Don's Pinball Podcast, checking in here from Chicago, Illinois. Just got back from the Stern Factory Tour, and I want to share my thoughts and impressions on Dungeons & Dragons with you on episode number 168. Even got some interviews and such. So buckle in, head back, tray against the fun table. Let's go. That was a fun time here amongst friends. So Stern had an influencer event media conglomeration yesterday. Pretty awesome. Started out with dealers and such at around 10 a.m. And then at 2 p.m. they let loose the unwashed masses of a bunch of content people. End of the Factory, man. Had a great time. Got to play the game. I got some meaty first impressions for you guys. Right off the bat, I'll say game is fun. Game's good. Yeah. Played all three versions, pro, premium, limited edition, toured through an empty factory. What I would like to do is share with you some conversations I had with the creators, movers, and shakers in Stern Pinball that were at the event. I brought my equipment this time. Had such a great time. Had a Diet Coke and played the game. And so we'll get to all that here. But right off the bat, let me just give it to you. Don, how's the game? I'm itching to buy this dang thing. Should I go in on it? Should I not? Should I wait? What's going on? What do you think? What are your impressions? Give it to me. Now, I played the game about ten times. Again, spread amongst pro, premium, limited edition. I can kind of run through the list here. Comment on the art. Just good. Everything looks better in person. Let's give a first impression, though. Walking up to the game. Okay, what do I see? I see a glowing blue gelatinous cube that looks completely more amazing than I thought it would look like in person. I'm not just trying to shill here. Like, the thing actually, like you see, drawn towards it with its translucitness. I'll talk to George about this here in a little bit. But, yeah, video and photos don't capture this thing as cool as it looks, man. I'm very impressed with this thing that's in there. Shots and layout. all of the shots that I hit, I was able to hit relatively soon to when I decided to try to make them. So it's not a very tight game. It's not a game that's unfair. The shots all feel totally accessible. I think if you played a Stranger Things, you know, for five, ten minutes and jumped over on this, it would feel pretty similar as far as like, you know, every time you shoot the ramps, the ball's rocking right back at you. Nice and smooth transitions, not a ton of bricks. And actually, there's not a ton of posts on this game either. I didn't realize this from the videos and such, but the spinner, the spinner's elevated, like, even up higher off the play field than what seems typical. And then it's forward of where the post typically would be. So it is essentially a vertical up kicker that's back there, though it's bigger than just, you know, the size to accommodate the ball. There's a little bit of play back there. But the spinner's actually offset from where the posts are for that entrance. So you can actually hit that spinner from a 45-degree angle if you want and still get it to spin relatively well. Otherwise, that shot straight at the middle, I hit it just about every time I wanted to, and every time it was fun. Use the same Vuk up over the ramp or up over the arch into one of the plastic wire forms. Wire forms aren't made out of plastic. One of the plastic ball guides up there. The game was fun to shoot around in there. As far as the modes, it's going to take me a while to bake my mind in around all of the rules that Dwight put in there. But just if you just walk up to the game and play it and make shots, pick a character, fight a dragon, you're going to have a good time. So I'll get down to my final breakdown. We'll save that here for the end. But while I was there, I sat down with game lead designer Brian Eddy, part-time coder, or at least part-time on this project, Elizabeth Geiske, who is like a true gem. Dwight was over there playing with the people with the LE, like walking them through the rules the whole time. so he was very preoccupied over that. But I was able to talk with him, but I didn't get him on tape. But I did happen to sit down with, coincidentally enough, George Gomez, who's going to talk about the design process and everything that led into this. So let's not hold it up. Here's Brian Elizabeth and George. Hey, Mr. Brian Eddy, how are you doing this afternoon? I'm doing great. It's exciting to be here with everybody, showing off the game. Man, thanks so much for letting us come by here. I just got my first couple of games through there. We walked through the factory. You gave a great overview of everything. And I just want to take a minute. First off, congratulations on your new game. Two years in progress. August 22. We started after Venom, but we've been thinking about it for two years, definitely. Man, as soon as I saw the release, all I wanted to do was fight that dragon. And I've done that. I've got the dragon multiball. Super awesome. I got two billion points. I know codes are still early. Still made you feel good. I feel good about that. So I had some questions from chat. They were just a lot of questions about the leveling system and the characters. So I just wanted to go over those real quick so I don't get yelled at when I get back home. All right, so let me go to them here. So they were asking questions about the health bars in the battles. So the way you explained it, when you're in a mode, you've got your fighting monsters or what have you. You've got yourself, your character, but then the other three party members. And so when you make a shot, you will count that shot, and then the dice will roll, and that will allow the other three characters to attempt a shot as well? Yep, that's exactly it. And they will cause damage to whoever you're fighting or monsters on the screen, too. So they're helpers. Yeah. Just like in a campaign in D&D, right? They'll help you along the way. But they can also die. Right. So as the monsters are attacking, the shots are timing down, and when they time all the way down, the monsters attack. Perfect, yeah. And it'll start taking out your party first. And then the way you explained it, it's not a permanent death, but when you lose that party member for the rest of that mode, you lose that chance for an extra bonus roll when you hit the shots. and then if you deplete all of your energy, then you're out of the mode, but pinball first, play continues. Right. Yeah. Right. You don't actually die. You'll go down to zero hit points, but it'll just end the mode, and then you're back up on the next mode that you start. Okay. Now, can you get back into that mode with that same battle then? No. Once you do it, you move on to the next one. You get the light lit, so you get credit for playing the battle, but you move on to picking a different mode. Perfect. All right. This other question was, do the character stats have a material impact on the game, pretty specific. And he said, yeah, but not a huge one. No, just a small amount. So all the stats that are rolled that you'll see on the left side of the character selection screen, they'll have a small impact on the game and, like, luck and different things you'll get a little bit more of. But not as significant as Venom. Like, Venom was very focused on getting you more powerful as you leveled up, and that's not the focus. All right, yeah. And with Venom, you know, the higher level you got, you know, if you started low level and went into a battle, you might have to do eight or so shots to get through it. The higher you leveled and played, then maybe you'd only have to do four, so it would help players get through it. But you're saying now as you level up, those battles may be more difficult. Right. It's kind of like when you play D&D and you're leveling up your character. You want battles that kind of fit your character so it's a challenge and interesting. So the same thing happens in the game. You'll end up getting more monsters as you level up to have it be a bigger battle. Oh, but it's also a bigger reward too. Yeah. So there's more foes. It's not just you've got to really pound ten shots to beat this guy. Okay, there's more going on there. All right, very good. When party NPCs roll dice, what does that do? Okay, we explained that part. The Sunday updates, do they expire or are they additive? So I think what this person meant was Sunday, that dungeon's cleared out, a new one comes in. And then I had a question about this. If your game was not connected to Insider Connect, basically was the procedural generation baked into the code even if you're offline? But, no, you do have to be connected to get that Sunday update. Well, sort of. Okay. So there's two different ways to this. So if you are connected, it will change every Sunday for everybody who's connected. So you'll get to share and, like, you can talk to your buddy and say, what would you do if you went left, left, right? Where's the extra ball in the dungeon, right? That will be the same for everybody connected. If you're not connected, the dungeons are still procedurally generated. So every time you start a game, you will get a different dungeon layout. Okay. Okay, but during that three-ball game that you're playing, you'll still be in the same dungeon. Same dungeon for that whole game. But then when that game's over and you start again, there'll be a new random one. Okay, so it is kind of both. Yeah, it's a little of both. And so my thought was, okay, so is this every Sunday there's a code update that's got to download? And you said, no, that's not the case. There's some other magic way to do this that we didn't get into, but it's not a code update that has to come out. No, and it'll be changing forever. And now is that just on, it's not some monkey here hitting the switch every Sunday. That's just going to be an ongoing thing. It's just ongoing. I know there was questions about that earlier. So people, for as long as they own the game, it will be changing. How exciting is we're talking about these sorts of things in pinball now, like leveling up, saving your character. When you go to a different arcade or a different person's house, you can log in and pick up your game where you left off. I had my Venom. I enjoyed it. I played through it. I unlocked everything, sold it on to an arcade. But now whenever I go back, I'm right back in my same game where I left off at the house. Yeah, I think it's great. There's a familiarity that comes with that. I've earned all this stuff and now I can come back at any time and play it. Plus it lets people see things that they would never be able to see. Like I'm an average player. I think most people probably are. I am amazingly average. Amazingly average, exactly. So a lot of people will buy a pinball or go out on a location and play and they'll only see like 20% of the game. Right. And so this allows you over time to not only see the whole game but see the variety that happens throughout it. Yeah. And I think that's great for the whole industry and everybody. Yeah, so I know with Venom, if I was hitting a brick wall, I could kind of keep playing, keep grinding, and then when I went back to that mode, it was easier for me to get through it. But with this game, as I'm progressing, and if I do successfully get through a mode, that progress is what's saved. Right, so it's a little bit different. It's a little bit deeper than what Venom is, so you don't have that chopping wood thing as much. It's just saving your points along the adventure, so you don't have to redo the stuff that you did earlier. So you're always getting new stuff as you go. And if you get to the end of one of three different endings for the story, and that all depends on what choices you made and the way the battles happened. You get to the end, and if you beat that final boss at the end, then you unlock a new character. Oh, perfect. So it won't feel like chopping wood at all because you'll always be seeing new things along the way. Is the idea that you will get to choose which character you unlock, or is that tied to which of the three bosses? It's tied to which of the three endings, so you're going to have to find your way to all three endings. So I can't find the easiest one for me to beat and then unlock it all that way? You'll get one. All right. Okay. All right, so Dr. Tone was asking to suggest that he get some documentation on how the features work and all that. I think what they mean is, you know, is there like a flow chart PDF that could be released? Because this code is complicated. It would be nice to have a visual reference for a visual tactile learner like myself. Right. For people who want to dig deeper into it and they want to understand the whole story that's behind it and stuff, we will have a PDF. It's on the QR code on the instruction card, so you can just scan it, and it's going to bring up a whole rural documentation story and character bios and all sorts of stuff. So D&D people who specifically really want to get into that, too. Perfect. All that background is there. I love it. I love it. And then I had a lot of personal questions. We kind of talked about it, and you answered them in your intro to the game that you did for us. But the gelatinous cube, I saw that the ball was locked on top on the magnet and also on the bottom. That's one magnet that's in the bottom of that cube, so it actually grabs the ball from underneath and lifts it up. I saw that happen. Yeah, exactly. And then I was thinking, okay, ball gets on the magnet. I want to hit it off the magnet and start a multiball. But you have a choice, right? Yep. Once two balls are locked on either side of the magnet, you can put one more behind it on the bottom, and then when you hit the other one on top, you get a four-ball multiball. Right. Is that right? It's pretty close. Okay. So if you have one locked on the top and one on the bottom, then you have a choice. Do I want to go up the left orbit, up down ramp to the gelatinous cube, or do I want to shoot under it? And that's really a player choice. Okay. It might be a little easier to shoot under it, I think, but it's really up to the player. So if you shoot under it, it's a three-ball multiball, and if you shoot up the ramp and go through the cube, it's a four-ball. Oh, okay, perfect. Now, if you don't do anything, let's say you're flailing around and you can't hit either of those shots, it will time out and just start a two-ball multiball. So you do have a limited time to start the three-ball. Okay, so that's a fun way to give yourself some options of two, three, and four-ball. Can I talk about multiball? I got the dragon multiball. Fantastic. And then you've done something a little different with this one. Rather than give a timed ball save, it's almost like you have balls just keep coming. They come like crazy. And you have basically you have to get enough shots on the dragon to complete the mode before you end up draining more of them. And I think it was like 15 balls would have to drain to end the mode or I'd have to hit the dragon about six times or something, five or six times. Right, yeah, we're still tuning what those values would be. And it's a little easy right now because of the CES and stuff. We want people to be able to see it. But that's exactly it. It is a very different mode for pinball, but I really wanted it to feel like a battle in that intensity. That's what you get from all the balls. Your goal is to try to get his goal underneath or try to hit him X number of times. Because his goal is to drain as many balls as I can on this person, and I'm trying to hit him as many times to stop him. It really does feel like a fun challenge. There's going to be different battles all throughout the campaign. As you finish one, we're going to save where you're at and do more battles. and we have a lot of variety with how we can move the dragon and how he shoots and where he shoots. So it's going to keep that interesting, too, as you go. That's fun. Now, I am a simple man, and I enjoy simple pleasures. And so seeing, like, eight balls bouncing around between me and the dragon was fantastic. As they would drain, more would shoot out of his mouth, I think, on the premium. And then I hit the shield and just I waited a second, let all my balls gather around the shield on the flippers. Then I was able to monkey flip both flippers and just shotgun the entire field. And that alone was fun for me. I want to do that more, let alone if I beat the dragon or not. I just want to do that. Shotgun, boom. Right. Yeah. The shield is kind of turned into a number of different fun things that we didn't even realize making it, things like you just said. Yeah. And you can let the ball rest on the sides of it, and sometimes you tap it just right, it'll make a shot for you too. That's fun. Yeah. It's not just a simple up post that's there to try to bounce balls off of. Yeah. So that was fun. I'm having a lot of fun with this game. I want to get back on it. I played the premium, played the pro. I do like the movement on the dragon. So eventually when I drag one of these things into my home, it's going to be premium for sure. I need that dragon movement. It was so smooth. Yeah, it's a fun toy. Yeah. And it's hard to go back. But the pro is still fun, too. I think it will be a great location game, too. Yeah, yeah. We're having a heck of a time on them. Well, great, man. Thanks for coming by. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for all the information. Thanks for inviting us on over here. I'm going to get back and put another couple balls through this game. All right. That's awesome. Well, thanks for coming out. It's awesome to have you here. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks. We're being attacked by a gelatinous cube Matt Mercer, our narrator Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske Elizabeth Gieske, damn, I was practicing at home too 50-50 Oh man, so rules and or code are extraordinary I was trying to differentiate this Of course, we all fell in love with you With your involvement with JAWS It was just awesome And then what I was trying to do was I'm trying to be accurate And rules and code seem to be synonymous for me Because I don't do either one of those So I want to kind of tease it out because I don't want to misidentify you. No, we wouldn't want that. Yeah. So when I was asking you earlier, you said that you were on rules but also code is part of it too. Yeah. So when someone says software, I'm always interested in what they mean by that. They're like, oh, this, you know, the code. Let's say that. It's like the code feels earlier. Like the code is really good. And I'm like, okay, what do you, for you, what does that mean? Because for some people that means rule sets. Other people that means light shows. other people it means speech and call outs and music and sound effects other people it's score balancing, scoring other people it's like are there challenge modes and they're all right, they're all code and that's everything I just said is my part in this game ok perfect, because as a lay person when I think code I'm thinking actually sitting down there and banging out lines like 10 go to 20 and 20 go to hello world or whatever physically that's what it is but as an end user Like, my inputs of all those lines of code, the output is the lights that are turning on, the scoring that's happening, and all of that stuff. Okay, perfect. Do you start going through rules and just get everything you want in the game, and then you go into coding? Or do you think, okay, down the road I have to program this, so maybe let's not be too enthusiastic. Let's tone this down a little bit and make it easier to translate. Yeah, I do. I like to push myself. and sometimes I write a rule because I want to learn a new thing in the game. So that might entice me to do a certain thing. And that's what, on Jaws, the shark is broken mode, was mostly because I wanted to learn how to operate the coils and flip the flippers and make weird things happen in the game. Yeah. I thought that would be funny. So that's a topper mode for Jaws. And same with this one. I really wanted to focus on lamp effects. I didn't do as many light shows in Jaws, so I wanted in Dungeons & Dragons to have more of an input on the light shows. So some of the rules, you might want to notice some of the light effects that are happening because the rule of how the mode works is dictated by the light show. I'm a sucker for some light shows. And initially I was thinking, man, this would have been a great game for the expression lighting. Because I'm thinking a dragon, I want to see fire going across the field. But actually playing it, there's a lot that's in there between the flashers Flashers and the GI lighting and then what's going on with the play field. But even little things like there's a red LED that's inside that cave that's backlighting the dragon. So it's like the whole cave is just glowing and it's breathing red. And his mouth too. His mouth has a light. And we're going to flicker that light when he's talking so it feels like he's really speaking. I was reading through the feature sheet and I saw that it said light up eyes on dragon. But looking at him it got a lot more than just that You know it just the LEDs and the lights Yeah that bastard of a dragon He something He something else I dig that So a game like this you know were you I guess Dwight was leading it too Do you divide up duties? Are you kind of working together on them? Yeah. Different for every game with Dwight. Dwight has kind of a master plan of where he wants the game to go to. So, with this one, it's very story-driven. So, like, we have the whole story. And when I joined the team, he's like, you're going to focus on modes, and you're going to fill in all the modes. So he provided me with a story of like, okay, this mode we're trying to rescue the miners, and we're in this mining town, and there's this monster that's attacking the miners. So write a mode that that's what happens. So then I'm like, okay, how do I translate that to pinball? How do you translate a story to things on a play field happening? So the miners are roving around. The monster is really big. He takes up multiple shots. so we can kind of play around with what's happening in the story by having it in the play field. My favorite rule, actually. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I was freaking out when he was like, you're in my favorite mode. And I still need to balance it, but it's the stealth missions. Sometimes you want to be sneaky and you're trying to shoot the shots. And what breaks stealth? Noise. If you're making a lot of noise, then they're going to find you. and so I translated that to pinball. If you hit the slings, which on this game is the loudest thing on the play field. You're making a racket. You're making a racket and like the speech call outs, it's like, oh, he stepped on my foot and oh, you're making too much noise. And if you hit enough slings, then you are found out and the guards appear and you're unable to shoot the shots because all the guards are blocking him. Can I just say like I love when, you know, I'm playing a game and I'm kind of lost in it and then I can hear a call out that's telling me what to do. I don't have to take my vision off the play field and look at the back glass or the LCD and see what I'm doing. So any little chance you can have to put a little call-out in there to tell me what to do or what to stay away from, I love that. Oh, for sure. And I think I learned that on this game. Again, my history is Jaws. Jaws doesn't have a lot of call-outs. You know, there's maybe 300 lines. This one has 11,000 speech lines. Kill it. Kill it. Shoot it now. That one's so great. Oh, I get chills just thinking about that. But this one is more descriptive and more story-oriented, but also personality and all this stuff. So I spent the last three weeks just trying to get as much speech into the game that makes sense and give that context to the player. Yes. Like, you know, shoot this shot or avoid the slings. Or, you know, you're almost there. One shot left. This sort of thing because audio does play such a great role, especially in this game. And I love the idea of a stealth mode, too, because when I'm playing pinball, usually the goal is hit all the things as much as you can. So whenever it's like, no, wait now, don't hit those things, but try to hit this one. I love that. Apparently I'm having a streak of writing modes that are bad for multiball. Oh, that would be terrible for multiball, yeah. I think that's my goal now is just to write single ball modes that you don't want to be in multiball with. This is fun. I saw there was a mode selection screen that came up, but I haven't quite got to that yet. But I saw you run over and you're like, ooh, pick the purple one, pick the purple one. You're getting so excited. That one was the stealth mode. Okay. Yeah, I wanted them. Because again, no one pays attention to how many slings you hit during a mode. So I'm kind of like watching videos, but I'm like, it's a different play field. So you might be hitting slings more often on certain games than others. True. So I'm trying to figure out how many slings should it take for someone to fail and be found by the guards or whatever. So I'm taking notes. So far it's like three, and I'm like, oh, these players are pretty good. I might have to scale it. I don't know. So for launch, I know, like, obviously the goal is to have the code as complete as possible by launch. But do you give yourself, like, a through line? Like, try to have a path, like, through 80% of the game at least and then pad on to that as it goes? Or are you looking more at just loading that first 20% that most people are going to get to in the game by launch? Yeah, it's definitely the first 20%. And that, even that, like, we talk about the first 10 minutes of pinball. Like, make the first 10 minutes really fun. Wait, people can play for 10 minutes? Yeah, right, right. But this was, I've heard this line a lot at Stern. Now, it's tricky for this game. Dungeons & Dragons, you can kind of decide what your first ten minutes is by jumping around the map, whatever. So that first quote-unquote ten minutes is hard to translate in a Dungeons & Dragons game because it's so loose with the player choice and where you can go. So I think we covered all the bases. No matter what you choose, and if you play ten minutes, you're going to have a great grand time. I haven't seen anyone here get even almost close to getting to the end of the code. Okay. Yeah, you definitely won if you're watching me play. But I was having fun. I love that multiball start. I want to get in there and try to do some of the modes. I've got to go get into the dungeon and do some of that. Oh, yeah, the dungeon crawls? Yeah. So are you splitting your time between still polishing some stuff up on Jaws and then over on this game, or are you looking at, you know, how's your workflow? Yeah, when I, it was, I left Jaws in July, halfway through July, I finished the Broken Shark mode and then scurried on over to Dwight, who was like, you need to be on rope. That's our code word for this game. Grab some rope. Yeah, so as soon as I started working on D&D, though, I stopped working on Jaws. I haven't had any input on it since working on D&D. And I'll be on this game for a little bit longer, similar to Jaws, and then I'll move on to the next one. Perfect. Yeah. You liking what you do? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a lot. It's so much work. But I wouldn't be here if I didn't love pinball. Perfect. And, yeah, it's like the people that work at Stern work a lot, work really hard, and we're all adamant on making the best thing possible. so it's every little like every time someone picks up on something that I put in that was like just a little like no one asked me to do this I just did it because I wanted to and someone's like man that's a cool feature right there I'm like oh my gosh thank you so much yes please and that just drives my motivation forward like someone mentioned a call out I put on Jaws and I was like yeah I did that and it was so intentional and you noticed thank you it's during Bounty Hunt Multiball and the second to last shot at the shark, it will play the sound bite, he's under the boat, I think he's under the boat, something like that. And that signals to you as a player, like, ding, ding, ding, this is going to be the last shot. To hit one more green shot at shark, you beat the mode. Love it. But that sound bite is the same one every time, so you can kind of learn, like, this is the progress. And what we were talking about, audio cues, you don't have to look up, you don't have to read. You know, I'm like, I almost have this mode beat, and immediately my heart gets pumping faster. So I read that on Pinside, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to keep doing that. So I put it in this game, too. Well, I'm glad you're having such a great time because we want to keep you around, for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tell my boss. Say, hey, Elizabeth's good. She's cool. Keep her around. That'd be great. Yeah. And it's Elizabeth. Don't abbreviate it. Don't shorten it. Oh, yeah. Thank you. I pay attention. All right. Appreciate it. Yes, Elizabeth. That is my name. Thank you. Well, thanks so much. I'm going to go jump back on there. Yeah, yeah. Go play. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Well, hey, I think I'll sit down here with Mr. George Gomez. Thanks for coming in here, buddy. Hey, Don. Yeah. I'm digging this game. I know we just talked a couple minutes. Thought I would get a couple of minutes down on record here. Yep. Yeah, game's fun, man. Congratulations to the team. Thanks. These guys have been jamming. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's been a labor of love for Dwight. You know, he's been a huge D&D guy. Dungeon master for his D&D crew. and all that. I mean, it's coming through the way he talks about the game. He walked us through all the rules that are in it already. Yeah, he knows his stuff so well he'll put you right to sleep. Yeah, no, perfect. And it's, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if I'm a big... Like, I never really played... Culturally, I was aware of D&D, but I was never into the tabletop role-playing. Right, right. But, like, I dig this progression, replay value in games. I know I talked about that at home. Like, I love that. I played a ton of role-playing games based on D&D rules, you know, for computer systems and things. So, yeah, this is, like, speaking right to me. It's a perfect blend of, like, the video game things that I like and the rules that I like and the pinball that I like. Yeah, I think refreshing the game on a weekly basis is going to make a huge difference to people. And I think you're going to see that on a lot more games moving forward. Perfect. And so, you know, the pin save stuff and all that stuff will migrate into some of the other games. I mean, the level progression makes it such that even if I have a bad game, at least I accomplish something, building towards a bigger goal. Yeah, I mean, look, there's so much in this game, right? There's beyond the content of the game, all of that sort of stuff, all the stuff that extends how you play, is going to make a big difference to people. They don't even know what difference it's going to make, but I can guarantee you that when people get into it, it's going to become a thing. Yeah. Perfect. And I'm already seeing, like, I know there's been this push, and I love it, to try to, you know, expand Pinball's reach beyond just those of us that already know everything about it. And even just, I mean, this game hasn't even been out for a week, it seems like. But I've already seen a lot of, you know, online YouTube videos of people from, like, the tabletop community that are talking about this game, too. Yeah, huge crossover. Yeah. Huge crossover. Right. When when we were first of all, you know, I mean, D&D is huge. Right. Which is one of the reasons we did it is because just just that it's so I mean, people have no idea how big it is. Yeah, it's enormous. And so we've gotten a lot of penetration. I was telling somebody, you know, my my LinkedIn page, I've got more impressions on the D&D post than I've ever had for anything. Wow. And it's not any different than a lot of the other stuff I post, right? So I think we've gotten a lot of interest out of the community, and that's what we want to do, right? We want to grow pinball. Yeah. The more we grow pinball, the more cool stuff we can do. I love cool stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's what drives it. I love gelatinous cubes. I like animatronic dragons. Yeah. That dragon was a tremendous amount of work. I could tell. The gelatinous cube looks way better in person than it did in photographs. I saw it from across the room when I walked in. Yeah, it was shocked. Yeah, it just glows, right? And, you know, when we do photography, a lot of times the illuminated stuff is hard to capture. So it's almost like, you know, I've had several comments from people on the gelatinous cube, and they're like, wow, that looks really cool. I was like, well, yeah, you saw the pictures. Yeah, it doesn't read in the pictures. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I did have a question. So this idea of doing a Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine, is this something that they reached out for? Is this something you guys reached out for? No, I think we reached out to them. You know, we have, I mean, they were all over it, but we reached out to them. We knew the D&D community was huge. We had a bunch of D&D interest within the building. Right. Dwight's been hosting his group long before we started working on the game. he would call me up and say, hey, I'm having a bunch of D&D guys over over an order of pizza and play D&D in one of the big conference rooms up front. And we're like, yeah, for sure. And, I mean, when you think about it, you guys make games. Not just the physical table and everything that's in it, but the gameplay elements too. Yeah, I mean, I think he's too modest to tell you, but he's an award-winning board game designer in addition to all this pinball work. Yeah, wow. So he's way into the whole RPG thing. And when he first started telling me about the game, because I'm not a D&D guy, when he started telling me about the game, I was like, I couldn't. My head is spinning. I couldn't keep. I'm like, I can't understand half the things you're saying, Dwight, but I get it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the play of the progression here is awesome. Now, we were talking a little bit earlier, too, about just a perennial favorite subject, which is accessories. Yeah. And I mentioned, like, I'm going to go home and just start printing out gelatinous cubes for my topper. And you mentioned. Yeah, I'm going to give you a little scoop. Oh, God, bring it. Yeah. So the topper for this game has a mimic, and it's got a two-stage mechanical action. It's pretty cool, along with, of course, some software stuff and some lights and all the usual stuff. But, yes, I mean, we're excited about it. And I just, because of the response that we've gotten to the game, I just met with everybody and said, you know, how do we move this accessory package up so that people don't have to wait forever for it? And we're going to try. We're doing. You know, we still owe accessories on a bunch of games, X-Men, WIC. And those are. We have a whole list. Yeah, yeah. And really, they're coming. Believe me, they're coming. Yeah, and just whatever you can do to add value into these accessories, too, just, like, makes us super happy at home. So the idea of, like, having movement in a topper that's interactive with the game, I love it. For the uninitiated, a mimic is a creature that looks like a treasure chest, and then you go to open it up and it turns into a chest full of teeth and tries to chomp your head. So that's awesome. There's a flat plastic on the play field on the left of a Mimic there. Yeah, and I'll tell you, so the story is we actually built it for the play field. Yeah. And then we had to make choices, you know, real world intrudes, right? Right, right. We're trying to hold costs. There's only so much space. Yeah, there's only so much space and complexity and development time, right? because it's not just the cost of putting something on the play field, but there's a bunch of costs associated with how many months are we going to spend coding that thing and working on making it cool and integrated into the game. So we said, you know what, we'll do something with it on the play field, and we'll do something simple there. We'll make the cool one on the topper, and, you know, that's what we did. I love it. Yeah, motion on topper, I'm always going to be a fan of that, and I love the light shows and the interactivity too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we want to do things with the accessories that are not easy to do for people. You know, we love the modders. We love the aftermarket, all that stuff. But we want to do stuff that is unique to us because we have complete control of our technology. Right. So, you know, but that's the intent. Yeah. I mean, I can 3D print the dragon and I can put LED strips in it and plug it in. but what I can't do is have it react one-on-one with the code of the game. It's a little harder. Yeah, and so that's part of what you're paying for with these things. Yeah, for sure. And I don't think I've seen a topper in person that I've been like, okay, I don't think I want that. Well, I'll tell you, there's some cool stuff coming. There's mechanical action in the WIC topper. There's mechanical action in the X-Men topper. Oh, my God. Be still my wallet. But, yeah, it's coming through. I love this idea of putting value in games. I know these things are expensive. I know inflation is an issue in supply chains, but having a 3D-sculpted gelatinous cube there that's transilluminated, having this dragon with two different stepper motors and three degrees of motion, and it's all fluid and smooth, and it's not just some flat plastics that are back there. I did want to ask, I'm sure you've done a lot of testing with this dragon, just throwing 10,000 balls into its jaw to make sure it's holding up. Yeah, yeah, we have. We've done, you know, we don't, like, a lot of times when we do stuff and if we have issues with it, it's not because we didn't test it. A lot of times, you know, it's like maybe something changed at the vendor or maybe when we screw up, it's because we designed the wrong test. Like, that's not how it's used or whatever, you know. But for the most part, everything always gets tested. Those things run 24-7, you know, until we destroy them. And so that gives us an indication of what's going to wear, how it's going to wear. We learn so much about the materials and the components that we select when we do that, that we, you know, we do it. Yeah, so, I mean, it's a dragon's complex. There's no question about it. It does a lot of things. Perfect. Yeah, at some point, I don't know if this is possible, but when you do start getting these on the line, And if you could do like a Factory Friday showing the inner workings of how this thing. We probably will. Yeah, like what's going on inside there. Yeah, we can do that. We can do that. I mean, it's like the thing, you know, it fires pinballs. It moves up and down. It tracks your, you know, it tracks. It basically tries to be alive on the play field so it looks around. It knows where the ball is. It knows what you're doing. You know, it's going to be even more interactive. We have a lot of the Michael Dorn voice is just not still in there yet. Oh, okay. We have more coming. I want so much more. Yeah. Yeah, we got more coming. So it's like all of that stuff, you know, the eyes light up, the thing. It just does so much. You can hit it. The jaw will sense hits from any direction. Okay. You know, so it's really kind of cool. Come here, tasty traveler. I'm never getting rid of that sound bite. That's right. Yeah, typically between the Pro and the Premium, there's like three things that are changed. This one, it looks superficially like you've got the dungeon and then the dragon is two. But the Dragon is, you know, the motion, the sensing. But then also there's a physical ball lock that's inside here. There's a ball delivery system. I had it shoot three fireballs at me. I brought my shield up, had all eight balls sitting against my flippers, and then just shotgunned them at the field. And that was super fun for me. Yeah, the Pro is a huge value on this game. I think so. Because, I mean, honestly, Mark Waynick called me into the office one day. We had the two games put together for the photo shoot. and it was sort of the first time that we saw him side by side and he said to me, he goes, what do you see different? And I was like, not a lot. He goes, yeah, that pro looks just like a premium. He said, that may be a problem. No, I think this is a perfect trend, you know, because it means like, you know, no matter which one you pick, there's going to be value that's in there. You know, you've lowered the number of limited editions, you know, under 800 now, so that bakes in some value. Yeah, we've been sensitive to what people have been saying. They want to make sure that they buying something really special And that means you know that means reducing the number of LEs And also you know I mean look the world is different right Inflation has affected everybody. Right. And so it's like, and we've been trying really hard to hold the line on price. All the speculation, by the way, about, you know, whatever price raise is coming, I think people are going to be, like, pleasantly surprised. Oh, I love that. Yeah. A lot of that is probably something we're manifesting more than anything. But I'm glad you're receptive to the feedback. I don't see this as a zero-sum game, right? Like, whenever Stern does good, we do poor. When we do well, Stern does poor. I think there's room for both of us to have aligned goals here. We just want to make the best games that we can make. We don't have any... We want to grow pinball and make the best games we can make. And we are the customers, right? I mean, every guy in product development, you know, we buy the games with our own money. We pay a little bit less than you guys do, but not a lot less. Sure. And, you know, I mean, it's like we buy them, we collect them, we mod them. You know, there's certain people in the studio that compete. Other people just collect. You know, everybody is engaged and participates in the hobby. So the last thing we want to do is break it for ourselves. Right, yeah. Yeah, I get that sense, too. And I like that you're receptive to what our concerns are, too. And so I've just been seeing games on an upward trend of getting better, more complexity where it counts. We're trying. I mean, we love making them. I mean, if you can't tell. Everybody I've talked to so far, yeah. Yeah. So this is – I love having you guys in here because I think you get to see what we're about. Yeah. And you get to see the games. and touch them and feel them. I mean, this is exciting. This is a great party. I love it, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to hit the chips and dip. I'm going to get back in the game, and then I'm going to drain this Diet Coke and then just rinse, repeat. Awesome. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. All right, thanks. Talk to you later. So hanging out here in the CERN lounge, man, is this life? This is so cool. I dig the game. I dig the shots. I dig my buddy Retro Ralph, who is here on the microphone. Dude, what do you think? Dude, this game is awesome. Dude, honestly, I know everyone's going to say that we were here, and it's this magical thing. Did you get your shield check? The shield check? Shield check. Oh, shield check. Yes, I did. So I'm prepared to say some really nice... I thought you said shield because of the shield in the game. No, no, the shield's great. No, man, you know, here's the thing. Here's what I was worried about, Don. Yeah. I'm not a Dungeons & Dragons player. Are you? No. Well, I mean, like, culturally I'm aware of the hits, you know, the high points. You don't, like, spend a large majority of your life playing Dungeons & Dragons, right? No, no. This is true. And this is what I was nervous about. I'm like, okay, it's Dungeons & Dragons. That's not something I'm necessarily, like, super nostalgic for or anything. But I really am enjoying it, and I feel like you could appreciate this game if you're really into Dungeons & Dragons, but you could appreciate it and have fun with it if you don't even have any, like, memories or care, really, about Dungeons & Dragons. So, correct me if I'm wrong. This is a pinball machine, which we agree we're interested in. Yeah, but Don, you realize that everyone, the world believes that you and I would just buy anything, no matter what it is, if it has two flippers and balls in it. Yeah. So we have that working against us. We are Dons or Don Juniors here. But this is a medieval-themed fantasy game. I'm Don Light. Black calories must be that, yeah. But like a medieval-themed fantasy adventure game. So it's got the Dungeons & Dragons livery on it. Okay, big deal. It could just be Dragon Pinball, and I would be as interested into it. You know, it draws on a lot of the cool source art, which, I mean, there's piles of it. There's books full of it. Why not? It looks great. I'm having fun. I still don't have much of an idea of what I'm doing, but I know how to start multiballs. I know how to get into the dungeon. And for that, I'm thankful. Yeah, and you know what? You got a chance to talk to Elizabeth for a little while, right? Yes. And she wrote a little bit of the code in some of the game. First of all, she's super awesome. She's super awesome. And you know she wrote The Shark is Broken for Jaws, too. Yeah, so she's awesome. Let's just say she's awesome. But she was standing next to me when I was playing, and she's been looking at all of us the whole time just to see what things we like and don't like and whatever. And she was giving me some tips, but even without the tips, the tips were helpful. I'm having fun with this. I'm having a good time playing it. Yeah. And the dragon on the – I don't know if you talked about your kind of deconstructed the Pro Premium Limited. No, not really, not yet. I feel like people could have fun with the Pro. It lacks a couple things with the Dragon and the Dungeon Crawl thing, but I don't know. It's still pretty cool. I would say I would go in for the Premium for sure. I like the full-featured game. I don't know a way around it. I would miss that Dungeon Scoop thing that pops up. It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. We were convincing ourselves on the couch. I was talking to Jamie over at Wormhole. I was like, we could totally do the Pro. And then he's like, that Dungeon Crawl thing is pretty cool. I'm like, yeah. He's like, Dragon's pretty cool. I'm like, yeah. It's a simple thing, but it's fun when it pops up. And, like, just the degrees of freedom with the Dragon is fun for me. But at the same time, I think the Pro is pretty fully featured. It is. Yeah. Especially, you know, for the price. Like, you know, LE is going to be twice the cost of the Pro. So, you know, I don't think you're getting twice as much gameplay. No. No. I think that, you know, a lot of games you either want to go Pro or, like, LE so you get the expression lights and all that business. This one I think I could do a premium and build it and come in for, you know, still cheaper than an LE and approach that look pretty close. Yeah, I think so. I think, especially with custom laser cut armor. Yeah, yeah, you have so many things you could do to just, like, kind of make it more LE-ish. Employ my powder coater. Yeah. Just start printing gelatinous cubes for the topper. Do you do your own powder coating? You don't do your own powder coating. No. That was cost prohibitive. I mean, because you need, like, an oven and stuff, don't you? So it's not just the oven, but like, you know, because you can source ovens of $1,500, $2,000 because it's got to be at least four feet so you can do the armor. But the problem is... You seem like you might have thought about this. The problem is you need a sandblasting setup to clean your parts, to get professional look, and to run the sandblasting appropriately, you also need like a $2,000 air compressor, like a really good high cubic feet per minute, not something Harbor Freight, not something even at Home Depot. And that's where I stopped. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to invest $10,000 in this home powder coating setup, and I'm still not going to get professional results. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so I was close. Now, if you're powder coating small parts, you can use just like an electric oven. You can spray them down. You can get the Harbor Freight sandblasting cabinet, and you can make that work. But for doing what I'm trying to do with pinball and, like, powder, you know, sandblasting a coin door, forget it, man. Do you have a place nearby? So, like, I have a guy that's right down the street from me that does it. Yeah. I don't know what, you probably do, right? I do. Point Coding in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Yeah, it's 20 minutes away. So I'm going to tell, shoot, because I want to know what you pay for powder coating. About $15 a part. Okay, but like for a whole set. Well, not more than $200. Oh, son of a bitch. Yeah, I know. That's actually a really good price. Part of that may be because they don't know their value, and I'm trying to just keep it like that. Because I've paid, when I first started, I paid like $500 to have a whole game powder coated, and I don't think that included the coin door. Now I can do everything coin door included for like, yeah, under $200. Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, the guy that buy me is like $350. Now I'm buying the powder too. Not that powder is $20 a pound, so that's terrible. And one pound will technically do a machine if you're doing coin door and speaker panel. I get two just so I have some extra. And then they can lay it down a little heavier if they need to. But, yeah, that's been kind of what I've been doing and getting away with it. What do you think, Don, not to like shift back to the game real quick, but what's your favorite part of this game so far? I mean, we've been here for what, like a couple hours, maybe three hours? Yeah, yeah. So you've got some time on it. I mean, hitting those ramps is fun. It's like a clean shot up there. These feel like medium ramps, right? They're not tight, and they're not like super wide open, like that Avengers ramp shot, which is just like a mile wide. But every shot feels fair. Nothing felt too tight. This feels like a game where once you get the shots dialed in, even I could combo shots and hit what I want to hit. Yeah. I also think that little, that right flipper, if you can, like, get it coming out of that gelatinous cube. Oh, the upper flipper. That's kind of a fun shot that kind of winds around. That's kind of a cool shot. That is a fun shot, yeah. Like, when you hit it, it's very, like, you get happy. You're talking about the rush shot? Yeah, like, you're happy when it happens. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it comes right around. I liked it the first time when it was on rush. This game is just labyrinth. No, I'm kidding. No. No, there's, I was trying to say, there's one other thing about it. We actually have the spec sheets right in front of us. Oh, perfect. So I can look at it because I need to refresh my memory. I was talking to Elizabeth, and she was talking about the lights and the dragon. And the plan is because the mouth is lit, the cave is lit, but when the dragon's talking, when Worf is talking to me, they're going to start putting light shows in the mouth when there's words. Oh, that's cool. Okay, no, she didn't tell me that. Then it'll just go to solid when it's ready. Yeah, so that's a lot planned for this. Yeah. What a fun game to have at home and just play through a ton of times. I think so, too. The one thing, my only thing so far that I haven't liked, and Elizabeth's telling me I should go talk to Dwight, and I don't know if you notice this, the shield is a quick hit in the action button. You have to, like, quickly hit it. Oh. Like, fast. If you don't hit it fast, if you just hold it, your shield doesn't come up. Oh, maybe that's why. Some people have been saying there's, like, a delay with it. And maybe that's why. You have to do this, like, very fast, almost like a tap, like a tiggity tap. I know, like, okay, the funnest thing for me, Dragon Multiball, you get all those balls out there, hit the shield, let it load on the flippers, and then just boom. You feel like a complete badass. Yeah, it's like the spread shot in Contra. Yes, yes, that's actually awesome. Yes, it is. Oh, my gosh, that's like the perfect, for those of you that have never, I mean, I don't know who would be listening to this who's never played Contra. The spread gun is like, well, yeah. You can like, you just, but you're a badass. I feel like when you're playing, you're like, oh, yeah, dragon? You want to mess with me? Let's do it. You put your shield up and you're like, let's go. Spread, spread ass. Spread ass? No, no, not spread shot. Not spread ass. No. I don't, poor dragon. That's a different game. Although you said people, when I got the celebration thing, you said people in the town were celebrating in some very interesting ways. I did not see any of that on the LCD. That does not sound like something I would allude to. Fictional characters fornicating on a pinball machine. It was very inappropriate. I don't think Dwight would code that in. Well, that does sound like something I would say. Maybe it's the Easter egg. I don't know. Game's fun. I don't know. It's always hard because I've just played it. Of course I'm hype on it. I love playing new pinball. How am I going to feel about this in three weeks? How would I feel about this if I had a deposit in on one after a couple weeks? That's what I'll just have to wait and see. I feel like this is a super mature thing you just said. Oh, my God. Growth. Personal growth. I will say, though, there have been games that I get super hype, and then I bring them home, and it's a little different. Like sometimes different better and sometimes different worse. Right, yeah. Yeah, I know. I get that feeling, that sensation. And I've been there before where you put the deposit in, and then six months later when they're ready to deliver and you've got to pay the rest of the 80%, you're like, oh, God, why did I do this? I haven't been in that position too many times. The only one that I did that with was Stranger Things, but I really like that game. I love Stranger Things. You don't have it anymore, though, right? I do. I can't get rid of it. It's my daughter's favorite game. Yeah, that's a pretty good reason to keep it. Yeah, that's good. Scooby-Doo just went out. I didn't think that would happen, but that happened. You sold it? Sold it. Why? Well, I got Evil Dead coming in. I love it. I've had it for a year. I've played the hell out of it, and it's just like I wasn't playing it as much as Looney Tunes or TCM and some of the other things. So I was like, you know what? I can get this onto a new home. And here's the other thing. I could get it back for what I paid for it just about. Yeah. So if I need to down the road get it back, I can go find one. Yeah, that's a good call. So whenever I sell a game, I always look at what the cost to replace it if I need to. Like, oh, no, I made a mistake. I could go out and get one, right? Yeah, there's a lot of talk lately about the cost of games. Yeah. I don't know how the market's really going to go. See, I think, you know, now that we're a couple years out from the big COVID surge, a lot of us have game rooms now. And so it's like we don't really need another game. And if we do, it's starting to eat up floor space. So it's like I can kind of slow down a bit, let three games come out, and then pick from those which one I would want to have next. Rather than I want to get this one, then this one. Are you in a position where your collection is so tight, though, that you need to get something out to bring something in? No, there's plenty of room. That's another problem. I could fit another ten games in. At some point, too, though, I have only five, seven, but I do feel like I have a manageable collection where I have variety. I feel like if I had too many, I might fall into that trap of I don't know what to play. Personally, I set ten as my limit. I think that's a good number. It's a pretty good number. It's a manageable number. Now I have 15. Oh, no, you do? I didn't know you had 15. Dude. 10 is my limit. You do have a problem. I know. This could be a session. Do you want it to be a therapy session? It probably should be. It probably should be. But if I'm Don Light, then that means that I'm going to be you soon. So my collection will go from 7 to 14 probably. Does that make me Don Dry? I don't know. Don Light is dry. Or Don Gold. I want to be Don Gold. Maybe you're Don Gold. Yeah. Yeah, you're Don Gold. I'm definitely not less filling. Oh, my God. Although, Don, I've got to tell you, did you lose some weight since I last saw you? I don't know, like 14 pounds or something. Don's looking good, guys. I know this is an audio-only podcast, and I don't want to make Don's flushing maybe a little bit, but he looks pretty damn good. Getting shredded. Yeah, he is. Yeah. Yeah. It's all the bench-pressing machines. Must be that. Something. It's all a pinball. Man, this is fun. Yeah, this is fun. Where are you going from here? Because I don't want to steal too much of your show time. I don't know. I've been awake all night at work, and then I drove down here. I've been doing this all day. It's almost 6 o'clock. I think there's pizza coming. It's almost 6 o'clock. Interium has a tournament starting in a half hour. Oh, shoot. Oh, no, wait. No, it's 7. 7. Are you going to do it, you think? I don't know. We'll see what happens here. I might just eat pizza, and then I don't know. Where's the after party? I ain't got to work tonight. So I heard some people wanted to go to Logan's, but I also heard some of the crew was interested in playing in the tournament. I wouldn't mind going over there. I'm interested in a hotel bed if I'm going to stay in the city. Yeah, you should probably think of that. I will say, though, man, Interium, the pitch of those games is extremely high. I don't know how often you've played there, but sometimes it's like, holy crap. Yeah, that Berrios barbecue challenge. Not just a sales challenge, but make it up the ramp challenge. Oh, yeah, I would imagine that game with a steep pitch. You missed out today, man. I know I can't, but did you tell the story already? No. Can you tell it now? All right. Because I only have a little bit of it, so tell me. So we were eating lunch. This is so off topic from Stern Pinball. So, yeah, a little message floated through my inbox that our good friend, Mr. David Fix, is no longer at American Pinball yet. Haven't had time to reach out to him. I'm sure he's really busy. But I thought, why don't we go by and pay a visit? So a bunch of us jumped in the car. We went over to American Pinball. But I did not go because I wanted to grab my stuff that I didn't use. Because you have a sense of dignity and respect. Me, I was panicked, and I wanted to go see my friends. So we popped over there, got an impromptu tour of the factory, may have played a new game again, and then, yeah, then we were over here. But I can't believe you went in. You told me at lunch, like, we're just going to go and take a picture in front of the sign. So early on in my youth and my young adulthood, I had opportunities that I didn't take the initiative, and then they passed me by. And I've had regret, you know. whether it's in life or love or whatever. And so I just kind of have a rule that I'm just going to try to push myself a little bit after that comfort zone towards a goal, and then we'll see what happens. And that's a shot my shot. And it worked. We walked right in the front door. Did you guys literally just, like, try to open it and go, oh, we're just going to see if it opens or what? It's not like Stern where it has a nice lobby and stuff like that, right? Now, they do have some nice marble floors and tiles and things in there. They used to have a receptionist. She was let go a while ago. So we let ourselves in and talked to some staff there. Had a good time. There are good people that are there. Happy to report, you know, I can't talk specifics about, you know, future game releases or anything, but there will be a future game release that is still on track, and it's going to be here sooner than we think. And you said you kind of like it. I do, yeah. That's awesome, man. All right, yeah. I really bummed that I didn't go. So for those of you listening, I didn't go because I was going to get my equipment, which I didn't use. I didn't use the equipment that I went to go get. You know what, though? You hang out with me, you get to do fun stuff. That's true. So just always remember, you know, air on the side of dawn. I feel like it would be, when are you going to get Cengiz to come out and do the American tour? Retro Jango. I've been trying to get him out here. I had a plus one available for this. Would he come out ever, you think? I don't know. I don't know. I might have to go out there and get him. Seriously. I just ran all the way out to Perth to go hang out with Ryan. He's coming out. But, yeah, we've got to get Retro Jango out of here, man. I feel like he would be so overwhelmed by the energy of this place. Donnie, this place is so amazing! He would. He'd be like, oh my God. Oh my God. He'd love it. We're stirring pinball. This is amazing. Look at all this fun stuff. Oh, my dear friend Retro Ralph is here. Where's the pizza? Where's the women? Yeah. No, I think he would dig it. There's really no women, but there's definitely going to be pizza. We are pinball. Come here, tasty traveler. Oh, man. Thank you, Worf. Man, I love this. I'm proud to fight alongside you. Did you rip him from the trailer? Absolutely. Look at this guy. We're being attacked by a gelatinous cube. I love the gelatinous freaking cube. I'm so glad they included it on this game. So, do you remember when people used to put food inside of Jell-O? Yes, 1970s. That's the original gelatinous. It wasn't in a form of a cube, but it kind of was. Like, the fruit and the vegetables were trapped. Vegetable ham cubes inside there? Yeah, food would be trapped inside of cubes. And, Bethany, does your cat like Jell-O? Come here, tasty traveler. Hi, Kerry Hardy. How are you doing? Yeah. I tagging in Kerry All right Get down here buddy This is so much fun Wait until we get the rest of the anecdotes And that's the second time I got crabs. Yeah. Welcome, sir. Oh, I think this might be the first time I've ever been on Don's Pinball Podcast. Welcome. Come here, tasty traveler. So I told the story earlier today where he was running, grabbing his equipment. We stopped by our good friends in North Palantino, Illinois, at American Pinball. We went ahead and let ourselves in there. Now, I am under restrictions from talking specifics, which is a luxury you do not enjoy. So we're a little more free here. But we were asked to, you know, as I live it. But that was fun, right? Yeah. See, I was telling Ralph, man, you hang out with Don, fun stuff happens. It was very unexpected, that's for damn sure. It was one of those, like, as it was going on, I'm like, Is this happening? Is this happening right now? Sometimes I torture myself. Like, it was so awkward, and I just wanted it to continue. I thought we were done, too. I'm like, okay, we got out of there. We could just get in the car, and then we got lured back in. This is what we thought we were done. They're like, come back in here. So, like, a lot of speculation is running, like, rampant right now, you know, especially with the new fixed situation that got suddenly revealed through Pinball News. But I think we can report with some specificity that the release of Game 7 is still on. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the thing is that I've been sharing stuff with my patron members, and it's been a yo-yo of information in regards to American Pinball and what's going on there with their employees, with David Fix. And it was one of those where I'm like, I'm being told this, and then I'm seeing that they're hiring, and I'm like, what is going on? I'm getting one information here, one information there, so what the hell? I try to temper that, you know, so when something comes out, I'll throw a text out and be like, hey, this is what's being said. You know, what's your response? And I know I'm going to get the corporate line. I'm not going to get reality. None of us know what the reality actually is. But at least kind of keep it within a nice little realm of somewhere between here and here and not just swinging wide one way or another. But, yeah, personnel change-ups. I guess we can say that for sure. And the game is still going to be released hopefully soon. I like how you had to laugh as you were saying it. But, yeah, we went in there, and they were like, hey, Carrie, you want to play our next game? And I'm like, yeah, sure. So I got to see it. I mean, even though I'm not under NDA. There was no one there to tell us not to. Yeah. So it was one of those where I'm like, sure. I mean, I would like to see if the next game has potential. And honestly, it does. This is always fun for me because, like, I'm not sure if it's just my own hype. Like, I love everything new, you know. But I was like, no, I think objectively this is a good time. And I like this direction. Where has this been? And so it's validating when somebody else plays, too, and can say, oh, yeah, you know, I actually think it's pretty good. Yeah, I literally got one and a half balls. I mean, I wanted to play more, but then we were, like, being summoned here to do the Stern stuff. None of this was planned. No, it was not planned. I could have played longer, and I'm like, man, I kind of want to because I want to do more exploring to see what all this game has in store for us. I know, you know, which booth I'm going to be walking by extra close at Texas Pinball Festival with my fingers crossed. And that's the thing. I've even asked him while we were there. I was like, so what is going on? I mean, we were kind of under the speculation that this was going to happen, and this is going to happen, especially due to the loss of David Fix that was reported merely a couple of hours ago. And he said, no, we'll be fine. Yeah. David just, you know, I'm like, okay. I mean, well, what is, I mean, are you going to be able to release? Yeah, they're pushing forward. They're going to be making, building, and releasing this next game. Yeah. We will never know what's actually real. We'll know that a game's released when it releases. That's the only way we'll know for sure. I know, you know, David Fix has been a friend. He's bought me food. He's always been cool to me. So, regardless, you know, I'm still friendly with the guy and wish him the best. I'm sure he'll make statements when he's comfortable. I don't want to push him right now. I'm sure he's busy, exit interviews and all that. And for the record, I did try to call you, David. I did. And you did not answer, but I think I know why now. There may have been a reason. I think I know why now. Yeah, yeah. So, he'll tell us in his own time. And in the meantime, we're going to continue to speculate and manifest destiny. It's like, okay, we can speculate, and we know, but the rumors are that the game is a particular source. And, you know, it's like, do we think that this game, even though we've played it and seen it, is this a game that we think is going to at least, like, help them? I mean, I don't think that one game can save anybody. And you have American that is so far behind. I don't think this game will be the game that will get them to go, hey, you know what, now we're winning. You know, I'm seeing a parallel here with these Dungeons & Dragons games and this topic. So this was a theme that was revealed, and expectations were pretty low. And then it came out, and it's pretty good. And so we're all elated now. So I think in a similar situation with American Pinball, expectations are low. And so we can all be pleasantly surprised. That's something that I know for, I can say for a fact, is that expectations are going to be low for their next game. And then they're going to play it and see and go, you know what? It's actually pretty damn good. Good a thing, you know? I think that from my experience with all their other games, I feel like this next game will be their best. Yeah. It's clearly my favorite that they've made. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I would consider ownership of this one. Yeah. I mean, we didn't get to see, like, the LE all lit up, but we did get to see the LE art. That was new for me. I hadn't seen that before. Yeah, I was like, ooh, that's a shiny kind of thing. But we were in, and then we were out. Racing down the freeway. I'm still laughing because you called me. You're like, we just played it. This is a day that I could not have seen how I was going to plan out the beginning of the day. I did not see it. We went there to literally just get a picture out in front of Ametron slash American Pen. Let's get a picture. Okay, we got a picture. Then Don's like, you want to go inside? I'm like, I don't think we can. I don't think it's a good idea. He walks up, and he opens the door. I'm like, oh, my God, I guess we're walking in. He starts talking. He's like, hey, where's David at? He acted like we had an appointment. Like, yeah, we're just here to chill. Is he here? Oh, we'll go see if he's here. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? I only wanted to see my friend. I'd heard some information, figured I was in the neighborhood. Pop on by. I was like, I'm pretty sure this is not going to go well. Nothing good can come of this. How can I get that Jaws topper out into my car without getting arrested? I literally think you could just pick it up and just leave with it. Yeah. I'll leave this equipment out here. No, no. I won't say that publicly just in case it happens. Fantastic. That's like catching an audio for, like, well, you said you would steal it, and it's gone. All right, this is Exhibit A right now. I'm joking. When I get caught on it, I was joking. This game's fun. So, as we'll say, are we getting thoughts and opinions currently on D&D yet? Is that what we're doing? I think so, yeah. Yeah. I like it. I think, yeah, people are saying, now they were saying, like, the pro is the one to get. I think there's a lot of fun to be had with the dungeon popping up, and the dragon is awesome. It comes down, blocks your shots, you know, does change up the gameplay. The movement is much more limited on the Pro than I thought. I thought it would, like, slowly lower down and pop up, but it's pretty much a brr, brr, brr, brr. For those audio listeners, I'm motioning with my hand up and down. But, yeah, still fun. Still a fun game. The code's cool. It's very deep. I don't know if I'll ever get through all of it. Yeah, that's the thing. I think this is definitely catered toward the home audience. This is, like, fruitcake depth, man. Yeah, because you're rich. You've got a lot of stuff that you could, like, crawl through, literally, I mean, through this code. And I still know very little about what I'm doing or where I'm supposed to be going. And then it comes up, it's like, all right, where do you want to go? I'm like, I don't know. What does this do? I mean, like, it's like, and it says, like, oh, accomplish two shots. I'm like, oh, two shots? I can do that. No. There's, like, towns. There's, like, kobolds. There's, like, all kinds of stuff. Rats. I did the dragon multiball. I did really well, played against some skilled players, and I still came out as the victor for that game, which was surprising, to say the least. How is the first mode not killing rats in the basement? Isn't that supposed to be how these games start? Yeah, you've got to start out small and work your way up. Look at Joel's shirt. It looks so awesome, man. He's always so sharply dressed. Triple drain, in effect. The thing is, unless you look closely, it's Dungeons & Dragons related. Oh, is it? I thought I was the only one. No, no, no. You had to go up there and actually examine it. He's so classy. It looks like it's from Nickelodeon or something, but no, it's actually a Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt. Baller. All right. Goals. Goals. But, no, I mean, as far as pro versus premium, my speculation so far is pretty on par, I'd say. I think both games you're definitely still getting the full experience. All the shots are there. You're just getting more with the premium. More fun stuff. Yeah, you got the dragon that, like I said, he still goes up and down. he blocks the shots on the pro, but I felt like he was doing more blocking on the premium. I think, and I don't want to give them any ideas or anything, but honestly, like if the gelatinous cube on the pro was just flat plastics, I don't think we would be surprised. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The dragon was a flat plastic. Yeah. I would, I would be like, yeah, that's par for the course. Or just like a static head that was up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, he doesn't move at all, but still on the pro, you're getting the up and down, which I'm like, okay, that's pretty cool. You're still getting the ability to bash him and he still can block the shots. But no, you get the full cube. You get the magnet that locks on the top and the bottom still. They're loading these pros up, man. Well, that's what I'm like. I'm like, man, if you think that the $3,000 for the premium versus the pro is worth it, then you do you. It's like me. The dragon spitting the balls out is damn cool, though. It's cool. It's like, man, that is damn cool. It's hard to deny the cool factor of it. Two extra balls. And when it comes down to just function, then the Pro is definitely a great choice. I think if you're deciding to go on this game at some point now or later, whichever version you think is right for you is going to be the right choice, and you'd be happy with it. I think if Pro is where your budget's at and it's where you want to go into, I think you're going to be very happy with this one. Same if you want to go in on Premium because you want the extra features, you don't want to go to the LE level, I think you'd be happy with it. And if you want to go LE, it looks beautiful. Art package, what's your favorite? I like the scene on the Pro with, like, the party there and the beholder guy. And then, of course, the LE is just dripping with all that foil that's playing around. The back glass looks best on the LE. Yeah, the LE back glass is my favorite. LE back glass on a Pro cabinet, but with the LE backbox art on the sides. I like those guys. It's like I like the premium cabinet with a LE back, the trans line. That's... Yeah. You know, I didn't like the premium art when I first saw it, like, in the videos and everything, but seeing it in person with the dragons, I think it's cool. I think it works. Yeah. I think some people have opinions on art, but it's one of those, this is for Dungeons & Dragons, this is iconic art. This is not like, oh, this is the new modern-day pinball art like you see from Yeti and Franchi and stuff. This is, like, this is Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah, and isn't it cool that they found someone, like, from that culture that does that art to do the package? I was talking to George Gomez earlier, and he said that they were actually the ones that reached out to D&D because of how popular it is. Because a lot of people here at Stern after hours will have, like, D&D parties. Really? Yeah. So, like, he's like, well, I got people here that are passionate about it. It's huge. And so let's try to make something out of it. And I think they merged the worlds of pinball and tabletop gaming in a compelling manner. God, I'm tired. It's getting there. But, yeah, I'm getting creeping up to where I'm going to have to get my flat going. I was actually just wrapping things up. Cool, man. Thanks for coming out. This is fun. No, I'm glad to hang out with you. It's thanks to you that I got to visit Inside American Pinball and everything. I can't wait for the video on YouTube for this. So make sure you're following Kerry Hardy on his YouTube channel. If you like all things pinball, please like and subscribe to this guy over here. Yeah. Did I say it right? Thank you very much, Eric. I'll catch you all later. Bye. Absolute legends, man. Thanks so much for taking time to sit down with me and go through my questions. I was taking a lot of questions from the Discord chat, and then I feel like we got them all answered there. So there you go, guys. Thanks for sending me the questions. Really appreciate it. I also had just about every one of my questions personally answered, either directly from them or through the gameplay. So, Don, are you buying one? Okay, now, I had made myself a promise at the beginning of the year that I wanted to avoid any new commitments to new in-box purchases for 2025. Now, that's a New Year's resolution. Those are good for about seven days, and then they seem to wear off. So, you know, I can't say with a high degree of certainty that I will hold to that. But that's where I'm trying to be at for right now. And the reason is, as I touched on a little before there, my game room is pretty full right now. Something's got to go. A couple things have to go before more comes in. You know, or I'm just going to run out of space to put these dang things. And I think, for me, that's fine. How do I feel about this game? I've been saying it on Discord since I left the factory and was playing the game even while I was playing it game is good game is probably even better than good I would say game is great I don't know what makes a great game that is kind of something different to everybody there's people out there that ABBA is their great game and they're enthusiastic about it and they can't believe why anybody would talk trash about it that game could be Star Trek from Stern Which is a great, good game. Better than good, I would say. You know, is it great? That all depends on the person. There's people that have purchased this game, basically almost sight unseen. People that have purchased this based off just the gameplay videos that we've gotten so far. And I think they're going to be super happy with it. The main thing I came away with this game was that, you know, whether you buy the Pro, whether you buy the Premium, whether you get the LE, or whether you don't, you're going to be happy with your decision. And I think that's good. I think that's good. I think there's been games that have been released that people was like, you know, if I had time to think about this or do it over again, probably I wouldn't have got this. There's also games that people have bought that they would say, you know, I wish I would have got this earlier. And so I think however you feel about this game is probably going to be right. You know, if you weren't really in on it initially, I think you'll be happy with that decision. If you were in and the pro was really the one you wanted to get, you've listened to everybody. I think there's strong arguments to be made that the pro is a fantastic machine and perfect. And I think if you bought that one, you'd probably be really happy with it. Likewise, if you went for premium, which is probably what I would do, I think you'd be really happy with that. You can come through with 10 reasons why you like that. And I think the articulating dragon is really fun. You know, standing there and looking at the limited motions of the pro versus, like, this wandering wharf dragon, yeah, like, it's awesome. Likewise, if you're in on an LE and you get it, I think you're going to be happy with it. It looks phenomenal. Like, the art looks great in person. foil. Looked like it was foil on the Art Blades 2, although I didn't spend a ton of time inspecting strictly that, mainly because I had a brand new game in front of me and I just wanted to play it. Backglass looks awesome in person. The mirroring is good. I'm not going to rate the top 10 mirroring and pinball backglasses. It's not number 10, but it's not number 1 either. It looks really good. I like the subtle sparkle effect in person. It just looks nice. You've seen this on Alvaro's Blood Red Kiss Edition with the sparkly, you know, fingernail polish kind of effect on the red lettering. So this has that on the Dungeons & Dragons logo. It has it on the Tyrant's Eye below it. It has it on the ampersand and the silver. And it's just a nice little finishing touch that you can't duplicate this. You know, even the people I know that can make mirrored back glasses can't duplicate this effect like this. So, yeah, it looks good. So if you get that version, I think you're going to be happy with it. If you get a premium, you'll be happy. If you get the pro, you'll be really happy. And if you decide not to get it, you're going to be happy with that decision too. If that makes sense. If that makes sense to everybody. Now, playing the game, all the shots felt accessible. I would say they're all, you know, moderate. They're not tight and they're not wide open. I'm thinking wide open like that ramp, that big wide ramp on Avengers that you can kind of hit just from anywhere. You know, so nothing was bricking. I was having a good time. I was able to hit just about every shot when I concentrated and wanted to hit it. Even that upper flipper shot felt good. There's a couple of different shots up there. You could actually get that pop-up dungeon from the upper flipper. That was fun. That was fun. Dragon was fun to play with, and I'm saying fun a lot. Now, I've only had about 10 plays on this game total, you know, so I haven't spent hours and hours going through. I'm not at game number 200 where I can really give a tight in-depth, you know, okay, where does this game finally rank? But as far as first impressions, the game's fun, and I really want to play it again. So thanks so much for the folks at Stern for allowing us to come in there. Thank you for sitting through my Jerry Springer final thoughts here at the end. Now, while I was at the factory, I did pick up a handful of flyers on this game. So if you'd like to have a commemorative flyer, I've got pro premiums and LEs available. I'll go ahead and throw them in with any new and bogged Don's Pinball Podcast purchase. If you want a t-shirt, if you just want a $5 sticker pack, I'll send you a flyer. Just email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com, and we'll work something out, and I'll get it to you. If you want one of the mods for my mod bucket, yeah, I'll get one of those out to you too, as well as a flyer on this game. Get it before you can grab one at Expo, and I'll get it out to you. Suitable for framing, I guess. Put it on your refrigerator, fold it up into an airplane, and fly it around your room and scare your cat. You do you, man. All right, thanks, everybody. Oh, man, yesterday was completely nuts. I'll have a complete breakdown of everything that went on, as well as other factories I may have visited while I was in the Chicago area. Over on the Patreon, patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast, $5 gets you in the door, $10 gets you more. $20, and it's you I will adore. Man, that really, that was awesome. Sometimes I just bring it extemporaneously. All right, thanks, everybody. Later.