BlahCade 256: Let's Play Garfield and Snoopy

We’re taking a spin on Peanuts Snoopy Pinball and Garfield Pinball, the last two carry overs from the Zen Pinball Party mobile app into Pinball FX.

Note	For those that still need to take advantage of transferring owned titles from the Epic Games Store, use the Pinball FX Founders Form to register your preference.

Chat on Discord

Join us on our Discord server to chat about the show.

BlahCade Discord Server

Watch and listen

And here’s the podcast audio:

BlahCade is available everywhere good podcasts are hosted:

Show notes

01:00 - Some warm up banter

Topics include:

Getting old technology to talk with new technology.
Pink Panther "Diamond Chase" side comp at BPAC.

15:00 - PS5 and Xbox reviews

While we set up the Peanuts Snoopy Pinball Let’s Play, we talk about some of the review reactions out there in the media.

All reviews seem to be focusing on the Zen Coins aspect and the season pass aspect where the "monetization" piece happens. All are saying that it is not worth repurchasing them all because they are on FX3.

All are totally missing the fact that you can purchase the tables and that the Pinball Pass is optional. Oh well.

20:00 - Let’s Play Peanuts Snoopy Pinball

This table is very easy to understand and Chris strolls through a bit of gameplay.

There are a few good mode tips to go for if you are playing in the Pinball FX Events.

Also, double-stacked outlanes play exactly like Stern’s hungry double-stacked outlanes like Metallica and The Simpsons Pinball Party.

37:00 - Let’s Play Garfield Pinball

The Garfield Pinball table was one of the last tables released on Zen Pinball Party. We didn’t get an opportunity to play this during the beta builds.

So this table is "new to us".

This table is a bit of a mixed bag. The problems center around the usual issues of hard to decipher shotmaking and knowing where to shoot because of uninformative callouts.

This game also allows you to stack several modes, and collect them even while you’re in multiball. This stacking approach is quite similar to Williams' Monster Bash in that regard, but not as well executed.

This section also covers our tips for Zen about their instructional design for in-game instructions. They need

50:00 - Instructional design for in-game instructions

On some tables the way the instructions are ordered are not quite right. You want to lay out the basic instructions first like how to get a skillshot, increase multipliers, and start a mode, start an easy multiball. These game elements are all things you will do in the first five minutes of play.

Then later on in the instructions go into how to score in game modes and unlock the more lucrative scoring modes. What modes can you stack? Can you run multiball during modes?

Back to Garfield gameplay at about 55:00. There seem to be some oddities with how the designers describe the shots. Things like "center loops" turn out to be the loop off the right flipper. The language seems to be inconsistent with what we expect as players. Maybe this is a "us" problem and not a "zen" problem here.

Thanks for listening

Thanks for watching or listening to this episode: we hope you enjoyed it.

If you liked the episode, please consider leaving a review about the show on Apple Podcasts. Reviews matter, and we appreciate the time you invest in writing them.

If you want to Say thanks for this episode, click the link to learn how you can help the show.

If you want to make your digital pinball cabinet look amazing, why not use our Cabinet backbox art for your build?