Stern Pinball's Dungeons and Dragons: I Played It...

Cary Hardy·video·15m 30s·analyzed·Jan 11, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Cary Hardy reviews D&D pinball positively, calling it Eddy's best recent work with engaging exploration-based code.

Summary

Cary Hardy provides a hands-on first impressions review of Stern Pinball's Dungeons & Dragons after playing it at Stern's headquarters. He praises the layout and dragon mechanic as Brian Eddy's best work since returning to pinball design, highlights Dwight Sullivan's deep ruleset focused on exploration and replayability, and recommends the Pro model for value. Hardy notes the game is approachable but requires play time to fully appreciate the branching code design, and encourages players to try before buying given the niche appeal of its journey-based mechanics.

Key Claims

This is Brian Eddy's best game since returning to pinball
high confidence · Hardy explicitly states 'Congrats Brian this is your best since coming back to pinball' after analyzing layout and dragon mechanic
Dwight Sullivan states this is his deepest rule set ever
high confidence · Hardy reports 'Dwight has stated that this is his deepest rule set ever' and notes Sullivan co-wrote the game's story
The game changes every seven days with randomized dungeons, built into code without requiring Stern intervention
high confidence · Hardy explains the weekly randomization system: 'the game will change every seven days...it's basically just going to take things that you know and put them in a different orientation...This is built into the code'
The Pro model retains most premium features including moving dragon and fully lit gelatinous cube
high confidence · Hardy notes unexpected feature retention: 'I was expecting the pro model to have a static dragon head...it still moves up and down...I was expecting the gelatinous cube to be a flat plastic but no it's still a fully lit like cube'
Hardy achieved a high score of approximately 4.5 billion during play testing
high confidence · Hardy states 'I personally got a really decent score...I had a high score of like 4.5 billion' but notes this may not be reliable as scoring is still being tuned
The game is built for home buyers but will benefit locations through high replayability
high confidence · Hardy: 'that's why I feel like this game was marketed towards the home buyers...But it's not to say that locations won't benefit from this, because it's going to give this game a high replayability rate'
Elizabeth Gieske is assisting with coding and gathered feedback during Hardy's play session
high confidence · Hardy credits 'Elizabeth Gieske...She was there even assisting me while I was playing and taking notes of things that need to be changed or updated'
Code is currently at version 0.80 to 0.82 with issues like ball searching and ball getting stuck under the dragon still being worked out

Notable Quotes

“Congrats Brian this is your best since coming back to pinball. I mean you ditched the fan layout and gave us something with a little bit variety to it”
Cary Hardy@ 1:38 — Strong validation of Brian Eddy's design work after previous game (Venom) that Hardy disliked
“This is supposed to be a journey. A game of exploration. I mean, like taking different routes within the code to get a different result because of the decisions that you made along the way.”
Cary Hardy@ 5:55 — Articulates the core design philosophy of the ruleset—branching narrative paths rather than linear progression
“I just don't want to pay for it. Now, I recommend everyone give this game a fair try”
Cary Hardy@ 11:19 — Summarizes Hardy's position on Premium vs Pro pricing: value argument for Pro despite acknowledging Premium features are desirable
“I'm not like dreading to play this game like I was on brian eddy's previous game i just have no interest in playing Venom again. Whereas this one, I do want to go into this world and play some more of it.”
Cary Hardy@ 15:03 — Direct contrast between D&D and Venom, indicating meaningful improvement in engagement and long-term appeal
“I kind of wish that their manual or their book for this particular game looked like a Dungeon Dragons manual book.”
Cary Hardy@ 12:11 — Constructive feedback on theming opportunity; suggests community may create custom manuals
“There is a mimic chest to replace that flat plastic that is on the Premium and the Pro. That is a missed opportunity right there.”

Entities

Cary Hardyperson Brian Eddyperson Dwight Sullivanperson Elizabeth Gieskeperson Jerry ThompsonpersonStern PinballcompanyDungeons & Dragonsgame

Signals

?
community_signal: Stern is actively gathering feedback during pre-release play sessions; Elizabeth Gieske documenting issues in real-time for code updates
high · Hardy: 'Elizabeth Gieske...She was there even assisting me while I was playing and taking notes of things that need to be changed or updated'
?
competitive_signal: Game approachable for casual players but requires extended play time to master shot selection and understand branching code paths; positioned for home buyers primarily
high · Hardy: 'The game is very approachable...it seemed to be a bit of a long player after we got some of the shots down...this game was marketed towards the home buyers'
?
design_philosophy: D&D emphasizes non-linear exploration with player choice determining outcomes; weekly randomization ensures replayability without server dependency; designed as continuous experience unlike John Wick contracts model
high · Hardy explains: 'This is supposed to be a journey...taking different routes...different result because of the decisions that you made...game will change every seven days...This is built into the code'
$
market_signal: Initial community feedback to D&D announcement was mixed/negative, but Hardy's positive hands-on review may shift perception; targeted at home collectors rather than location players
high · Hardy opening: 'the feedback was mixed at best. But people mostly were leaning towards it being a title that did not interest them...it's going to be interesting to see how many of you out there are going to change your mind'
?
community_signal: Brian Eddy's design trajectory: Venom received negative reception from Hardy; D&D marks significant improvement, suggesting Eddy responded to feedback or had more creative control

Topics

Game Layout and Mechanical DesignprimaryDragon Mechanic and Playfield ToysprimaryRuleset and Code DepthprimaryPro vs Premium Pricing and FeaturesprimaryWeekly Randomization and ReplayabilityprimaryTheme Integration and Exploration GameplaysecondaryProduction Quality and Code StabilitysecondaryDemo Game Purchase Advocacysecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Hardy provides measured approval with constructive criticism. Praises design work (layout, dragon, code depth) while noting some concerns (chaos shots, visual 'wow' moments, Premium pricing). Strong engagement signal—contrasts positively with his disdain for Venom. Recommends trial play but not an unqualified endorsement.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.046

What's up guys? Welcome back to the channel. I'm here in front of Stern Pinball and I'm here to play some Dungeons and Dragons. At the end of 2024, Stern Pinball revealed their next cornerstone would be Dungeons & Dragons, and with the title alone, the feedback was mixed at best. But people mostly were leaning towards it being a title that did not interest them. And it's going to be interesting to see how many of you out there are going to change your mind. Now, I didn't post my typical first impressions or anything like that whenever they revealed the game, because I knew that I was going to be playing it in a mere couple of days. And so what do I think about the game now that I've played it? So firstly, before I begin, I want to state that my trip was not paid for by Stern Pinball. it was paid for by my lovely patrons out there. So all my thoughts and opinions going forward are my own and there is no influence. All right so let's start out with the layout and design. Congrats Brian this is your best since coming back to pinball. I mean you ditched the fan layout and gave us something with a little bit variety to it and the idea to utilize one magnet under the cube to lock balls above and below is a nice touch. And you got multiple flippers on your upper flipper shot, including a repeatable loop, which is something that always speaks to me. Now, I was worried about the saucer on the left at first. I assumed it would do very little, kind of like the one on Stranger Things, but this actually launches the ball to the far right to set up a shot with the upper right flipper. Now you have a cluster of shots in the middle. Now hitting them is easy but hitting the ones that you actually want to hit is going to take you a little time to narrow down where they're at on the flipper. Now of course what brings the attention to this game is the giant dragon. I mean this mech is pretty cool. I mean it serves multiple purposes. It looks badass, it blocks your shots and it's a bash toy I mean him blocking your shots may be aggravating at first but I feel this adds to the game I mean do you think a dragon is just going to let you do what you want and hit the shots that you want I don't think it should so definitely I do give them kudos for this particular mech now hopefully they work a little bit more on the code when it comes to the ball searching and the balls getting stuck underneath the dragon or in within the dragon we did have a couple of moments of that but they stated that obviously the code is at 0.80 to 0.82 somewhere around there and little things like that will get worked out the game is very approachable and it seemed to be a bit of a long player after we got some of the shots down and i think brian really wanted to utilize every part of this game but there is this one particular shot underneath your upper right flipper that will feed back down to the right side. I going to say the right side not your right flipper because the speed at which it goes in there will determine where it might go because it basically just going to get it going to throw it into chaos it going to go down there and probably bounce around the outlane area you could lose it or it could feed safely to your in lane or bounce off the top of your your slingshot it's a little chaos i so i'm hoping that there better be a big I guess you know reward when using that particular shot I don't know enough about the code to really know why you would want to go over there just yet but it needs to be good because otherwise I don't want to utilize it because it's just going to purposefully basically throw my ball into chaos now the three targets underneath your dragon are not going to be as dangerous as I initially thought they might be the way their offset kind of gives it the ball is going to be a little chaos But it's not going to be a ricochet and shot right back down the middle like you experienced on Galactic Tank Force. Not to mention you have the chance of the dragon being in the way anyways. So you're going to probably have to hit him a time or two to get him to raise his damn head up so you can actually hit the targets. Now overall, I think Eddie has done very well on this theme. Was there a wow moment for me? Like, no. But that's subjective on pretty much everything that I'm saying right now. It's like, so was there a moment where I made a particular shot, or the machine did something that made me go, whoa, that's cool? No. I didn't get that experience, but the machine overall was enjoyable to play. So let's talk about the code. Now, Dwight has stated that this is his deepest rule set ever. And you can tell that he has a lot of passion behind this game. But, I mean, he has passion behind every game that he does. but there's just something special about this that I think is even more emotional to him. And perhaps that has something to do with him co-writing the story for this game. Which brings me to my main point. This is supposed to be a journey. A game of exploration. I mean, like taking different routes within the code to get a different result because of the decisions that you made along the way. Now, while this isn't going to be for a lot of people, that's why I feel like this game was marketed towards the home buyers. But, you know, that's the majority of the market anyway, so there is that. But it's not to say that locations won't benefit from this, because it's going to give this game a high replayability rate, due to the fact that the game will change every seven days. I say change because it's basically just going to take things that you know and put them in a different orientation. So you're not always going to be going, it's not linear. So that gives you the ability to experience the game differently. And something else to note is that this is built into the code. There isn't going to be something that Stern has to do on their end to change the game. This is not going to be the John Wick experience where contracts are, We're doing contracts. Here's your contract. And then eventually you just stop seeing contracts. This is going to be something that's going to be continuous even if you're not online. But if that's something that you don't want, you want the ability to experience the same thing that you started with, then that's perfectly an option for you. You can choose to play a continuance from your previous save point, or you can choose the option for one-shotted whenever you select your character. and for them in this game they say one-shotted because it's not going from your progress it's not going to save your progress which i don't feel is the correct terminology to use for this because i look at one shot as being like you only got one ball and once you lose that ball your game is over and no returns no ball save or anything like that i would consider that one whereas i think what they talking about should be considered hardcore mode you see this on like your diablos your world of warcraft and even the game i'm playing now pat the bexiles 2 there's a hardcore mode which you play and you play but when you die the character is dead kind of thing it's game over you cannot progress any further than that, which I will never play that on a video game RPG. But when it comes to pinball, if you want to do what they call one-shotted or what I would suggest they change to hardcore, then that is always an option for you. So when it comes to the visuals on screen, they're good. I mean, they're not like, you know, amazing, but they're not bad. But it's like perfectly fine for the theme. Now when it comes to audio it's Jerry Thompson so I have no doubts that this is going to be great but I can't really give you a lot of feedback on that because there was a lot of noise in the room but from what I could hear at least within the callouts the call outs look to be top notch those sound great when it comes to sound effects and you know music I could not really get a good feel on that. Now when it comes to pro versus premium models on this if I were to purchase this game, I would go with the Pro. And that is mainly due to cost versus what you're getting in return. I mean, the last couple of games that Stern has brought out, that's X-Men, and now we have Dungeons & Dragons, the Pro model has a lot going for it for what it is in comparison to the Premium. It's like you're merely only going to be losing some cool effects within the pro if you settle for the pro versus you know if i was to get the premium on dungeons and dragons what i'm getting i'm like it's like yeah they're cool but i didn't feel like they were like necessary or i had to get them now what i do i want them oh yeah i would love to have the dragon to fire the pinballs and everything i just don't agree with the price increase for what you're getting is all i'm saying but i think you're definitely getting plenty within for the pro i mean honestly i was expecting the pro model to have a static dragon head like it didn't even move it still moves up and down and it's still a bash toy uh on the pro i was expecting the gelatinous cube to be a flat plastic but no it's still a fully lit like cube on your game there's just things that i was anticipating to be you know lower grade to cheap out to make it cheaper but they didn't do that with the pro that you still have the full aesthetics of what you would think is a premium you're just losing the cool features that they have for the premium versus on your pro the dungeon crawler mech that comes up to catch a ball yeah okay it's an extra shot but i didn't feel like i was really missing it whenever i was playing the pro i just think that the pro was perfectly fine to get a good experience on this game you're going to be able to play exactly the same game as someone that has a premium they're just going to have some cool things going on that yours kind of don't and even though the dragon was firing pinballs at me i honestly didn't notice but that's just me because i was focusing on other things but it's definitely something that's a cool feature it's like if you just had the option like hey do you want a dragon that just does this on the pro or would you like the one that has it on the premium that does everything. Oh, I want the one that's on the premium. I do. I just don't want to pay for it. Now, I recommend everyone give this game a fair try, and I would also recommend that you try before you buy because I do think this code is going to be something that doesn speak to a lot of people out there So reach out obviously to your local arcades to see if they going to have one or even your local distro to see if they have one on their game room floor so you can get a good experience to figure out that this is something that you're for sure going to be able to really dive into. This is something that I think that people are probably not going to understand about this. This seems to be a code in the game that you're going to be able to explore and go, oh, that's interesting, or try different things or different paths and really dive into it. I kind of wish that their manual or their book for this particular game looked like a Dungeon Dragons manual book. I think that would be pretty cool, but I don't think it's going to happen. But I'm pretty sure there's going to be somebody out there that's going to make it. So by all means, go for it. When it comes to mods, I can already see someone eventually is going to create a mimic chest to replace that flat plastic that is on the Premium and the Pro. That is a missed opportunity right there. They save my own cost, obviously, but to have an actual mimic chest, maybe even one that moves like a clamshell or something kind of type of thing, that would be pretty damn cool. Now, I'm looking forward to playing this in a more controlled environment, possibly even at Pinball at the Beach next month. so that should be good for me if uh for those out there that are going to pinball at the beach and you're interested in getting a dungeons and dragons you may want to reach out to little shop of games to see if those games have already been sold if not see if you could snatch up a demo game there at the show it's got it's a way to save you hundreds of bucks guys and you're getting pretty much a new game you're basically saving hundreds and only putting what three to five 100 plays on a game, go for it. I'm a strong advocate for purchasing demo games because you know for sure the game fully works, especially after getting beat on for a whole weekend. And of course you're saving some money, so there is that. So for what I can tell so far, this is a strong effort on Stern Pinball's part on developing a Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine. Brian Eddy, this is your best game since returning to during pinball. Dwight, keep doing what you're doing with this code. I know that during the show and during talking that you were really wanting to just tell everybody everything all at once. I think eventually people are going to get to really dive into this and experience a world that you are currently creating. So that's going to be interesting for people to experience, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's response to this journey that you're trying to implement into this game. And I also want to throw in the name Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske. I believe she's also helping with the coding of this game. She was there even assisting me while I was playing and taking notes of things that need to be changed or updated. I mean, I personally got a really decent score, but they also specified that, you know, don't take your scores too much to heart because they're still working out, you know, all of that. So I think I had a high score of like 4.5 billion. but um yeah it's i mean like i said they don't don't take that score seriously i could have hit a target and got much more points than i actually should get so but other than that i think i had a couple of good games while i was there but i definitely need more time on the game the thing is i'm not like dreading to play this game like i was on brian eddy's previous game i just have no interest in playing Venom again. Whereas this one, I do want to go into this world and play some more of it. So that about wraps it up. What are your current thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons by Stern Pinball? Let me know in the comments section down below, guys. And until next time, peace out.