This pinball table was a project for Fundamentals of Game Design and Development. The objective was to design a table, while using ideas we learned about video game level design. This was a project done individually during the first couple weeks of the course.
I was inspired by the movie, 300, which seemed like it would be great source material because it was very iconic and recognizable (especially amongst my audience of gamers). I started by adding elements that would make for an exciting pinball game to the table. I added a path that goes up the left side, so that as soon as the player releases the plunger, they see the satisfying reaction of the ball shooting all the way to the top of the table. I also added some bumpers so that players can have the goal of getting their ball into a place where they quickly get lots of points. The last thing that I thought about during the first pass at the table was how it is frustrating when the player hits the ball with the flippers at the bottom of the table, and has to wait for a long time until it comes back and they can make a meaningful change in the game again. I added a feature where some targets periodically pop up right in front of the flippers so that the player can have short bursts of frenetic button mashing.
After a couple iterations of table design, I started skinning the table. I used several assets from the movie including sounds and screen shots. There are also other visual elements that are consistent with the motifs from the movie that I added, like the blood splatters. I skinned the different parts of the table with things that were analogous to events or places in the movie. For example parts of the table show the hot gates or the goat path. The targets and bumpers also represent the waves of Persian attacks, Xerxes’ beasts etc.
This project was built with a shareware program called Future Pinball, which is also required to play the table.
