Pinball

About the Game

The game is inspired by the traditional pinball game we played in childhood and brick breaker video games such as Breakout. As a turn-based battle game, each turn a player shoots one of three pinballs, damaging opponent’s pinballs by collisions. Meanwhile, pinballs can also break the bricks in the arena, obtaining different buffs. The goal of the game is eliminating all the pinballs of the opponent.

Core Gameplay

In one’s turn, all the collisions between one’s pinballs and the opponent’s will cause damage on the opponent’s corresponding pinball. We allow player to cause multiple times of damage in a single turn, which encourages players to find the most effective aim angle and use strategy such as combos or “corner kill”. The damage equation is as follows:

The arena consists of different kinds of bricks. Most of the bricks are breakable, and some of the breakable bricks are even revivable. Consequently, the structure of the arena is always changing.

Whenever a pinball breaks a brick, it has a certain chance to get healing or buff, which gives player’s more options instead of blindly heading to the opponent’s pinballs. Players can also receive positive feedback in random collisions.

In an early stage, we designed a skill system: different pinballs have different skills. Additionally, collisions of one’s pinballs can accumulate the skill slot which let the player to release ultimate skill of pinballs. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for the team to implement the system.

User Interface Design

Playtest

We carried out playtest among the participants and mentors in the winter camp. Though the major problem was the inconsistency of players’ synchronization. We found several problems in our design:

• The pinball’s trajectory often mismatched player’s expectation.

• Because of the randomness of collision, it was hard for players to come up with effective strategies.