successful? And then when I moved into pinball and I started meeting all these great creative people in all different disciplines is let them do their job. So when I stepped back and I was looking at all these people I've worked with in some capacity, it's like I need these guys to help. They're magnificent in what they do. And not typically the role that I saw them doing, but something that they could help me do. And that includes Eric Prepke as the coach. Oh, yeah. You've worked with him for a while. Yeah, I worked with him on Rick and Morty. So he's fantastic what he does. So I just went to him and said, hey, dude, I'm working on this title. You want in? And he's like, he loves Labrador. It was really funny finding out all these people that love Labrador. He's like a Muppet. He's huge. He's in Wisconsin there. I mean, all that cheese that he's had, he's developed into a Muppet. I kid, Eric. You know I love you. Yeah, and so I brought him on, and he's full-time at Barrels now. Nice. And then there's David Fosmer, who was the OS guy at the Coder at Spooky. And he stepped away, I think, over a year ago to do something else, just changing his career. And when I found that out, I was just like, hey, we're having some issues. Not issues, but we were working on an OS for our platform. And he just called and said, hey, would you help us out on some things? I was like, oh, Dave, of course. I remember working with you. We're friends. And he actually flew down to Houston. I was like, just come on down. I was just coming down, help me out, and he came down. And by the end of that five days, he's like, we're putting a house on the market. So he's like, dude, I've got to be a part of this. So he put his house on the market, and now he lives in Houston. So he's a full-time now. So we have 15 employees right now. Full-time employees. Obviously a lot of people on contract. That's something. So one of those people we want to talk about is somebody you're going to be working a lot with and certainly have so far, Phil, and somebody you've known from the competitive scene, Bowen Cairns. Dave's worked with him before. He's done Spooky. He's done some stuff with Multimorphic. How do you guys work together when it comes to coming up with the rules? Sure. I mean, a lot of this project and the rules were very organically developed. David brought me on end of 2021. At the time, everything we had was, you know, just concept drawings and layouts for the playfield layout. So we didn't even have a whitewood at that point or was an early whitewood. So I sketched kind of a high-level overview for the rules. I think maybe even a year later, I don't remember when Bowen came on, earlier this year maybe, so the rules had kind of, you know, we had a high-level overview of what the rules looked like. And then Bowen came in, we had the rules document, he looked it over, it looked good. As the game matured and we started flipping it, we realized things that we needed to change. And Bowen is just excellent at finding areas for polish, things we need to improve, how we can balance the rule set. He's got a bit of a math eye, doesn't he? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. I mean, and he has a competitive angle as well. And so what Bowen does is he, you know, the magic that he works is he takes that existing rule set and he just turns it into magic. So that's one of the excellent things about working with Bowen. And I'll also say Eric also has an excellent eye for this stuff too. So Eric can look at the rule set and say, you know, this isn't going to work from the programming perspective or here's how we're going to have to tweak this to make it work. some of the times like the rule document that i wrote didn't have enough detail in there and then eric will implement something i was like oh of course this is this is the way that it had to be and it's so good what a team yeah it ends up working out very well like i said it's very organic and it's all remote for the most part so we're all working in different states but it ends up being a very compelling product a very compelling game experience as you play it as you've probably I played it. It's a very fun game. It does make you want to keep going. It does make you want to keep shooting. I kind of noticed David said something. Here you are, a startup company, and a lot of companies will do a lot of talk. The talk you've done has said pinball is not easy. It is hard, and you've kept this secret for so long. Obviously, the goal is to sell games, but I've noticed you said to people here, please flip it before you buy it because you'll be impressed. First of all, you also know, as a salesman in a sense, Once they flip it, they're going to love it. If they already had the interest, you flip it, it's a done deal. And I thought that was very admirable of you. What I've loved out of being here, A, first of all, I can finally talk about it. And I can tell you there's probably a few people out there that are not happy with me right now because I didn't bring them in. And it's just because you've kept the secret from me. And it's just like, well, I want to see this be successful. And I want this to be a surprise for everyone else. but what has made my day is seeing the diversity in the crowds that are lining up for this game. When I see kids and mothers and their daughters playing this game,

23:15

I mean, in the last two years, probably about half a dozen or so. But I had seen the movie many, many times before, so I was familiar. Didn't you see it in college? I think you told me. I've got some core memories watching it in college in a dorm room full of girls. It's a very popular IP among the ladies. That is true. You know what? I don't want to speak tales out of school here, but I did have somebody who's selling a lot of these games say to me, he cannot believe the number of women that are buying this game. Not that men aren't, but it's just, for the most part, male, not dominated market, but male populated market, I will say. The number of women that are all on this is incredible. Isn't that the case, David? There has been many times the husbands this weekend, it's like, she's letting me get this. There was a guy on Pinside just today I just read, and he's like, my wife is only allowed one game and it's a keeper. And she goes, this is the second one. So they have Medieval Madness remake, and they say now we've got the labyrinth going into their home. That's so cool. And so, again, back to you, Phil, the seeing of the movie to kind of figure out, okay, what would work in pinball? When you see the movie, and it's been years for me, I'm going to watch it again this week because of just playing the game, it reeked of this is a pinball machine. I mean, the rules wrote themselves, really, when you're thinking about how this is going to actually unfold in the machine. Okay, you're playing through the labyrinth. You're going to meet all these characters. You're going to go through all these scenes. You're going to visit the Bog of Eternal Stench. You're going to go against the four guards and try and solve the riddle. It was obvious to me how I was going to have to progress. It was also really important to me that everything was thematically appropriate and well integrated. So you have your friends, Ludo, Ser Didymus, Hoggle. They each have their own aspects and personalities in the movie. And those personalities then translate to what they do in the game. They help you out getting through the labyrinth. So there's that angle as well. It really wrote itself. I think everybody that's played it, you can only get so far in a game when you're just playing it at an expo, but everybody that's played it so far said the theme integration is excellent on what you did. You've captured the movie very well. That was very important for me. That was first and foremost. I wanted to make a very fun experience that people were playing. I'm also a competitive player, so I'm thinking about how are these modes and things like that playing off one another. How can the player make decisions that are going to maximize their scoring and reward? How can they maximize their progression through the labyrinth? So there's a lot of strategic decisions for the player. But even if you don't care about that, it was also important to me that everything on the play field is doing something for you. It's activating certain things. It's progressing you through, making the story unfold. Fun moments. Fun moments, exactly. Barrels of fun. Barrels of fun, yes. You know, we even talked about what my favorite thing is. I haven't even told either one of you. One thing when I play a pinball machine, especially a new machine, is having some sort of intuitive message. What am I supposed to be doing? And sometimes it's so difficult lifting up your head and seeing a screen that, okay, where is it? Oh, I just drained the ball. Well, I don't have to lift my head because the screen is right there on the play field. It's awesome in the back. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, that was an accident. Well, good accident. Happy accident. So if you look at the shooter rod, the custom shooter rod that we've got for it, It's got a little creature on it called the nipper. So we originally were coming up with that model was going to be a little nipper toy that goes across the back of the panel. So it's getting chased by the ball and there'd be little goblins like, run away, and all this type of stuff. So we were tooling this up and we're looking at how we're going to make it move and make it look organic. And we bought some LCDs at an auction. And my partner, Brian, goes, why did you put an LCD back there? And I was like, you know what? So I got some painter's tape out. I just stuck it on a piece of board and it's like, this is like a third of the price of building these toys that we would have to figure out how to work organically. I didn't know that though. So good bomb. Yeah. So it was literally like, okay, so now we get to do exactly the organic nature. We can animate the goblins and do more in the background. But now we can extend because we've got that whole wood on the glass with the village and the castle. Now we can actually go through the back of the machine and create a world behind that. But also let the rules, all the really important information to be there. so the player knows what they're doing. You know, just when you yelled, run away, run away, I thought, I didn't know David had the voices. I know better. It was Mark Silk. So we're using a lot of the original voices, but Mark Silk absolutely is in there. So basically, when you're going to heckle from those toppers, that's Mark talking to you. That rude Birmingham, UK, son of a gun. But he did such great work and a great hire there. So, my goodness, what are we missing, Phil? What else, for people that haven't seen this game, what are they going to love the most? The rule set that we've developed for this game, we've kept in mind the average player. We want people to step up. You said before, a lot of times you don't know what you're supposed to do on a game. We wanted to make this as accessible as possible. When somebody steps up to the game, it's a clear path for what they need to do. They shouldn't be having to read deep rule sets or understand anything. You don't need a PhD to understand this rule set. Thank you. Yes. It should be fun. We don't want people to feel dumb when they're playing pinball. We want them to have fun. And when they walk away, have a smile on their face and not feeling like they just got talked down to. This show's been wonderful, David. What are some of the moments you're going to take away from people seeing your new baby? I honestly, I'm still processing it. I mean. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Still in shock. Look, it's like I'm still working on like what I need to do when I get back to help my team. I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better launch, a better reception than we've had here. Like we could have not executed this any better. but this just shows you how awesome our community is and how willing they are to support you if you have something that's genuine and you have it for them to physically touch. It wasn't talk. It was physical. You showed up. Here it is. Here's not what we're going to do. Here's what it is and it's done and that has not always been the case as you know and that probably helped you significantly. Well, as I said, go big or go home, right? That's it. Well done. You're in the race. Yeah, and the water's cold.