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Ep 162 Multimorphic's Portal Pinball! With Stephen Silver, Michael Ocean, & Ian Harrower

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 20m·analyzed·Mar 14, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Multimorphic Portal Pinball showcases P3 innovation with puzzle mechanics and dual aerial shots.

Summary

Loser Kid Pinball Podcast interviews three creative directors from Multimorphic—Stephen Silver, Michael Ocean, and Ian Harrower—about Portal Pinball, a licensed P3 module featuring innovative mechanical design with dual aerial shots, moving ramps, companion cube portaling, and custom voice work by Ellen McLain (GLaDOS) and Mark Silk (Reggie core). The game emphasizes puzzle-light mechanics integrated with pinball gameplay, a hub-based structure with eight objectives leading to multiball modes, and a standalone story set in a portable testing unit. A P3 Plus version with extended playfield features is available as an upgrade option.

Key Claims

  • Portal Pinball features two different aerial launch points with multiple landing zones

    high confidence · Discussed by hosts as major feature; described as 'aerial tricks are really impressive, right? You throw a ball once one direction...two different launch points, two different directions, multiple landing zones'

  • Portal Pinball is Multimorphic's most advanced P3 module to date

    high confidence · Michael Ocean states: 'this is our most advanced P3 module to date. If you've been a fan of Weird Al and Princess Bride and Heist and all these other modules, this—we've really threw everything at this module.'

  • The game includes shots in the lower two-thirds of the playfield, a first for P3 platform

    high confidence · Kerry Hardy: 'something that they haven't done yet either on the P3 Multimorphic system is that we're going to have shots in the lower two-thirds of a game. I think that's really going to be a highlight for a lot of people out there because that's been a common complaint'

  • Ellen McLain (original GLaDOS voice actor) provides voice work for Portal Pinball

    high confidence · Josh confirms: 'I did hear Ellen, the voice of GLaDOS, Ellen McLain, she actually is the voice of GLaDOS in this game as well.'

  • Portal Pinball has a beatable wizard mode with a complete narrative arc

    high confidence · Ian Harrower: 'yes, there is—this will be a game you can beat' and describes story as 'a love letter to the license'

  • TJ Weaver is the mechanical engineer credited with designing faith plate and momentum jump mechanics

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'we've got TJ Weaver, who's our mechanical engineer. I happen to believe that he's one of the best mechanical engineers in pinball. He always turns out amazing ideas.'

  • Portal Pinball was licensed through Jerry at Multimorphic negotiating with Valve

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'Bo and Karen helped us get in contact with some people at Valve. And Jerry worked out the deal with them.'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's perfect for the P3 with what we can do with transporting balls from here to there and all this stuff like that.”

    Stephen Silver @ early discussion — Explains why Portal theme specifically suits the P3 platform's capabilities

  • “We knew we absolutely need to have GLaDOS in the game. And so we've got GLaDOS. But GLaDOS can't be that person to cheer you on...And so we created Reggie, the team building core.”

    Michael Ocean @ character design section — Reveals design logic for new character creation while respecting existing franchise lore

  • “There is a spreadsheet. Yeah, we got a spreadsheet. Nice. We were ranking things.”

    Michael Ocean / Ian Harrower @ design process discussion — Illustrates the methodical approach to feature prioritization

  • “I'm going to now compliment my teammates a lot, and they may get uncomfortable in that. But Michael has brought in a ton of amazing framework that he's built up through Weird Al and Final Resistance”

    Ian Harrower @ team collaboration section — Documents how previous P3 game experience accelerated Portal Pinball development

  • “It's a love letter to the license...if this is your first experience into the Portal universe, I highly recommend you go through and you pick up Portal 1 and Portal 2”

    Michael Ocean @ story design section — Positions Portal Pinball as standalone story while encouraging franchise appreciation

  • “We didn't want the puzzles to be an aha moment, because if it's an aha moment, then you only get that once, and then it's just going through the motions.”

    Ian Harrower @ puzzle design discussion — Core design philosophy differentiating puzzle-light integration from traditional puzzle game mechanics

  • “Portal for the P3. This is a—there's a three near the word Portal.”

    Michael Ocean @ Portal 3 joke section — Playful reference to Valve's historical difficulty ending game series at 2

Entities

Stephen SilverpersonMichael OceanpersonIan HarrowerpersonPortal PinballgameMultimorphiccompanyLoser Kid Pinball PodcastorganizationEllen McLainpersonMark SilkpersonTJ Weaverperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Loser Kid Pinball negotiated exclusive discount code for Portal Pinball purchases, indicating direct community partnership with Multimorphic

    high · Josh Roop: 'if you want to get in on this game and you want the Loser Kid discount that we've worked out with Jerry right now, email us at LoserKidPinballPodcast@gmail.com'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Portal Pinball created as standalone story ('love letter to license') rather than remake of Portal 1/2, set in portable testing unit with custom narrative

    high · Michael Ocean: 'this is a love letter to the license...But this is its own story...The whole idea is that the premise basically is that this is a portable testing unit that is shipped out on location'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Portal Pinball employs 'puzzle-light' mechanics philosophy to balance puzzle gameplay with replayability, avoiding single-solution 'aha moment' frustration

    high · Ian Harrower: 'We didn't want the puzzles to be an aha moment, because if it's an aha moment, then you only get that once, and then it's just going through the motions'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Multimorphic secured full Portal IP license from Valve including voice actor collaboration (Ellen McLain) and creative freedom for standalone story

    high · Stephen Silver: 'Bo and Karen helped us get in contact with some people at Valve. And Jerry worked out the deal with them' and Ellen McLain reprising GLaDOS role

  • ?

    design_innovation: Portal Pinball features mechanical innovations including dual aerial launch points, companion cube portaling mechanic, faith plate launcher, and moving playfield ramps

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.240

0:00
thanks for tuning into a very special episode of loser kid pinball podcast we were on episode 162 i am your captain josh roop with me my co-captains today kerry harding and scott larson and scott tell us about our our sponsor before we get into this amazing so the sponsor is flipping out pinball as always if you are looking for all those uh you new used mods um upgrades uh shaker motors whatever you need go ahead and contact zach and nicole mini at flipping out pinball they can definitely hook you up and get all things almost all things for you the only exception is what we're talking about today so i'm going to throw that back to josh yes if you want to get in on this game and you want the loser kid discount that we've worked out with jerry right now email us at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com for this amazing portal pinball machine. And with us today, we've got three of the development team with us. I'm going to let them introduce themselves because they have had a wide array of different roles they've played in this, and I think they say it best. So I'm going to kick over to Steven first. Why don't you go for it? Hi, guys. I'm Steven Silver. I'm the co-creative director on this game. I'm Michael Ocean. I'm also creative director on this game. And software. And I'm Ian Hareworth, the third creative director on this game, co-creative director on this game, and I'm focusing on software. And if you guys are tuning in just right now, you saw the release of Portal and you're clamoring for more, right? Like you are just ready to feast on this and it looks amazing. Guys, you have you've destroyed everyone else in the competition right now with this game because it is amazing. Not one, but two aerial shots. You've got new mechs on the lower play field. You've got portals launching balls. You've got two companion cubes. I mean, what? OK, first off, where did this concept even come from? Who decided we're doing portal?
2:02
Well, we're all love the property and we've been into it for a long time. I think we it was somewhere around the we were in the middle of both of us were in the middle of Michael. You were working on Final Resistance and I was working on the Princess Bride. and Bo and Karen's helped us get in contact with some people at Valve and Jerry worked out the deal with them. And so we found out in the middle of those projects that we were going to do Portal next and we just couldn't wait because just what a great franchise, what a great thing. And it's perfect for the P3 with what we can do with transporting balls from here to there and all this stuff like that. So we couldn't wait to get our hands on it. Now, for the people who aren't familiar, I actually had not been familiar with this game because I'm an old fart. But go ahead and tell me about Portal. Tell me about the game and tell me how this integrates into pinball.

The game includes a custom 'Reggie' personality core voiced by Mark Silk as a friendly guide counterpoint to GLaDOS

high confidence · Ian explains creation of new character: 'we created Reggie, the team building core...He's just over the head. He can't wait to build teams and he's ready to go and build that teamwork with you.'

“You can't have Portal without GLaDOS. And like you said, Cave Johnson's almost more of a deep cut...But in reality, in Portal 1 and a good chunk of Portal 2, he's not really there”

Josh Roop @ character discussion — Validates the design decision to exclude Cave Johnson while prioritizing GLaDOS

Brad Albrightperson
Scott Deniseperson
Rory Sternutaperson
Jerryperson
Valvecompany
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
Josh Roopperson
Kerry Hardyperson
Scott Larsonperson
P3 Plusproduct
Aperture Scienceorganization

high · Detailed discussion of 'not one, but two aerial shots', 'one companion cube that portals between locations', 'faith plate multiball', and 'ramps also move up and out of the way'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ian Harrower transitioned from solo homebrew developer to lead software designer on licensed title after Multimorphic recruited him; first full licensed game development experience

    high · Ian: 'He's like, "Hey, Ian, will you sign an NDA and let me talk to you and convince you to do this game?" And he's like, "I'll tell you the theme once you've signed it, and you can say no."'

  • ?

    announcement: Portal Pinball officially announced as Multimorphic P3 module with comprehensive design details revealed

    high · Full episode dedicated to Portal Pinball featuring three creative directors discussing completed game design, voice acting, mechanical features, and story

  • ?

    product_strategy: P3 Plus upgrade tier offering extended playfield module extender with mechanical feature advancement, creating two-tier P3 Portal offering

    high · Michael Ocean: 'we also have a P3 Plus version, which involves...Module extender, which brings those mechanical features further down the playfield'

  • ?

    product_concern: Portal Pinball praised as most technically advanced and mechanically complex P3 module, leveraging team experience from Weird Al, Princess Bride, and Heist modules

    high · Michael Ocean: 'this is our most advanced P3 module to date...we've really threw everything at this module' and Ian's testimony about framework benefits from previous projects

  • ?

    technology_signal: Portal Pinball introduces below-playfield shots to P3 platform, addressing long-standing community criticism about shot placement limitations

    high · Kerry Hardy notes: 'something that they haven't done yet either on the P3 Multimorphic system is that we're going to have shots in the lower two-thirds of a game. I think that's really going to be a highlight for a lot of people out there because that's been a common complaint'

    • 2:57
    So Portal is a puzzle game. There's been Portal 1 and Portal 2. and you basically go through and you have to place portals in different rooms and solve puzzles by traversing them and using them to get you through these touch chambers and things like that. There's an entire world around it built in the Aperture Science universe and it's got such great lore and everything along those lines and we feel like we've created something new in that universe that's really interesting but is still true to everything that makes Portal great.
    3:35
    Chances are if you really enjoy a puzzle-based video game that sort of tells its story as you play it in a very subtle way or you enjoy really dark humor in a video game, all these things probably are because of Portal existing. So they really did it first in the most impactful way. My kid has played any number of games, PC games and things, where it's just like, oh, it's so cool. You learn the story as you go around. Portal did it a long time ago. I'm not excited by that video game. Portal already did that.
    4:06
    And Portal is timeless. Portal 1, Portal 2, you can pick them up and play them today. You should if you've never played it. And they are amazing games that just first present as a story, a story list sort of, oh, I'm going to, you know, I've got to solve this puzzle, this first-person puzzle. And the more you dig in, the further you get. I remember the first time you sort of crossed the threshold and you realize there's something more to this game than you first realize. And it's yeah, I like, look, I've been working on this pinball machine with these guys for a while. And even still, like my the arms on my the hairs on my arm go up talking about that first moment where you realize, wait, there is something more to this game. It's not just what it seems. Why? Why pinball? Why the P3? Right. So when you enter these environments in the game, you sort of walk into this very sterile, clean chamber in Portal 1 and you sort of see what it is. And then the chambers reconfigure, right? They move and they dynamically change and all this crazy stuff happens. Just so when you think you're starting to wrap your head around it, then panels are moving and the thing reconfigures. And the P3 is able to show you these dynamic environments on the screen. And then also we have some incredible mechs that reconfigure in real time so you actually can kind of get that experience when you're playing this pinball game.
    5:29
    I think we've done it. Yeah. At this point, people have seen the videos, people have checked it out. It's got to be on the P3. Nobody else can do it. One of my favorite things about the P3 is our ability to get into storytelling right underneath your eyes, change the environments that you're in based on the mode you're playing. And so we wanted when you're going into test chambers, you're going to experience something different with each test chamber. We wanted to, you know, be able to make a really incredibly immersive game. And because of the basic design of the P3, we can like we can port a balls anywhere. Right. We have a the infinity ball trough in the back where we can basically send a ball out anywhere that we want. And so it just is a no-brainer for the P3 platform, and it's just a perfect fit. So I have a question for Josh and Kerry. Since you are big fans of this game, what are you looking forward to in playing this game and getting this game?
    6:32
    Well, like it's already been stated, this is one of those themes that when I got into it, I just fell in love with it. And like Portal 1 was one of those games that launched with the Orange Box back in 2007. It was one of those hidden gems that just basically started getting attention. And eventually they decided to make a sequel, which was, you know, even surmountably better than the first one, because that's when you start getting more story and lore and personality in GLaDOS. and I think that's the nature of why I love it so much is that there's a lot of mystery, but I also love puzzles. It's really fun to incorporate that aspect into a pinball machine, although I'm still curious of how these guys are going to do that with it being a puzzle-related game and then a pinball machine. So when I first heard that they were doing it, I'm like, I see where it would work well on the P3 system, like it was originally stated with the fact that they could put balls and go anywhere with it. But I was still like, how are they going to do the puzzle aspect of it? I'm kind of curious of how that's implemented, and I'm sure we'll dive into it here in a little bit. But yeah, with how the game changes from scene to scene, I think that this platform is definitely going to be able to make this theme shine with the screen on the display and everything. That's going to be interesting on that. but that's i think with all the different moving portions of the game too with the multiple companion cubes the multiple shots and something that they haven't done yet either on the p3 multimorphic system is that we're going to have shots in the lower two-thirds of a game i think that's really going to be a highlight for a lot of people out there because that's been a common complaint with people that have these systems it's like well they're all in the back of the playfield. Now, I'm assuming due to feedback, they're trying to satiate that portion of the industry by telling, like, hey, we can still do that. We can give you the shots in the lower two-thirds. So I really like that aspect of it also, and the fact that those ramps also move up and out of the way. So I like just a lot of the movement that I'm seeing, a lot of mechanical features. So, Kerry, I just want to jump in and correct one thing that you said that Josh said at the beginning as well, and you both said there are multiple companion cubes on this table. Oh, it's the portal. There's one companion cube that portals from one side of the play field to the other. Yes. Okay. It's moving in between the portals. Yes, you are correct. I've looked at the pictures. That's all I've got to go on.
    9:10
    I mean, it's actually, from a design perspective, it is one of the reasons, in addition to the companion cube being uh iconic and like one of the symbols of the portal franchise we chose to go with the companion cube to emphasize the fact that it is the same cube because within the game well okay let's ignore portal 2 when flotta starts spawning uh as many as she wants but um within the game there's one companion cube and it's important that there's one companion cube well and just I like that there's the core in here too. Mark Silk's doing the voice for the core, right? Yes. Mark is amazing. I really think people are going to fall in love with this core. It's got so much personality and everything. I can't wait for you guys to get in there and really get to know this core.
    10:07
    I'm excited too. Wheatley is a big part of Portal 2 from start to finish. How is Mark Silk's core integrated into the game? We looked at the possibilities of working with Wheatley But Wheatley had a complete story in Portal 2 And we knew we absolutely need to have GLaDOS in the game And so we've got GLaDOS But GLaDOS can't be that person to cheer you on It can't be that person to give you encouragement To tell you where to go her purpose is to abuse you and to be mean to you. And so we needed somebody that was a champion for the player, your guide, your friend. And so we thought, well, in this Portal universe, there's already been the there's always been a precedent that they have multiple personality cores. And so we're like, we've got an opportunity here to create something new in our world that will fit in here and give us the ability to create that friendly guide that you have helping you out. So we created Reggie, the team building core. And so Reggie is his purpose there. He's just he's just he's just over the head. He can't wait to build teams and he's ready to go and build that team teamwork with you. And he's cheering you on as you're going through and guiding you through both the hub mode and the objectives and the chest chambers. And I really think people are going to fall in love with Reggie because he's got so much personality in this character. And I just wanted to add on to what you're saying out there, Stephen. You said that, you know, we knew we had to have GLaDOS. I'm kind of curious in the whole brainstorming and the infancy of this project. I mean, what are some of the things that you guys said we have to have this? We have to have this. What are some of those things? There's a spreadsheet. Yeah, we got a spreadsheet. Nice. We were ranking things. Yeah. We knew we had to have GLaDOS. We were basically going through and trying to find the features in Portal 1 and Portal 2 that we thought would work in pinball and that we can do. And we knew we wanted to have some sort of a momentum jump, something where you build a speedy thing goes in speedy thing comes out and you can do the jump so we've incorporated the momentum jump that's a lateral jump across the play field and you you've got multiple landing areas you can go to and we wanted to have the faith plate too and early on we were like we're not sure if we can do this like let's see if we can do it but we've got tj weaver who's our mechanical engineer i happen to believe that he's one of the best mechanical engineers in pinball. He always turns out amazing ideas. And so we just set him on it and he's turned out some really incredible mechs with those two things. In addition to that, we knew we needed to have, you can't have a portal game without portaling around and changing the configuration of the play field and getting from one place to another and using that to solve puzzles. And so we made sure we had uh portable shots that could that could basically lead anywhere we wanted to go and so um is there anything i'm missing that was on our must-have list absolutely turrets turrets yeah yeah we we knew we knew we wanted a core uh even though we weren't sure who we was going to be yet um we knew we we definitely wanted to have a companion cube we wanted to have radios we wanted to have all the good puzzle elements right we wanted the thermal discouragement beam we wanted high energy pallets we wanted the we we we wanted it all um and i think we've tried to stuff as much as physically possible into this machine but the aerial tricks are really impressive right you you throw a ball once one direction uh you should say that's good enough but not us we've got two different two different launch points two different directions multiple landing zones for the throws there is a glowing pit in the center of the play field that you know you can you can fall in the drink you know you can wind up in the acid uh it's a it's all possible so and one of the other things that you didn't mention was ratman we wanted ratman and we wanted ratman's den within this game because just like Michael said at the beginning, there's that moment in Portal 1 when you realize there's more to this game and more to this world than you knew up to that point. For me, that's one of my top moments in video game. It's historic, it's game changing, and I think it's influenced so many people. So we needed that presence in the game. When you walk behind that panel that's open, you see all the red scratches on the walls and you're like hold on this there's something more to this story what's something going on here kind of thing yeah oh even the end of portal one where you're kind of getting led as a lamb to the slaughter and all across the walls the cake is a lie you know it's just it's perfect so i i agree it looks awesome my question is ian this is kind of your first licensed theme with i don't know if you've had a full development team before behind you on this before i know we've had multiple games on the P3, but how has it been different working on Portal and utilizing all these amazing personalities that are in pinball? I mean, there's so much that is way easier and so much better quality working with an amazingly talented group of people. And we all complement each other's skills. Like both of my games were solo developments that I did myself. I did graphics, I did audio design, I did programming. I licensed assets to help me fill gaps, but I was trying to see what can I do, build up my skill set and learn things about how to develop in Unity, how to fit all of these pieces together. And I was just doing it for fun. You know, I didn't go out and knock on Jerry's door and say, please give me a job. He's like, hey, Ian, will you sign an NDA and let me talk to you and convince you to do this game? And he's like, I'll tell you the theme once you've signed it and you can say no. and I'm like, okay. And he's like, I don't know if you've heard of this or if you have any. It's like, yeah, yeah, no, I've heard of this. And I was really excited. Anyways, getting back to your question.
    16:40
    I'm going to now compliment my teammates a lot and they may get uncomfortable in that. But Michael has brought in a ton of amazing framework that he's built up through Weird Al and Final Resistance that I wish I had had when I developed my own games that has made things really smooth and go amazingly well and throwing ideas off of him and having someone else to just speak out loud to about the engineering challenges. You know, pinball is hard. Software for pinball is hard. It's complicated. It's a real-time system with a lot of events going on. There's a lot of things that can go wrong, and we're doing some of the most advanced stuff we can do here.
    17:22
    You know, Stephen and Rory, with their graphics work, is amazing and nothing i could ever do um and it's been really cool to actually interact with rory sternuta who's the um uh technical artist i think is what his title is um he's doing amazing work within unity but it's really cool to like talk to someone with an animation background learn a lot of tricks a lot of new stuff that i didn't know about unity um and actually have someone to like throw technical ideas off of and that was huge and really fun and Stephen has like amazing visual ideas and when we were designing the rooms like for all of the test chambers I would go off and prototype like okay this is what I want I'm going to make these pieces fit the pieces we need to get this done and then Stephen would come in and he'd be like okay let's move the camera here let's move this wall here let's move this over here let's create these views and we like turn this sterile grid into these beautiful environments and it's been really cool and something that i just couldn't experience uh developing my own and like throw scott and brad on top of that as well and like it really is a dream team of people coming together and when you say scott brad you mean scott denisi who is on sound and brad albright who did artwork which both amazing hands down amazing and brad brad designed the topper he designed the sculpt did the playfield art for hub as well as all of the decal work and all of the cabinet art so one thing i want to talk about with this is that when you're doing a procedural game you typically go through and you learn a little bit and then you learn more you know just just like any sort of game and you and then the puzzles get more complex as you move on now here's the question how do you avoid the the mundanity of doing the same puzzle over and over again when you go to a pinball machine because you can't have the same sort of progression and how do you incorporate that into modes are there main modes you have to do are there uh you know advanced modes in wizard mode, how do you have the rule set aligned?
    19:45
    Yeah, so we set out to with the idea that we would have two distinct areas that you take apart in the game. There's what we call the hub. It sort of themed and named because of the Portal 2 experience of having this hub where you meet with your other player before you go on And we like that name So we call it the hub And we wanted to design the hub to be a fun experience a fun pinball experience where even if all you did was spend the entire game in the hub, you would have a good time. The hub is where you play multi-ball. The hub is where you play these objectives, which we call them. And objectives, they're not really modes, but if you If I actually look at them, they're as complex as a lot of modes in Pinball. But we wanted Hub to be this experience where everything's stacked, where everything can happen at the same time. There's eight objectives, and if you can collect, complete all eight objectives, they'll start a hurry-up. If you can stack all eight hurry-ups on top of them and cash out that eight-way hurry-up, this is like this big, massive event. You've got your turret multi-ball. You've got a faith plate multi-ball. You've got edgeless safety cube multiball. So you've got all of this you can do in Hub. And we think that if people just experience that, they'd have a great time.
    21:05
    But as we're doing these, these objectives are starting to teach you elements about the game. So things like the hidden panel, which is used across the hard light bridge. You'll learn that as one of the objectives in the Hub. And when you need to use that later on in one of the test chambers, you don't have to have completed it, but it will sort of teach you and educate you. Now, to get to your question about, like, are puzzles boring the second time you play them? It's actually one of the really hard challenges in designing this game. We wanted to lean in to the puzzles, but we really wanted to lean into the puzzles in a light way. we didn't want the puzzles to be an aha moment because if it's an aha moment then you only get that once and then it's just going through the rope motions um the high energy pellet is probably our best example of like our most complex puzzle mechanic right now and this mode is set up in such a way that there is a high energy pellet which is a energy ball which will bounce off of walls and there's a series of five panels, which you have to figure out how to turn those panels into the correct position so that the pellet will complete its course to the catcher and open the exit. And this isn't a hard puzzle if you were to solve it on a piece of paper, but it becomes a hard puzzle when you've got to control a pinball and hit shots and not undo the work that you've done. And there's some tricks in there as well to kind of throw you off and possibly make you backtrack. And I think we've managed to – I hope we've managed to build something that people will – they'll appreciate the puzzle aspects that are there, but not just find it frustrating to go through. And they'll still have fun.
    22:55
    Because if you – I mean, if you think about it, right, pinball, especially multimorphic, we have this tendency – a lot of games do this, right? We want to tell stories, right? We want, especially for this game, right, we want these games to tell these really deep, interesting narrative stories, but they're gated by your pinball ability, right? And so if a player is not so great, they're not going to get to experience all of it. And so there's already this additional challenge of how do you tell this narrative story gated by pinball, and now we're also going to add a puzzle on it. Well, we don't want you to your point. We don't want it to be the case that you don't want to experience it a second time because you've already figured out the trick. But then also, how hard is it to manage both a puzzle and pinball? and so yeah I mean they're maybe puzzle light they I think as a pinball player who loves Portal playing the game you feel the same experiences of I solved this I figured this out without it being you know as as you don't have the time you don't have the bandwidth to sort of sit there and try to figure out some complex thing there's a live ball right and so you've got it you know and so it's a trade-off but i i think i think we've got something that really works here in regards to story is this going to be like in like will playing portal one and portal to help you understand this pinball machine better or are you going to have your own story i'm kind of curious about the details on that and what you can tell us right now and also the second part of the question is Can this game be beaten?
    24:35
    Yes. So if you have played Portal 1 and Portal 2, I think you will have a deep appreciation for the deep cuts we have in this game because this is, as somebody recently said, a love letter to the license. Like, I think that will increase your appreciation. And so if this is your first experience into the Portal universe, I highly recommend you go through and you pick up Portal 1 and Portal 2 on Steam or wherever and go play them because you're going to enjoy the whole franchise. But this is its own story. We, you know, we could have gone and just made a reference box to Portal 2, but that's not that necessarily interesting. So we interesting to us, at least. And so we wanted to go through and we wanted to make a new storyline. And the whole idea is that the premise basically is that this is a portable testing unit that is shipped out on location. It's looking for it's looking for test subjects. And so you come up and you are the test subject in here. You get introduced to Reggie. Reggie's your guide and you're working your way through this. And yes, there is there. This will be a game you can beat. I was joking with Carrie. I got on the phone with him. And since we know portal, we know valve and stuff like that. I was joking since if this is like your own story for portal, you should nickname this portal three. Cause valve has a terrible time ending at two, you know, half-life to portal to left for dead too. And so it's like, you could be breaking that cycle with this machine. It is true. It's true that this is portal for the P three. This is a, there's a, there's a three near, near the word portal. So one question I had, so I did hear Ellen, the voice of GLaDOS, Ellen McClain. She, she actually is the voice of GLaDOS in this game as well. Is Cave Johnson involved at all? Did, did you, were you able to put him there?
    26:39
    We, we, we don't have Cave Johnson. I mean, and to be clear, there there's no Aperture Science without Cave Johnson, but you know, this is a different story. And it's the sort of thing that if you don't know all of the lore of Portal 2, you might not even appreciate it at all. And then it's a lot of story to fill in to try to explain who this character is. And we have this opportunity to maybe, you know, to tell a different story, to tell a story that's sort of more, you know, more focused to pinball, right? Because we're trying to find the right balance for the player, right? It's the same thing that was said before in which you need a positive voice in an atmosphere where there's a lot of challenge. And so Reggie provides this positive voice and provides this sort of avatar, if you will, into this world where you can sort of get the right relationship to the characters and the universe. We're very fortunate to have access to GLaDOS in this game. We think that's what people really want to have. Well, it's like Back to the Future without the DeLorean. It's King Kong without his Empire State Building. You can't have Portal without GLaDOS. And like you said, Cave Johnson's almost more of a deep cut. It's one of those things as you develop deeper. But in reality, in Portal 1 and a good chunk of Portal 2, he's not really there because it's more of a side story that you're learning about when you dig deeper. And where you guys are creating your own story, that's fantastic. I mean, GLaDOS is perfect. Yeah. And we all love Cave Johnson. We're all big fans. What's interesting about Portal is you've got these characters in there that you never see. Like, you play most of Portal with never seeing GLaDOS until later in the game. And with Cave Johnson, you only see him through pictures and stuff like that. And so there's disembodied voices throughout there. And we're like, well, we've got Reggie. Reggie is your your guide. And GLaDOS is there always constantly talking to you and and and doing her GLaDOS thing throughout the entire game and everything. And we figured that's probably that's probably enough for especially for new players. I won't know if there's all of a sudden this third voice that's coming in there. That's a disembodied voice. You have limited amount of time for storytelling and pinball. Well, you can't. I don't. Probably one of the worst things you do is force people into linear gameplay in in pinball machines. And we're always we're always careful about that. Even back when we were making heist, it basically said you need to do a heist style game, but you can't force people into linear gameplay. You've got to be able to go and do things in any order that you want. And so that's just one of those things that that I don't think is the right fit for this game. the end of the day. Especially this is a portable testing unit. You're not at Epsyscience. You're in the portable testing unit. Now, go ahead, Jerry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We're on GLaDOS right now, so I was like, that was one of the main things, talking to Jerry, whenever I found out about the game, I was like, do you have GLaDOS? You've got to have her. And especially if she's doing the call-outs, and I was curious about how many call-outs, but you just pretty much said it right there, that she's going to be talking to the entire time because for those that don't know is like you know you pretty much defeat her in part one and then part two she comes back and she is bitter and in the call outs that she has towards you are mean and it's hilarious at the same time and i want that mean bitterness if i'd lose my game or drain i want her to say it says it right here in your file you are a horrible person stuff like that it's just like that i really hope to hear that that's gonna be great we didn't even test for that and look it it came up on the test now somehow you've been in sleep all these years and how somehow you still gained weight hey i could do that uh okay so we we talked about this a little earlier that there are two versions of the game and you know so there's a basic version so why don't you explain to me how that works and explain how the different things can be you know purchased versus what is the difference between the step up versus the basic? Yeah, so the basic game, this is our most advanced P3 module to date. If you've been a fan of Weird Al and Princess Bride and Heist and all these other modules,
    31:15
    this we've really we threw everything at this module. So you're going to you're going to have a ton of stuff to do on this module. So we have the standard edition where if you want to if you get it, it's just like any other P3. It's the fast module swaps and everything else. You pull it out, you pop it back in. But we also have a P3 plus version, which is that involves the the module extender, which brings those mechanical features further down the play field. And it's a it's a pretty simple swap. Pull off your in lanes and then pop it down on the machine, screw it in and plug in some connectors and you're good to go. And if you buy the P3 plus version and you want to have it, it's a different challenge based on it. Let's say you have somebody that doesn't like shots close to the play field or struggles with them. You can pull it out and you play the standard version as well. So we think there's a lot of compelling features in the P3 Plus version that with the lower play field mechanisms, a lot of really, really cool ideas are in that. But both versions will have the complete game, have the entire experience. We just will handle things differently on the standard edition version. We also we've got one art package. The art package is absolutely stunning. Brad Albright, first of all, he's one of the best people in pinball. If you go find him at a pinball show, go find his booth, check out his 3D art, his wood cuts, everything. He's an amazing talent. But this art package looks incredible. It's got unique sides on either side, and there's a lot of Easter eggs all throughout the art and everything. And then we've also got an optional topper that you can buy if you want to add the topper onto your machine. So those are basically the two different versions. But, yeah, the gameplay, you know, when you actually play the game, we're not holding anything back, whether or not you have the lower segment. You get an additional ramp. You get a really cool kickback shot. You get a physical spinner. You get the physical hard light bridge feature. You get a lot with it. You get targets that are up close. It definitely changes the geometry, but we wanted to make sure that the players still got the same gameplay experience, the same core software experience, regardless of whether or not they had it. So that's definitely the case. that it's not a requirement, but it's hard. We think people want it. Yeah, it's a compelling upgrade. I really do think, like, you know, you can go spend, you know, a couple thousand on a topper somewhere or something like that, but this is something that will enhance the gameplay, and it really does enhance the machine. We think it's compelling for everybody. But also, like I said, if you own it and you just want to do a quick swap, you don't want to do the full swap, you can pop it out. You can pop in the module and play module only if you want when you've got it. So we think it's a really cool thing. And we've been working on one thing you guys said early on is that this was based entirely on feedback from customers. If anybody's familiar with the P3, we did a video way back like 2014 or so that showed like swapping out lower pay-to-fill modules. This has been something that's been on our mind for a long time. and we've been making inroads through the various games that we've done. With Heist, we brought in the crane that comes out and does the widest variety of short shots and pinball where you can bash that crane all over the play field. You can knock a ball off the crane. The crane will fling balls at you. We also brought in the – we replaced the side target module with a flipper with a hidden shot underneath it for Heist. And then with Weird Al, we brought in the left module. So this has been something that's been coming for a long time. And we just were always trying to make sure however we did it was still compatible with all of our existing customers and for easy play field swaps and things like that. Weird Al has the crossing wire form across the ramp. So we've been doing a bunch of stuff over time, making those improvements for them. And every improvement we've done to the system, we almost always make that available to all of our customers, even the ones that bought back on day one. And, you know, just just think like what where else does that ever happen? Like if you bought a car and then you want this year's new features, what do you got to do? You got to buy this year's car in order to get it. And we've made a ton of upgrades to the core P3 system over all those years and made them all available for people who bought into the system originally. So we think this is a really compelling upgrade. We think everybody's going to want it, but it's optional. If you want to dip your toe into Portal Universe and try it with the standard edition, we have that available too.
    36:05
    Does having these lower features speed up the game? Because that is one thing about the P3. With everything being the back third, the game in the middle can be a little floaty. But this kind of narrows the play with the spinner on the left side with the chute there. the ramp on the right right side it brings the action a little more far forward so you have to react a little quicker and then not only that someone can answer that and then the other question i have too is what's the purpose of the ramp on the right side lifting up off of the screen so i can talk a little bit about this i think that the so the close features the stand-up targets are very close. The ramp is very close. A lot of the, you know, yes, on the P3, a lot of the features typically are very far back. But if you actually look at drawings or overlay play field, they're not actually much further back than typical pinball machines. There's an optical illusion that happens with scoops and walls and the horizontal lines that tricks you into thinking the playfield modules much further back. Not getting into that too much, but this ramp is actually really, really close to the flippers. Much closer than a lot of games.
    37:25
    And those targets are very close, and they're very dangerous. It's a challenging game. I think it's a fun game. I think people will enjoy it. But they do add a lot of risk, having those there. The lifting of the ramp was really important for the design of the playfield because of the right ramp down at the lower part of the playfield if you look at how most games that have close ramps deal with it if you look um that takes away a lot of your shots and they tend to just hide something behind it like a pop bumper nest and you just lose access to that and then to compensate for that you typically have to use an upper flipper to give you access to things that are behind and hidden by uh the shot so by having that ramp be able to lift, we are then able throughout the gameplay to give access to the shots that are behind there, our extended captive ball, there's stand-up targets back there. You can hit the center ramp even with the ramp down from the left flipper, but it gives you access to the backhand as well. So I think it gives dynamic gameplay by having the ramp be able to lift and allows us more flexibility and what we can design. There's also a system with the ramps that we can put them in two different states. So as you shoot a ramp, it will lift up and then you shoot another one and one will drop and another one will lift up. And when they do that, that changes like the left and the center ramp will become portals when they lift up underneath. So as you're going around and you're reconfiguring the room, you are making decisions of, okay, I want to configure it this way in order to make it happen. But then we've also got this after science automatic auto retracting stair system that we've got in there that if you hit a switch, then we switch them to all hold. So when something raises it, it raises and it stays up. And so you can get both ramps raised up and now you've got a portal loop where you can loop back a fast loop back and forth between the two flippers. So that's one of those really cool strategy things that are in the game to where you can go through and you can say, oh, you know what? I want I need to put these in the other configuration so I can go and make what I'm trying to do work, especially when you're trying to go set up some of those big, multi-objective hurry ups. And you've really got to think about this is one of the puzzle aspects that I think won't ever get old because there's no there's no correct way to do it. Like you're going to go through and you're going to be like, oh, shoot, my hurry up is counting down. I need to go and set this other one up real quick to stack it onto this stack do these things and so um having that having that system really adds some interesting gameplay strategy to it i just want to add one more thing about the p3 plus extension kit or i'm still getting used to the naming here um which it may not be obvious and like we take it for granted but i don't know if people will realize it right away is we still have full ball trackings across the entire screen. We added these targets. We added a ramp. We added a spinner. And we still have complete grid tracking of the ball across the entire screen, which is really cool from an engineering perspective and really cool from a gameplay perspective.
    40:48
    Okay, so I'm walking up to this game. I'm at a show. You guys are standing there. Put my hands on the flippers. Tell me what to do. There are inserts on the play field There are final resistance By the way, I'm going to double back to the floaty You've got to spend more time on final resistance That is true That game is not floaty It puts me in my place on a regular basis We decided Pretty early on We wanted Physical We wanted to represent physical inserts In the environment of this game So you're looking at a port you're looking at the hub and it is decorated with virtual physical inserts sort of like final resistance very like final resistance and so if you don't even know what to do you're just going to shoot flashing shots and you're going to shoot some flashing shots and things are going to change and you're going to start to learn what those things do now reggie is going to be there and reggie's going to talk you through this if you can hear him uh you know depending on who's standing next to you somebody else is going to try to talk you through it uh or you know you can you can experience the game but you can shoot ramps and as steven was saying the ramps will go up and the chamber will reconfigure if you expose yourself to that double portal you'll shoot one side the ball will fly right back at you almost too fast to sort of you know process because that's how portals work right throw a ball in fast the ball comes out fast uh you can complete any object you can hit stand-up targets you can hit the captive ball you complete an objective and now that face plate in the center is lit and you shoot that face plate the ball goes flying through the air in the back to the back of the machine. And if you've already moved the cube through the portal, then that's a physical ball lock. And now you are throwing balls across the machine to land on that grading over the pit to lock them.
    42:40
    I would probably coach you to start a multi-ball. I would probably coach you to start turret multi-balls. You can, you know, Reggie goes away, turns around and there's a little turret who's exposed, who starts lighting up and shooting at you and you start turret multi-ball and then it's fun chaos on the play field where we have lots of turrets who are locking in on your jackpot value and you have to knock them all out and then collect your jackpot before they completely destroy your jackpot value. And you can still complete objectives and do other stuff like stack multi-balls and do that stuff too. If at any point you want to try a test chamber you can call the elevator, you can head down to the elevator and you can start that I think the hub is a lot of fun I would tell you to hang out in the hub for a while before you hit a chamber personally but I'm sure the other guys would have different answers, I don't know Yeah, I'd probably encourage portaling I think it's one of the it's both the name of the game and a really cool feature so I would say focus on probably the left ramp because it's slightly more accessible than the center ramp and try to hit it to raise it and then hit it again to portal a ball up to the loft. And then in the loft, you can try to hit the companion cube and push it over and that will light your locks. But I think that that experience of having the ball instantaneously leave one place and show up in the other is something people have to experience. That is portal. And that is something that is pretty uniquely P3. Yeah, and these can be instantaneous moves. It's really magic when you're watching it happen. And what I'd say is if I was sitting next to you coaching you, I'd be like, I want you to go back up to that upper play field. I want you to try to do the momentum jump. I want you to see this happen. I want you to fly across the play field. See if you can do the full momentum jump, which requires you to build up speed before you hit that hole. So hit a loop once or twice to get your speed up before you hit that hole, And then you can go all the way across to the catwalk on the side or you can you can go to the lower landing zone down there with a regular speed portal. Or if you get in there and just kill all your momentum, you might portal into the drink. So but it's it's that's one of those magic pinball moments that I think people really appreciate. Out of curiosity, the loft on the images right here, it looks like it's spelled as it's an acronym for something. So what is it an acronym for? it's the library of failed tests there's a uh you go up there and you see all the the there then brad's got a little artwork in there of everything that they call the uh failed testing sheets from all the past people who have all the past test subjects who have uh come up short i gotta know because because there's this there's this lane on the left with the spinner and whatnot and it's kind of positioned where the upper flipper is um is there any concern of like Like, I don't know, you can't really utilize the upward flipper unless it's out of the way. But I did notice above that you have almost that whole wall shifts out too. And it's really cool in the video that it, like, shoots across. Is it able to shoot across over to the other catwalk or are we shooting down at the targets below? So there's polycarbonate across the entire play field on that second level. and when you shoot the portal, the first time you shoot it, we'll pop up a little tutorial that says get ready. It's coming down. Get ready to do your hard light bridge. And as it's rolling down, you've got to time your flip, and it's actually a brilliant mechanism. It's tied to the upper flipper. That upper flipper on the left side is not activated except whenever you're going to do this hard light bridge when it's on the second level. And you flip it. The goal is to flip it at the right time and have it cross all the way across to the other side of the play field across that second level to the other end lane and come down and you've crossed the hard light bridge at that point so it's it's it's really awesome when you pull it off i literally just realized and noticed that there is a whole nother upper layer i saw i see now i didn't even notice that that's why i was like i don't understand what that's gonna do because you can't i can't really see it i guess i didn't see it on the video either but yeah it's nifty yeah that's a lot So, yes, it's traversing the entire play field. Also, if a ball balls when we ejecting balls occasionally that will pull out that panel. So it will cut across and it'll come down to your lower to your lower right flipper instead of come into the end lane. So it's pretty cool. And if you if you miss it, if you if you miss the shot or whatnot, then it's wild. And it's wild on the second layer where it wherever it comes down and falls down to the lower play field. you've got to work to catch it and everything. But it's a really cool trick. It's a really cool trick because I'm watching the video right now, and just like Kerry, I'm like, oh, there is something. It's magic. Like I was like, how the heck are they pulling this off? Because it's just, yeah, it looks like you've created a light bridge across the play field and the ball's just zipping across the other side. Yeah, you don't want to fall off that light bridge.
    47:54
    Not safe. One of the other questions, you know, coming from the perspective of a person like Scott that's never played portal and whatnot. Um, how are you trying to market this or show to the casual player that this is worth the dive into this, into this world? We're hoping that the pictures and the video really do a lot to show people like the depth of this game and everything you can do. Um, I, I feel like the game speaks for itself. Whenever you get up there and you see like, like all the shot paths and all the mechanical cool stuff. If you're a fan of pinball, this is pinball. Like this is, this is real pinball. It does some just amazing pinball tricks and pinball moments. And I think that's the, that's the main hook. And you, you get these, these magical aha moments that you see like, Oh wait, this, I love a diverting shot. You know, I love anytime I have a shot and it goes, it goes to multiple places at once, but we have shots that can go anywhere, right? Like we can we can literally send the ball in real time. We've got lit portals all over this play field. And so you're looking for the linked pairs and you're like, OK, if I shoot, this is going to come out over here and planning and figuring out how you're going to work through this world. And I think it's something that will get its hooks in you and you'll you'll just people will be excited about it. One concern I can see, too, is is when you have aerial shots, they're not shooting consistently. And like you said, you've not only got one with the aerial faceplate, but two was shooting out the portal the other side. How have you guys tuned this in and how how accurate is it? Like, are we 95 percent? Are we 50 percent? What are we here? It's so it's it's pretty good. It's really good. Like you go through there. We've got the now if you've got a really, really slow shot on the faceplate, you might get something that doesn't that that goes up. It doesn't hit on the sweet spot of it. But that's that's part of it. Like you need to. And if you're going to hit the lock the ball, you know, you need to go up there. But it's it's really, really consistent now. It's one of those things we were actively worried about in the beginning to make sure that this was going to work. And then when we when we saw it finally get dialed in, it just works. And especially the the the momentum jump is is that thing is is dead on. It's it's it's really awesome to see it going. And it's always a moment when it flies across and it lands and comes over on the other side. So and I'm I'm really looking forward to the day. I don't know when it's going to happen. I'm going to be playing my game at my house and I'm going to somehow I'm going to see if I can't talk to Jerry. He might make it to where I can't have. I really want those. I want to I want to faith played at the same time that one's coming out and have those two balls smack it to each other at that time. It'll be awesome if I can pull it off. So that's my life. Once I have my production play field, I'm writing the code. I can do it. I don't know if anyone else is going to be allowed to run it, but... And it wasn't by magic. It's by hard work, right? We've seen multiple Whitewood revisions where TJ has been refining this to get it, you know, get it dialed in nice to get the mech working perfectly to make that base plate happen. And then, you know, to sort of park the balls nicely when they get to the other side and not deflect off. There were a lot of logistical challenges that he brilliantly overcame to make this super cool faceplate Mac. He just rails the ball up the center and then it flings forward. And then, right. I mean, by all accounts, that ball should then ricochet off that back wall and come flying back at you. But that's not how it's designed. It's designed to eat the impact and park it down nicely, which is how it works and how it works in the game. Right. You fly through the air and portal and you hit a wall. You don't go deflecting off. It's a sort of strange, you crumple, right? The other impact is you, but the ball had to do it. So, no, it's super reliable. And, you know, from a person who's sitting around writing code, very easy to do because TJ makes it happen.
    51:53
    And if something happens and there is a misset, these guys are two of the most brilliant people I know. They've got software compensation in there, too. So if anything happens, it's like, okay, well, I still got my lock. Oh, yeah. If you're supposed to get a lock, we can make sure you get your lock. But that's, you know, we want you to see it fly through the air and land where it's supposed to land, right? Yeah. I think we've mentioned, like, all the really main features of the game, except for one, unless I've missed it. But have we spoken about the sculpt? Is that Reggie with the turret that is on the rear side of it? I'm curious about what all this particular device does. I mean, how is it integrated into the game? yeah so that's a beautiful mechanical sculpt from Brad and it is a personality core right and he's got his own he's running animations that he can react to you and to what's happening in the game and so he can look around look at the action he can move around he'll react to what you're doing in the game so as he's talking to you, you can also get some feedback from him. And then it just so happens that when he turns around, that's when turrets show up. So he doesn't have a turret on his back. You're mistaken. There just happens to be a turret who shows up when he looks away.
    53:17
    But yeah, so it gives us the ability to have two pretty lively mechs in the same place. The turret has integrated lighting for both the laser the red laser in the center and the gun muzzle flashes that we can utilize in the game so like different cores will like the Reggie have like a different color iris and stuff like that will it okay yeah he's got a cyan iris and it's got a whole lot of personality to it you know it's just like when you watch Wheatley doing so much expression you think about this character that has no face no eyebrows but it emotes so well like and we've got a lot of that in this with the screen on the front where the eyeball that you know we can go through and and and play all these uh these loops and things like that that will go along with it's it you know it's it's like rudy and funhouse talking to you and coaching you only the entire time but interacting with you the entire time in the game and i really do think people are going to fall in love with reggie it's such a great character especially with with mark but behind the voice of it i've set in with mark as he's doing voice work and i know he's got the range for it i would have been loved to have been a fly on the wall in the recording process if you guys were there to direct him on any of it because i know that he can just start ad-libbing and just doing his own thing but i'm definitely curious uh to hear all the call-outs that he's going to be doing for this yeah mark is mark is just the best. He's such a talented guy and he's so much fun.
    54:58
    We've got a ton of call-outs in this game. There's a ton of call-outs in this game. He's really brought this character to life.
    55:09
    Like I said, I can't wait for you guys to get in there. Once Michael forgives me for unleashing all these files on him.
    55:20
    It was great. As a core, it's hard you're an eyeball you've got to bring character and personality there's a part that always sticks out in my mind when you first kind of get weighty after he's like i need you to catch me because i could die when i dismount and he falls to the ground he's like ah he didn't catch me and you go to stick him in this machine you stick him in there he's like uh i can't do this with you watch me this is a robot this is a robot eye and he's and you're like whatever so you stare at him he's like no no seriously turn around i i cannot do this while you're watching so it's it's lines like that that bring the personality to a lifeless robot eye and i can't wait to see how mark has taken reggie's character and turned it into something special yeah we write we wrote all these jokes and all this dialogue and it's just like is this gonna work i mean we think this is really funny but then you start listening to these recordings from mark and you're like oh my gosh this really works and then you get them into the game and you're like yeah this really works and We were very fortunate to get some feedback from Valve where they were like, yeah, this captures the spirit of the universe. We get what's going on here. And I was like, I'm going to frame that and put that on my wall. I don't know what more I could want. I've had Weird Al. Weird Al said nice things about me. Now Valve has said I've captured the spirit of the universe. I'm done. That's it.
    56:43
    I'm done. What else am I going to do? Forget a Twippy. you you just framed that on your wall but this is my crowning achievement yeah i would take one of those too but no one's offering them so it's fine i don't know you guys this this game looks insane i know we're we're at the beginning of the year and blah blah blah but seriously this game has to be the best i mean i haven't got hands on it yet so i can't can't confirm but that's the thing like there are certain games you look at it first look and you know something special under that glass right you look at it and something catches your eye and says hey you've got to play this game there's something special about it and i can tell from these pictures in this video that people are going to want to play this game and they're going to want to keep coming back for more and more and knowing your guys's track record with princess bride with final resistance with weird owl the software and the code and the rules are amazing you have consultants like colin mccalpine helping you out and telling you and giving you pointers and stuff like that i mean you guys have really made a special product here. And I hope the rest of the community and the industry sees that as well. One thing I do want to bring up that is different with P3 is the ability to include animation onto the main screen. So tell me about how you've integrated the animation and the immersion into the gameplay. And tell me about the level of complexity, because a lot of pinball machines, when you look at the play field, it's a static play field, but you have a dynamic play field so what are the challenges of integrating a dynamic play field into the gameplay there's a lot going on here and i honestly believe this is the most sophisticated graphics package ever in a pinball machine um i don't think anything competes with what we're doing computationally from a graphics perspective um i think hub we really and michael brought this up earlier like We wanted Hub to present like a decorated piece of wood to hit that pinball feel that people want. It's got inserts that will be very familiar to you. It's got beautiful art on it, and it communicates things well.
    59:00
    And it creates this, like, what people want as a World Under Glass experience. And this is the most World Under Glass game I have ever seen in how it presents a room. It doesn't present a bunch of things around the play field. It's like this is an almost to scale room that you are playing in. And that's really cool. But then we also wanted to bring that reconfiguration and dynamic elements to this hub mode. And when you do things like hit the right ramp, it's so cool. You hit the right ramp. And instead of just turning off the inserts because the inserts don't apply because the ramp moved out of the way, all of a sudden the floor drops out, lowers the inserts, and these arms reconfigure tiles with no inserts on them to block it. So it's like your whole playfield just reconfigured in front of your eyes. You know, when you hit the turret, hurry up, start. The center playfield, accordions open, and its ball comes up. And then if this turret turns around and starts shooting at it it like these dynamic elements are not something you can do on a decorated piece of wood But I think we still managed to maintain that feel of what people expect from a pinball machine within the hub mode. Yeah, like on the right-hand side, when you hit the side targets, the valves on the gel pipe turn and open up, and it starts filling up more and more with the repulsion gel. And then once you open them all up, it will splash repulsion gel up on the right-hand side, and that's when that kickback's on. So if you come up the right ramp or the center ramp and you come down there, it's going to hit the bouncy gel and go bouncing right back out around the orbit back at you. And it's just really cool, like all these things that this is the benefit of having a dynamic display as our play field that we can we can do a lot of these things. And it's and, you know, I just every time I see it, when Ian first showed the prototype and worked up the the inserts dropping into the floor and the panels folding up and doing it, I was just like, that's magic. That's that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. And so we've got little monitors that come up for your. for your hurry ups for different aspects of the game. The whole room just reconfigures in front of you. And it's really cool. And then when you go into the chambers, then we can present the chambers in a way that chamber needs to be presented to the player. And so we've got some that are like travel modes where you're basically going and working your way through the mode like you would in a portal chamber. And then you've got some that are just, you know, that are presented more like a static room where you're basically putting, reconfiguring the room to fit, like in Discouragement Beam, where you hit the spinner and it spins the laser around the room, destroying stuff. And when that laser goes and it hits your slingshot or your flippers, then those slingshots become disabled for a second, flippers become no hold for a second until it passes by and then it comes on there. So it can actually interact with the physical elements that we have there too. So there's just a whole lot of So really, really fun stuff. I love how we're able to use the graphics to immerse you more into the world, the screen. I think that we really wanted to take – we kept Hub traditional, and we kept the test chambers really different. We really wanted to push what we could do, what people had experienced before within the test chambers. The two first-person modes, which Stephen called travel modes, which are actually captures from Source Engine. They are levels that I created in the Portal 2 authoring tool to create the experience that you go through within the pinball game and present a first-person perspective on that screen. is just wild and something that I hope people appreciate. But it's also isolated to two chambers out of our six in case you don't like it because it's different. And then the other two rooms, like we've got amazing real-time lighting. Like as your panels move, you see the shadows react and adapt. The high-energy pellet has a light source on it that illuminates the floor around it as it bounces across these panels in the room. And we're doing really cool things, I think really cool things, from a graphics perspective and a visual perspective that really no one has ever done before in a pinball machine.
    63:52
    And we get to do it with real assets, right? That's the thing. This isn't like a facsimile of, oh, this is mostly what these things look like in the Portal universe. No, we have got the assets from the game in our levels. That's why they look right. They are right. And so it's a great way to decorate the universe and have it really feel like Portal when it's really Portal.
    64:16
    So with the assets, you've got the visual assets. I mean, how far along with audio-wise, like sound effects of the turret, sound effects of when you hit a portal or launch a portal? And with audio assets, do you have the song still alive?
    64:32
    Yes. Yes, we have the good stuff. The good stuff. I love that. Yeah, it's very hard to not get immediately excited and say, no, this is going to be my new ringtone. No, this is going to be my ringtone. None of these are going to be my ringtone.
    64:49
    But right. And then being able to collaborate with Scott again, Scott Denisey, to, you know, have him work his magic, make tracks from these tracks that are like appropriate for pinball that really have the right, you know, that have the right feeling but are grounded and built from the bones of the portal music super cool but yeah we have we have all the real stuff this is pretty rad i'm excited for this for the fact that i feel like portal is different than what has been done in pinball before not only conceptually and gameplay wise but it is a theme that i don't feel like you can find at any other company and i hope this brings in fresh eyes it brings in people going what is this what is pinball and they look at this and they go i need to be a part of this because this is something special i mean we've heard people play the princess bride having not seen the movie and then checked out the movie and we're like oh this is really good um and so you know portal is is more than one movie, right? Portal is a whole universe where you can go down a rabbit hole and there's a lot of VR experiences. There's a whole bunch of really cool stuff out there. It's a fun journey for people who haven't gone through the portal. They should check it out. So speaking of Portal, on the playfield on the right side below your core, there is a captive ball with a portal behind it. is this stationary? Because it looks like the aerial faith plate loops back around into that area. How does this work? So that's a portal. You hit the captive ball, and it goes through the portal, and it could go anywhere.
    66:41
    During our basic gameplay loop, it miraculously appears in your back box, goes up, comes back down, and reloads itself.
    66:53
    But that is the Edgeless Slave Safety Cube, which is held there. And after a certain number of trips, you will actually hit that Edgeless Slave Safety Cube. It will pop out onto your play field in an excursion beam. And if you hit the appropriate target and turn off the excursion beam, the Edgeless Safety Cube will escape into ESC multiball, and you will start a two-ball multiball. So it's actually a really cool, like, it is a captive ball that can go anywhere. It's a captive ball that isn't really captive, that can escape at any time. During multi-balls, that captive ball will portal up to the loft, and you can play in the upper play field. And if you complete a moat jump during that multi-ball, that ball will come into play. So you've now brought your captive ball into play as an atom ball.
    67:48
    That's awesome. Portals free us up to do amazing things and magical things. And the engineering of how you do this is really neat and really cool, and we'll keep that magical for now. But if you're familiar with other P3 games that do clever things with ball, placement ball, taking balls and adding balls, you can probably start to figure out how we did some of these tricks, but the magic is there. Yeah, but they're not locked in paths to your question, right? We were just like, oh, it's a portal. We mean we can take it off the play field and we can put it anywhere else we want it to, right? Like it's any portal you see we're using as a portal. And so if in one mode you get used to the way the linkage has worked, we're going to relink those portals in a chamber in a different way. And as Ian said in Hub, that captive ball gets linked to a lot of different places throughout the course of just Hub.
    68:50
    And that added ball is stacked on every multi-ball. So if you want to head on up to the loft during any multi-ball and try to add another ball in, try to add another ball in, try to add another ball in, we want to see how many you can stack. Well, we are getting a little close to the end of the episode, and we want to give you guys the opportunity for final thoughts, areas that you want to focus on that we didn't ask you about or something that you really want to bring up. Go ahead. I want to say how awesome it's been to work with Ian and how awesome it's been to work with Brad. I've worked with Stephen before. It's awesome to work with him. I've worked with Jerry before. It's awesome to work with him. We're used to working with those people.
    69:32
    We used to work with Scott Denise. see it's awesome work with him but uh ian has brought uh so many cool good ideas it's been great to work with him i think he you know his tournament expertise has really been super super valuable as we've talked about rules and you think you have a great idea and he tells you know doodlebug that's from doodle what year is doodlebug from him oh dear put me on the spot there oh well at any rate you know we can't have we can't have good ideas because it's all been done in pinball before so that's what he's really helped us push ourselves to the limit to find truly new ideas uh and brad's artwork and just sort of he's just a cool guy in general and he's participated in so many meetings and i think that our love for the portal universe is on display and unlike so many passion projects that we have in the world this one we actually get to share with other people and people get to like see and experience and have in their homes you know like you get passionate about something but then you're just like oh well this is just for me like this is out there for anybody and that's we're super fortunate to be able to to do this it's awesome i want to say that michael's just okay it's the nicest thing anyone has said about me all year so thank you and if anyone is wondering whether the placement and start of high energy pellet is inspired by doodlebug the fact that michael could name doodlebug in this uh this conversation might give you a hint as to the answer to that question you know that doodlebug podcast is going to be so excited that that old game has gotten so much talk recently they're going to have two more listeners after this okay yeah but i just want to shout out the whole team i want to tell Like everybody has done an amazing job. And I mean, we really do. We've been extremely lucky to have put together these people at this company to everybody. And we've been lucky with the with the properties and stuff we've gotten to work on. Everybody's been super passionate about all the projects we've gotten to work on. And so this is my pitch for the P3 in general. You let's say you've been curious about it for a long time and you're you're looking at portal and you're like, this might be the thing that comes across. You buy Portal and you instantly have access to Portal and 23 other games that you can have in the space of one machine in your house. I work for the company. Of course, I'm biased, but I'm also an owner. And it's one of the coolest things in the world that when you get new pinball game day and you just go upstairs and you just download a new game and you've got a whole new gaming experience. It's the only third-party platform anywhere in pinball. That means anybody out there can go and download the SDK, start cranking on their game, get it, ship it, publish it to people, and every P3 owner on the planet can buy your game and download it. And the games are like nothing. They're like $150, $200 or something like that. And you get a whole new gaming experience with these things. I'm going to shout out Birdwatcher, Ian's game. It's awesome. And I'm really hoping Birdwatcher comes to Portal. We'll see. but he's developed a game that goes across all platforms. We've got some really great third party developers that are out there doing this. And I think it's one of the most exciting things to, to see all these creative ideas that would not have any other way of making it to the pinball market. You can't go to another manufacturer and say, I want you to take this crazy idea I have and make it available for people. We can do that. We've made it available for everybody to do it. And so there's a lot of cool third-party games coming out there, plus all the first-party games that we've been cranking out year after year after year. So I hope if you're seeing this and you're getting interested, come by our booth at TPF, and we'll have just an ungodly amount of P3s there where you can go by and you can sample just basically almost every game we've got on the system there and check out Portal and play it. And come say hi to us. Sounds good, Kerry. I want to know your thoughts now. final thoughts um uh first of all obviously thank you to scott and josh for allowing me to come on here and uh shoot the the stuff about this game i gotta watch my language but uh because uh talking to jerry about it i was kind of geeking out like oh is he gonna have this is it gonna have that and he's like i don't know i'm just the project manager uh you gotta i was like so to be able to talk to you guys to get you know answers and uh fellow portal fans is a truly a treat and hearing everything that you're implementing into this game is getting me more excited to actually play it. And for those that are watching this or listening to this, it is the week of Texas Pinball Festival. These will be there to play. And Jerry told me how many he's going to be bringing, and I really want you guys to encourage him to bring more.
    74:33
    I know he wants to show off all the other games and what his system can do, but I really do feel like this game in particular is something that needs to be very prominent at Texas Pinball Festival, and having more of them is going to give more access to those without having to wait in line. But I truly love what you've done with the game from what I can see so far, and I'm really looking forward to playing it. All right, Josh, you get the wrap-up.
    75:01
    You know, I'm jealous of Kerry because he gets to go play this game. uh you guys that live in texas that i got to play this game i'm jealous of you guys this is something i have said i've said multiple times in this podcast it's something special if you're if you're intimidated by the system itself and don't think of it as a modular but you're buying portal the pinball machine right because you can get this in your home yeah you have the accessibility of everything else but you don't have to feel obligated to that either like looking at just this this looks like an amazing experience itself don't be afraid to uh give it a try like i said i'm always about getting your hands on it and texas pinball festival is a great place to get your hands on it i think this game is going to be it is the best showcase of the p3 system in my opinion right now this this utilizes the tricks of all the wonderful things it can do i i just can't wait i can't wait to get my hands on one of these you guys like as soon as i found this out that this was the game i've been giddy about this this this has been really really cool because i feel like it's a theme that's geared towards me and and to carry and and it just it's crazy it's crazy to see something like this uh like i said like scott and i said earlier if you do want that thousand dollar discount email us here at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we'll get you in touch with jerry so we can get you on the list for a p3 yeah or specifically for By the way, the discount is for the entire system. So getting the P3 and the Portal game. Or P3 and Princess Bride. Yeah, exactly. It does have to come with the module. So you're getting into the game. And so we're just making sure. It's not like just getting a module because that's a crazy discount anyway. But, yeah.
    76:57
    All right. Guys, if they want to get a hold of you, Multimorphic Team, If you want them to get a hold of you, how do you want them to get a hold of you? You can find out more on Multimorphic.com. We'll have everything up there. We're on Facebook if you want to follow Multimorphic there, Instagram.
    77:18
    So, yeah, I'm on Facebook. Find me, Steven Sober. I don't hide. I don't bite. You can come and say hi. Come see us at the show. Say hi. I think, Ian, you're going to be there too, right? I will. I will be in Texas. So you get to see Ian. talk about birds.
    77:36
    That's the main sites. If you want to follow us, follow the company on Facebook. That's a good idea. We're always pumping out new information about every time there's a new release or anything like that. We'll have a lot of information there. And then, Kerry, how do people get a hold of you? Don't make it about me, but you can find me on YouTube, but that's it.
    77:58
    I'm definitely going to be making content talking about this game as soon as it's revealed. So I'll be doing live. I might even do some streaming of the video game to make people a little bit more knowledgeable about it. And, Kerry, plug your... Him being humble. Plug how they can watch you and consume your content. Plug that, too.
    78:14
    Oh, just on YouTube. YouTube.com slash Kerry Hardy. Don't make it about him. He's slumming it with us on Loser Kid. This award-winning, driving-the-industry YouTube show. and Kerry's like, I'm just here because I'm a nerd for Portal. Yeah, I was like, I want to talk to these guys.
    78:34
    He's also a pretty good restorer, by the way. I gotta say, I called Kerry because I saw a post he had made and I'm like, hey, Kerry, how you doing? And he's like, cut the crap. I was like, what are you talking about, Kerry? I was like, I know you know.
    78:51
    I've talked to Jerry and he says you guys are doing the interview. I want in on this magic. Well, we love you on our show anyway, Kerry, so you're more than welcome to join us. Okay, Scott, if you want people to get a hold of us. We are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. And you can find us on all the socials. Josh is really good at keeping up on that. If you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com, right?
    79:19
    Yep. And at Loser Kid Pinball on all the socials, Facebook, YouTube, all that jazz. so uh and if you want our swag silverballswag.com slash loser kid uh the baseball jerseys are very comfortable and same with the hockey jerseys and so uh yeah and uh i think that does it for you know i just feel like i'm missing something but it's just been such an awesome show i want to thank everyone for i mean it was not easy getting six people together at one time across three different time zones so i appreciate you guys coming on for sharing your time with us i I know you're more enthusiastic than us. We just found out. You guys have been dealing with it for over a year. But thanks again for coming on.
    79:59
    Give these guys a handshake. Say congratulations if you see them at Texas Pinball Festival.