While it may not be the most mainstream and popular niche in gaming, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for pinball. Or, as I like to call it, pingball, mostly because it really annoys anyone who hears me say it, a comedy technique which I charitably describe as me being “delightfully impish”.
Perhaps it harks back to the days of playing the casino level in childhood classic Sonic Heroes (Big The Cat’s “the city that never sleeps!” voiceline still lives rent free in my head). Or, maybe it was playing various pinball games both with and against my father across the PS2, 3, and 4, constantly practising and learning the tables to beat each other’s scores in a friendly competition across different modes. The gold standard is the Pinball FX series, with a ton of awesome licensed and original tables, a realistic feel, and fun unique mechanics that elevate a digital experience beyond that of a physical table.
If I’m being honest, the fact that I’m a sucker for pinball games is one of my core boomer traits, right up there with preferring to own all my movies on DVD and Blu-Ray (yep, I’m one of those people). There’s something about the fast paced simplicity of the game, practice to perfection mindset, and the ability to play the game entirely solo, but with the high score system still allowing for a competitive element that really appeals to me.
So, imagine my delight when I noticed that I had a horror-themed pinball game sitting in my Epic Games library, right next to the other billion free titles I’ve claimed over the years. I know a lot of people refuse to use the Epic Games store, mewling that they simply couldn’t have another launcher on their PC, despite the fact that like, five icons is really less than all the individual game icons you would have from installing games individually anyway. For whatever reason, a lot of people are biased against the store, and while I can admit it’s not perfect, and doesn’t hold a candle to Steam, it does have an extremely generous free game policy, of which I take full advantage.
Every week for years, they’ve given away 1-3 free games, including some truly amazing and very expensive titles, and no amount of people dismissing me with “yeah but it’s on Epic” can quell the shrewd consumer in me that will redeem a great game when it’s on offer. Even if I have no actual interest in a title at first, it’s still worth claiming on the off chance I’m won over by a trailer or word of mouth years later, only to discover “oh hey, I own that game already!”. Good times.
It was under these circumstances that I came into possession of a copy of this game, Demon’s Tilt. And, while browsing the horror category of my library recently, I rediscovered my ownership of it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to review a short, self contained time killing game, so I downloaded the title, and got to playing.
What Demon’s Tilt Wants To Be
Before we get into discussing what this game did wrong or right, I would like to discuss more about how the game sells itself, drawing primarily from its Epic Game Store Listing, as that’s where I personally came into possession the game. At its core, this game is billed as a single, occult-themed pinball table, with a retro/pixel art visual style, thematic music, and gameplay incorporating bullet hell, shoot ‘em up, and hack & slash gameplay elements, as well as the inclusion of boss fights.
This is in addition to everything you would expect as standard from any pinball game, such as multiball, jackpots, mini side tables, etc. The game is presenting itself as a loving, hand crafted indie title that promises a punchy and mysterious experience for the player, and sets itself aside from the average pinball game with the over-the-top visuals and theme, plus genre-bending gameplay additions.
Demon’s Tilt First Impressions and Technical Issues
My very first experience with Demon’s Tilt was not an encouraging one to say the least. I had recently found myself between jobs, and to try and cheer me up, my parents had taken me to visit my elderly grandmother who lives halfway across the country. It was a nice getaway, and I enjoyed the opportunity to unplug and take a break for a few days. But it also presented a unique issue – I was at the home of a woman well into her 90s, who has never had an internet connection in her life, or expressed any interest in using or owning a computer. She lives in a care home now, but whether or not her empty house ever had an internet connection in the past (it didn’t), I now found myself completely off the grid for a few days.
And that was when I discovered, much to my dismay, that this simple pinball game, for whatever godforsaken reason, was online-only. Epic Games was fine with me booting up my owned titles offline, that wasn’t the issue. The problem is that the main game itself will not even load the main menu without being able to contact the game’s servers to check global leaderboards. You may not think this is such a big deal “who doesn’t have an internet connection these days?” well, I know a person; in this case, it was me, and ultimately, I was directly disadvantaged by this pointless restriction on play.
I’d understand a fully multiplayer title like Fortnite or Dead By Daylight refusing to operate under these conditions, but in the case of what is essentially a single player game, I see absolutely no reason why it can’t just save my scores locally to send to the leaderboard later, or simply have the game not bother to record them while playing offline. It’s not like the leaderboard even works anyway (which we’ll get to later), and I’m generally opposed to always-online single player games for reasons of easy access and game preservation.
This issue genuinely meant that I simply couldn’t play the video game while I was visiting that house, and it would be about a month before I would get around to revisiting Demon’s Tilt. And that was where I ran into issue number two.
When I was finally able to actually get the game to boot up, I was faced with the absolute gauntlet that hurdles every new game experience – rebinding the controls. As a left handed person, the very first thing I have to do in literally any new PC game is remap all the controls that are close to WASD to closer towards the arrow keys. That means that keys bound to Q, E&R are useless, the space bar is useless, tab and left shift are useless, etc. For such a simple game that revolves mostly around just two flippers, the rebind experience was about as frustrating as they could have possibly made it.
Now, much to my extreme frustration, the game automatically minimises if you try to press the print screen key (???) so you’ll have to make do with a crappy photograph of my laptop screen to get an idea of the control menu – apologies in advance.
This is the control scheme which I was able to figure out after about fifteen minutes of fiddling, wiping, and re-trying. Now here’s the thing – tilt is one of the core game mechanics here. Hell, the game is called Demon’s Tilt. This is a simulation of how you may physically shake or tap a real pinball table to slyly affect the outcome in your favour. Plenty of in-game menus and hints aggressively inform you that you should tilt the board, and there is even a little indicator of how much you can get away with on screen at all times. That’s why, to my great surprise, I found that all the nudge controls were unbound by default.
That’s right – unless you go in and manually change the settings, the titular game mechanic is literally not possible to do. See where it says nudge right/left/up/down? Yep, completely blank. Why even have a setting available for something if it’s so unimportant that you can literally just assign nothing to it and still leave it in the game?
But the rebind problems were more than just an issue with the defaults. As you can see, all the options are against a large brown background with a large gap between the category and choice, making it hard to tell which keybind was associated with which option. It didn’t help that sometimes, if you selected one option, it would apply that selection to the menu item below it instead. If you notice the WASD selections, bear in mind that for every one of those, I tried to put the key in the slot above the one shown in the menu, but it would always apply the selection to the cell below the one I was asking for.
The menu also has various names for different controls that all imply they are nudge-related, some which say “move” and some which say “nudge”. These concepts don’t really seem to be different, and so you end up with multiple sets of controls which seem to do basically the same thing.
Often, some options would simply refuse to accept your choice – for example, if you changed a key to Z, then changed your mind and wanted to go with X, it would just be stuck as Z. Unless you hit restore to default and rebound everything again, X would not be an option. While selecting my layout, I had to restore to default about four times before I found a setup I was happy with, and this went on for long enough that it was a genuine accessibility issue. There were also some keys it straight up wouldn’t recognise. If you wanted to use left control or alt for something… just forget about it.
If you selected a key that was already bound, rather than giving you the chance to swap them or a warning, it would just blank out the old key selection, and with so many key slots that were empty by default, it became easy to forget which keys were important, or just there for no reason. Not only was this menu frustrating, it was pointless, as in real gameplay, you genuinely only need to use the flippers and launch button, with a very occasional visit from the left arrow key. That’s about it. Giving you so many overwhelming options when 95% of them don’t even need to be used is nothing but a frustrating waste of time.
The in-game on-screen control prompts are set to the default layout only, so if you do change your keys, the game will simply display the default layout, rather than having a dynamic element that will change to display your choices. This is a basic quality of life fix that would benefit literally everyone. Before I’d even got to play any pinball, the technical issues that plague the process of even getting started with this game had put me in a bad mood. If you don’t count games that literally do not allow you to change the keybinds at all, then this is the worst rebinding experience I have ever had in a video game.
Demon’s Tilt Gameplay
Despite the hurdles I’d faced to get to this point, I was ready to actually get started with the game, and as a big video pinball fan, I was all fired up to love this game. But unfortunately, this one just wasn’t a jackpot, and I felt like it missed the mark both in the small details and in huge, overarching mechanics.
The Demon’s Tilt Physics Engine
I think the biggest issue that was apparent immediately was also the most fundamental – the physics engine of this game just doesn’t feel right.
The best way I can describe it was that the ball felt too ‘floaty’. A real pinball machine uses a fairly large, heavy metal ball bearing, and slams it around a rubber, plastic and metal obstacle course at high speeds achievable by ingenious design and brute mechanical power. The slam of the flippers, the thunder of the ball, the clang and whirr of the machine all contribute to a great pinball experience. In Demon’s Tilt, the ball felt weightless, like there was no momentum behind it. It would lazily glide from area to area, but it always felt distinctly like there was a predetermined maximum speed it could travel at, rather than a real ball which is limited only by the actual law of physics for its potential speed.
While you could get a little bit of speed going, it always felt like it was capped or scripted, and broke any amount of immersion that this could be a real ball. Honestly, it didn’t feel like the physics engine had progressed much since Atari’s 1977(!) title “Video Pinball”, a neat but incredibly rudimentary arcade cabinet that, while a neat gimmick, is objectively less fun than an actual Pinball table. While the quality of the graphics in Demon’s Tilt have undoubtedly taken a step up, the weightless floatiness of the ball hasn’t progressed much in that fifty year technology gap, and that’s sadly just not good enough. When I could load up Pinball FX and have an incredibly advanced and real-feel physics engine from a pinball game with a weighty yet nimble ball, this game offers an objectively weaker experience. You’re constantly taken out of the immersion and reminded that you’re playing a pinball themed video game, not a pinball table that happens to be on a computer.
It goes beyond just the way the ball behaves and feels however, as a lot of movement is based on teleports and forced movements of the ball. While a real pinball table can snap the ball into place and artificially move it to some degree using magnets, this game relies too much on certain points on the map moving the ball from one place to another artificially, using literal teleporters to take it from one part of the table to the next. When the only way the ball can progress its way higher up the table is by being magically teleported, all that indicates is that the board design itself isn’t open enough for it to happen naturally.
Even launching the ball is handled by charging the shot up to pretty much max and going through a teleport that kills any momentum, rather than the launch power determining speed, lane selection, etc. With the amount of teleports and forced movement on the board, you feel even less like you’re in control of the ball, and more like all of the skillful shots, fun physics, and fast paced action of a pinball table are handled for you, leaving you in control of only the simple stuff.
Demon’s Tilt Genre-Bending Elements
I’m going to put my cards on the table right now and say this – I’m sick to the back teeth of every indie game thinking the perfect recipe to success is to Frankenstein together a couple of trending genres into one mega-game. Quite honestly, if I check my Steam discovery queue and get recommended another ‘deckbuilding roguelite’, ‘bullet hell soulslike’ or ‘tower defence metroidvania’ I’m going to scream. I genuinely wish I could mark entire genres as “not interested” to filter out the indie game slop that look flashy and interesting on the surface, but ultimately, are just riding the wave of being a carbon copy of one specific game that already blew up. But for now, I’ll put aside my prejudice towards gimmicky genre-bending elements, and rate their implementation specifically in this game.
Hack & Slash/Shoot ‘Em Up
While these are technically two distinct concepts, the game uses them pretty much interchangeably in its marketing to mean “there are enemies on the board”. If you hit them with the ball, it generally passes straight through them and they disappear as if they are no obstacle, and you can wipe out hordes of them fairly simply. This could be somewhat satisfying if they followed any kind of pattern or were at all difficult to hit, but so many enemies spawn and then float around the board at all times that tearing through them doesn’t feel like it requires any skill or precision shots. It happens as much by accident as anything else, which isn’t satisfying.
For me, the comparison to Pinball FX is unavoidable, as that series does its hardest to recreate the feel of a real, mechanical pinball table, but on your PC/console. If you consider how low level enemies function on one of their tables, for example, the American Dad Pinball, the little defeatable Rodgers are actually on mechanical plastic paddles that pop up. They move, can go up and down, give a huge score bonus to hit, dance in front of various lanes, and give big score bonuses when they’re all wiped out. Sure a lucky shot can take out one or two, but generally, hitting them feels like it takes more skill, and the mechanics feel more thought out than “the whole board teeming with easy to hit enemies”.
The idea of hitting enemies on a pinball table in not anathema to the game, but the way it is handled in Demon’s Tilt feels more like an excuse to implement a hack and slash ‘satisfying’ horde extermination gimmick, rather than any attempt to make them a meaningful challenge to defeat.
Demon’s Tilt also includes a number of so-called ‘boss fights’, but these generally boil down to ‘hit the boss with the ball a bunch’. It’s pretty uninspired and again, easy to do, with many bosses being turned to pulp within the course of normal gameplay, even if you make no specific effort to defeat them. If we compare this to FX’s Iron man or Doctor Strange table, the difference is night and day.
In those, boss fights are triggered by scoring in specific lanes and hitting triggers, which will bring a meaningful change to the board. You will often need to score a specific set of lanes in a certain order, hit an obscure part of the board a number of times, or complete any number of unique and tough challenges in a set time to face off and defeat that table’s villains. The Iron Man table is a veritable masterclass in making pinball bosses feel consequential and fun, whereas Demon’s Tilt takes a very laid back and underwhelming approach that borders on the lazy. Sure you can trigger some little side tables, which are a small mercy to visit, but in terms of the actual bosses, it’s just a matter of hitting them over and over until the “jackpot” logo displays. It’s just not that fun.
Bullet Hell
My feelings on this topic are mixed – this game is a bad bullet hell, but I don’t like bullet hells, so to me, this was a mercy. I would describe this game more as maybe a ‘bullet limbo’ or ‘bullet poorly ventilated hotel room on a hot day’. It’s not necessarily pleasant, but it’s not hell. The so-called bullets are few and far between, they come in small bursts, but it’s in small enough bursts that they’re easy to handle and avoid. While I was happy with this, as I don’t like bullet hells, I think someone sold on this game by the promise of a bullet hell would end up being pretty disappointed.
The bullets will stop your ball dead in its tracks, another thing which contributes to the lack of speed and momentum the ball has, but at least it isn’t instant death or some other extreme punishment like with most bullet hells. It can be a little frustrating, and I can definitely see other fans of fast-paced pinball becoming annoyed at this, but generally, the bullets aren’t thick or common enough for it to be a significant issue for me.
Overall, I would describe the implementation of this feature as un-obnoxious but under-baked. It’s not ‘bullet hell-y’ enough for bullet hell fans, but too ‘bullet hell-y’ for bullet hell haters. In the end, this token attempt at a bullet hell mechanic is only there to justify them adding a hot commodity genre tag to the game in the Steam store, and not to provide any meaningful contribution to gameplay.
Demon’s Tilt Table Design
While we can discuss the visual design of the pinball table in a later section, I would like to address how it feels from a gameplay perspective. The table was very ‘tall’ in Demon’s Tilt. What I like about the FX titles is that it feels like you’re really standing at a pinball machine. The tables have realistic proportions, and are housed within real tables like they would be at an arcade.
Demon’s Tilt is more made up of three small pinball tables stacked on top of each other, and each one feels a bit too segmented. If you are on the lowest table, you just have to rely on hitting one of the two or three teleport spots to graduate back up to a higher and less dangerous table. The highest section has a very simple ‘just hit it’ boss and a few ramps that dole out jackpots like nobody’s business. But it doesn’t really feel like a cohesive experience, just three anaemically small mini-tables mushed together. A great table will have a wide open section, a mini open section at the back, a bunch of ramps, and maybe a bonus table or two. This table just felt too long, too thin, and too linear to properly explore or really scratch that pinball itch.
Another issue is that things that should be hard to hit are right out in the open, and things that should be easy to hit are frustratingly locked away. The bumpers of any pinball table are a great way to quickly accumulate score. They are often high up at the back of a table, or nearer the front to the side. There can be any number of good bumper placements, but they are usually somewhere that’s at least somewhat easy to reach. Getting the perfect score chain bounce going from them isn’t always easy, but the bumper area is usually accessible by multiple ramps and wide open areas.
In this map, the bumpers were shuffled to a mostly blocked off side area of the board, hidden behind a wall, and mostly only accessible by one little ramp. This makes it less fun and more tricky to charge up a score on them. I agree scoring well on the bumpers should take some level of skill, but I feel putting such a central part of the board in such a sidelined and segmented area just goes to show that the pinball element of the game itself was not deeply thought out, and is only there as a token gesture. Even when they’re tucked away at the back of a normal table, they’re not hard to reach like these ones are. It feels as if the thought process was that a pinball table ‘ought’ to have bumpers, and the dev was making a pinball game, so they had to stick them somewhere. But ultimately, it just didn’t ring true to what I’d expect from a well-designed table experience.
On the flip side, bosses were extremely easy to hit, consisting of gigantic sprites in the centre of the board that are honestly harder to miss than they are to hit. On a good table, these are the things which should actually be locked behind obscure, hard-to-reach ramps and punishing skill-based shots. ‘Hit these ramps in this order to fight the boss’, not ‘hit them a bunch directly and they’re right in front of you’. It feels like the design philosophy of a pinball table has been completely inverted here to please someone who was expecting Terraria style boss fights in their pinball game, but the approach simply doesn’t mesh with pinball proper.
Countering The ‘But This Isn’t A Real Pinball Table, Its a Video Game’ Argument
I know what some of you are thinking, and it’s a fair point to make. I’m nerding out over the mechanics and feel of a real pinball table. I’m letting my special interest cloud my judgement. You’re right, this isn’t a real pinball table, and the fact that it’s a video game does give you more licence to branch out and create experiences that wouldn’t be possible with a mechanical table. A table so long that it requires you to scroll your view up and down, with independently moving bosses and bullets and little enemies that aren’t on rails isn’t possible on a traditional pinball table it’s true – so should Demon’s Tilt be celebrated for making these unique things possible when a real table couldn’t?
This argument brings me back to the comparison of this game and Pinball FX, and the difference between thematic and un-thematic additions to the pinball gameplay loop. Sure, a video game allows you to change some things and push the envelope a little, but other elements inherent to a pinball table are not only that way because of technical limitations, but because it’s a tried and true fun way to play.
Pinball machines are no stranger to video game elements, and the Williams Fish Tales Table Video Mode is just one of countless examples of how new and fun gameplay elements can be introduced to the classic pinball table on separate screens and in new areas. A separate bit of gameplay which doesn’t directly relate to the actual pinball at hand is not out of the question.
In fact, the Pinball FX series fully embraces the fact that it is taking place in a video game, and is able to do more than a real table can, but it keeps things thematic and within the visual style, behaviour, and theming of a real table.
Take the Stewie minigame from Family Guy Pinball. Mechanically, this does only as much as the video mode on any real pinball table could do, but it takes advantage of the fact this is a video game to ramp the graphics up to that of any 2D shooter, and makes it feel a lot more real.
They are also able to do more with animated models and voice lines that decorate the table to make it feel more alive, such as the Wolverine table having a 3D model of the titular hero physically moving, jumping, and fighting other characters during certain modes on his table. While a real table could probably use some level of animatronics, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as flashy as this. Certain cannon shots and animations across the Iron Man table’s boss fights delve into the realm of the unique and impossible – a mechanical table could find some way to produce a rough equivalent to what’s happening, but it wouldn’t look as good, and they take advantage of the digital nature of the game to add some extra flair that they otherwise couldn’t. But ultimately, it is still kept within the realm of feeling like the behaviour of an actual pinball table.
But FX does more than just flashy video modes and pretty animations – it isn’t afraid to delve into the realm of the impossible, with several arcade mode options that openly defy the laws of physics, with it still feeling in keeping with what you’d expect from the feel of a real table. By default, FX’s arcade mode behaves how you’d expect any table to – you have three balls, use them wisely. However, there are also a number of unique types of challenges that allow to you unlock a score multiplier which you can hold for the right moment, a slow motion option, and (my personal favourite) a time rewind button, that lets you ctrl-z game ending moments, at least before you run out the limited time altering resource.
These abilities, at least the last two, would be literally impossible to recreate on a physical table, but they are 100% optional, and also enhance the gameplay experience, rather than change it completely. What FX certainly doesn’t do is introduce a bunch of free roaming, off-rails enemy sprites, and a load of slow-moving, momentum-killing bullets to the game. You can improve and enrich the pinball formula with fun, digital-only elements, but this is best done when you don’t try to fight against the idea of a real pinball table, and instead work with that as a starting point, and see how it can be taken up to eleven.
Demon’s Tilt Scoring
By this point, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I didn’t really enjoy this game, and I have to say, the scoring system didn’t make me feel much more positive. There was quite a bit wrong with how scoring is handled, both while playing the game, and after finishing up a session.
Sequential Ball Multipliers
I played game after game on this table, and I simply cannot escape the feeling that each successive ball is giving out extra point multipliers. Even if you spent ages maintaining play with the first ball, you’d only have a score in the tens of thousands, but go only thirty seconds or so with ball three, and suddenly you’ve racked up a score in the millions. I understand that perhaps they were trying to raise the stakes as gameplay progresses, but point locking early balls to fundamentally be worth less points only makes the first two balls used feel somewhat pointless, like my time is being wasted, and I might as well let them drain on purpose to get to the real gameplay.
The Thrill of a pinball table is all about your own skill – any ball could be the ball that gives you a god run, and I can tell you from my time playing other pinball games, there is usually one ball out of the three that lasts you for ages, and the other two drain after only a minute or two. In pinball FX, using the time rewind feature usually means ball one is your highest scorer, but a combination of luck and skill can make both of the first two balls count. If my instincts here truly are correct, then this is a small issue that really detracts from the early game, as you feel you’re just going through the motions until you get to the goods.
In-table Scoring
The table does a few minor things to do with scoring that I just didn’t really care for. The first is how it handles so-called “jackpots”, a specific selling point of the game. These feel arbitrary and easy to obtain, often being told you got a ‘jackpot’ just for hitting the boss sprite a couple of times. They often occur randomly, or at least, when you weren’t trying for them, which is always possible on a pinball table, but it felt too arbitrary here. Jackpot is a powerful word, and it should mean something. The Epic Games listing selling point of “INSANE JACKPOTS” rings hollow if they take little-to-no skills to achieve.
The second issue I had was with the letter grade on the multiplier. It’s not a huge thing, but it felt a little arbitrary, and wasn’t immediately clear how it was calculated – what would break or not break a multiplier, and what was special about it. It would confidently declare you got a D rank for what felt like a fantastic run of luck, but then award you an SS rank or higher for a pretty weak performance. I’m sure there has to be a set logic to it, but it just didn’t feel like a metric I could rely on in-game.
Leaderboards and Online Functionality
The other issue with scoring relates to the online functionality. You know, the thing that was so important that the game literally won’t work without it? This is expressed entirely in the form of the oh-so-precious leaderboard.
2,147,483,647.
This is objectively the game’s high score. If you look at the online leaderboard (which takes an annoyingly long time to load every time it loads, and will only load in batches of ten at a time) literally every single score is the same. I scrolled down as far as 100 spots, and they all had the same score. Two billion, one hundred and forty seven million, four hundred and eighty three thousand, six hundred and forty seven. Not a point more, not a point less.
I’ve seen the top leaderboards in many Pinball FX tables, and sure, many insane god scores are within a few hundred or even a few tens points of each other, as the human body can only maintain pinballing for so long during a record-winning game. And sure, there may be a few scores that are even the same, by pure chance. It’s bound to happen eventually. But what you don’t get is hundreds of people with the exact same identical score.
I think it’s a fair assumption therefore, that this is mathematically the high score. Presumably, the game will just stop counting once it hits that number, and that’s what you scored, even if you could potentially keep going for minutes or even hours more. This creates the feeling that the game has already been beaten. What’s the point of trying for a high score? Hundreds of people have already achieved the highest score possible, so any feeling that you can ‘be the best’ is totally out the window. You couldn’t even get to the top of the leaderboard, only be one among a 100+ person tie, and any chance of having your name up there just doesn’t exist whatsoever.
While the idea of a score limit kill screen is cute in arcade classics like Donkey Kong or Tetris, where the very simple and limited computers that ran the games would literally run out of RAM if you played long enough, but the year is now 2024. Despite the arcade feel this game goes for, a freakin’ maximum score should not be a factor in a modern pinball game, and the limit should only be your human ability at the game. This feels like another minor but incredibly irritating technical limitation that holds this game back on a very basic level, and makes it feel like it’s a simplistic arcade simulation right out of the 70s with a spooky coat of paint, rather than a modern indie title built with an engine like Unreal or Unity.
There is also no option to scroll on the global leaderboards to where YOU are, so unless you miraculously placed top 10 right out of the gate, your options are to scroll through potentially thousands of scores, or simply accept that you’re a peon in the grand scheme of Demon’s Tilt players, and forget anything about working your way up to greatness.
I have a score in the top one hundred on an FX table myself, and knowing that I had like, the 80-somethingth best score on a table of anyone in human history brought me a great feeling of joy and accomplishment. Seeing my global position go up and up as I master a table is always a great source of pride – even if I know I’ll probably never be number one, knowing where I am at in comparison to even the game’s most dedicated fans is extremely satisfying, and that’s something you just can’t re-create in this game.
Demon’s Tilt Theme and Presentation
Now, let’s put the gameplay aside, and consider the look, sound, and feel of this game. We are reviewing this as a horror title after all, and sometimes, the art of a game with very mediocre gameplay can at least make it count as memorable in the long run, despite its shortcomings.
Demon’s Tilt Art Style
I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a heathen when it comes to art style. So many people will lose their minds over a game with a unique and cartoony art style, whereas for me, that holds little appeal. My two favourite art styles for any game are ‘realistic’ (think most AAA open world games, no attempt to make graphics stylised beyond accuracy to reality) and pixel/sprite art (Think DS-era Pokemon games, Stardew Valley, Terraria, etc). Something about the classic, nostalgic sprite art just always hits the spot way deeper than a chibi 3D model or cel shaded 2.5D cartoon ever could.
And that should, theoretically, work in this game’s favour. The art style was somewhere between hand made sprites, and the early Mortal Kombat game’s pixel-ified photos approach. Some objects clearly resemble 3D objects which have been flattened and pixelated into a sprite, and while I thought those were a bit ‘obvious’, the majority of the game looks nice. Just not for a pinball table.
Honestly, this art style in a different kind of game (perhaps a horror themed Puyo Puyo Tetris clone) could have worked really well, and made a genuine impression on me. I will say that the game had a bit of a ‘nu-pixel art’ vibe. That is to say, in an era where sprite art is not a technical limitation, but a creative choice, they can start to get too detailed and impressive, which I think detracts from the nostalgic charm. This is a nitpick, but if you’re going to go to a certain level of detail, the sprites cease to be charming and stylised, and just look like slightly pixelated regular drawings. Still, the graphics of Demon’s Tilt looked nice for video game graphics, but I’m not convinced it was right for a pinball table.
Once again, I’m used to realistic pinball simulators, both in physics and in graphics, and in those, pinball tables look like pinball tables. And while to a small degree, I do mean that it detracts from the realism to render the table in a retro art style, I more generally mean also that the visual board design isn’t what you’d hope for in a game like this.
Image from x.com https://twitter.com/PinballFX/status/1794793120556536099
Take for example this Battlestar Galactica table from Pinball FX. A classic pinball table has a few distinct elements. The first is lots of visual/ramp indicators which keep track of scoring/potential scoring so that you know what to work towards. The second is usually 2D character art, in this case, the main cast printed flat on the board. This type of design is extremely common in a pinball table. And the third is themed 3D models, which usually play only a minimal role in gameplay. Perhaps a hidden rotating ramp will be shaped like a spaceship, or a Cylon would move if you hit the right kind of scoring.
But Demon’s Tilt just doesn’t feel like this. Sure there are some score indicators on the board, but they are few and far between, without clearly signposting what you’re building up to. The attempt to make it look like a spooky castle detracts from the pinball genre, and makes it feel like something other than it is.
While there are a few 2D designs on the board, they’re all interactable. Like a Terraria boss, they’re not tied down, are able to pass through walls, can be hit like obstacles, and destroyed. They replace the ramp-and-target skill based gameplay with hitting a boss that can disappear from view, and detract from the board having permanent, fetching character art.
Even large boss designs that would be 3D models on a real table are also hittable bosses, whereas the boss on a regular pinball table would be defeated by the skillful hitting of certain ramps, saucers, and targets. Because they need to be gameplay elements, they’re too flat and don’t feel like dynamic visual design elements, and more like the flat model that they are.
In terms of general design, the board overall isn’t ‘busy’ enough. There is lots of wide open space of just castle wall, and the game relies on a lot of moving elements like enemies, bullet hell projectiles, and animations to try and decorate it. Pinball tables typically have a similar visual design philosophy to slot machines – they’re bright, busy, and obnoxious, with a ton of exciting art as well as flashing lights and sounds. This grey castle with large swathes of mostly undecorated background doesn’t doesn’t feel like a pinball table visually, as well as in terms of gameplay design. These visuals might be okay for an up-scrolling platformer, but not pinball.
Demon’s Tilt Horror Theme
That’s what we’re all here for, right? The whole reason I even realised that I owned this game to begin with was that it was grouped with the horror titles on my Epic account. So how strong is that theme really? Well, despite it trying to appeal to some of the more hardcore Satanic Panic, esoteric goetian mysticism angle with a touch of Mortal Kombat graphics, it doesn’t really go as hard as you’d hope it would. The game is rated PEGI 7, which if you know anything about the super-strict PEGI standards, means there is nothing hardcore about this.
Now I know what you’re thinking. This is a pinball game! How violent and adult can it really be? Surely they should be praised for not adding pointless gore for the sake of gore to a fun little scoring game? Well, competitor Pinball FX actually has a spinoff game called Pinball M, specifically to create just that. In fact, I hope to do a review of their Dead by Daylight table at some point, if I can find enough spare change down the back of the sofa to pick up that DLC.
They often have a censored version of the table in Pinball FX, and save one with full violence and gore for Pinball M. Sometimes a table has such a gory theme that it is only released in Pinball M. Expect blood-soaked flippers, ramps designed to look like human spines, squelching bumpers and gory goodness in spades. So, it clearly can be done. Some pinball tables demand a theme that is more violent and adult, and it is in fact possible to create a table that feels like a pinball table while incorporating some level of violence into proceedings. Hell, even Terraria, which I’ve compared Demon’s Tilt with in both gameplay and visuals is rated PEGI 12, and has more gore than this game does.
With a game that sells itself on edgy, adult, occult themes, it doesn’t make any sense that enemies vanish in a puff of smoke rather than burst of gore, and that the game generally shies so far away from including even a little blood. Even a lion and snake aren’t that scary as creatures (at least in a horror media context, in a nature context they’re terrifying), and they crown the top of the board as the ultimate boss, rather than a demon, or imp, or satan himself. Even a freakin’ spider would do. Lions are scary, but they’re not creepy.
While some of the sprites are really cool, the implementation horror theme feels too cheesy and friendly, and like it couldn’t commit to being genuinely occult or scary. I mean let’s face it, no one was ever going to get scared while playing a pinball table, it’s not that kind of horror game. But I still believe that with pinball, the table’s theme is everything. You may have a really fun set of ramps and targets, but the theme plays into the narrative storytelling of the table, and one with all blank grey ramps and boards, even with a good design, wouldn’t be as satisfying. This PEGI 7 level of violence could work well for a more goofy horror IP like the Addams Family, or the more lighthearted parts of the D&D franchise, but as a true-bred horror theme, it was too cartoony. I’ve seen Iron Maiden T-shirts that commit to hardcore horror more than this game.
Demon’s Tilt Music
The game has three music tracks across the menu, main table, and result screen. Generally, the music has a 16 bit-style retro game vibe, with a tang of tinny speakers to match the arcade cabinet vibe that at least parts of this game are themed towards. It’s very clearly going for some kinda 90s game music aesthetic, which is consistent with some of the more Mortal Kombat-leaning graphics. None of the music is in any way ‘bad’, but again, it’s a case of it being thematic and appropriate for the game itself.
At first, the menu theme can be considered slightly dungeon-y, but once it gets going, I feel it turns much too lighthearted. It starts out, charitably, in the realm of dark fantasy, before going full DOS adventure game, but nothing about it screams ‘demons’ or ‘hell’ more so than any King’s Quest boss fight music might. I think the tone needs to be a lot grimmer, and the pace more intense – a digitalised heavy metal-type beat could fit this purpose. The music would have been good in a more strictly fantasy RPG pixel game, but I wouldn’t have picked it out for Demon’s Tilt.
The second piece of music is the main table theme, which is probably the most accurate to the theme – I still don’t know if 90s arcade cabinet vibes really mesh with a Satanic themed pinball table, but for what it’s worth, the music is fairly fast paced, and keeps up a dark fantasy vibe. I wouldn’t quite stretch to calling it ‘horror’, but it’s the closest the game comes to a creative element that feels like it belongs in the final product.
The final track in the game is that of the results screen, which honestly sounds more Arabic than anything else. It gives the vibe of a retro RPG with a title like “Battle for the Caliph” or “Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb” rather than anything you’d expect in a demon-themed game. This one is more weird than a problem – the music is good, but this one is by far the most out of place in a game that claims to take its demonic inspiration from Christian mythology and European mediaeval visuals.
Overall, the music in this game sounded good, and I wouldn’t want to drag it down like I have with a lot of this game’s elements. But, I think it’s fair to say that this might not have been the right kind of game for most of these tracks to feature in.
Demon’s Tilt Value For Money
When it comes down to it, price is an important factor in choosing any video game. Even a game that’s fairly mediocre might be worth picking up second hand for a dollar or two, and a game that’s a masterpiece may still be offputting when the triple A studios hike the price of new games for the hundredth time. An important thing to consider is how much you’re going to get for your money.
I was able to bag this game for free on the Epic Game store when it was given away. But let’s say that wasn’t the case. Let’s say it was at full price, and I had purchased it for the entire amount. Would I be getting a good deal? It’s important to consider that Demon’s Tilt contains a single pinball table. Sure, it’s physically long, and has some sub-tables, but generally, you are buying one pinball table. Sure, quality over quantity is a valuable argument, but when competitors like FX are putting out bundles of tables around a single theme, you probably should have more than a single table in your whole game to be competitive.
I’m going to come right out and say it. This game costs over 20 US dollars. For this humble author, that would be £15.49. That is crazy expensive. For a single pinball table. Let me put that into perspective. In Pinball FX, you can buy a pack of ten Marvel or Star Wars tables for only a few dollars more. They are all great, well made, thematic pinball tables, and I would happily say that any one of them is better than Demon’s Tilt. They have smaller packs that cost more per table, for example, the Star Trek bundle works out to about $5 per table, notably, a bit more expensive than each individual Star Wars one. But, even the most expensive addons for FX, the single table DLCs, never, ever go above $6, or £4.50. Because despite the hours of fun, even tens of hours of fun you can get from learning and mastering a single table, you aren’t buying that much diverse and unique gameplay for the amount you spend.
Now sure, FX have a studio, and presumably an in-house pinball creation engine to put out tables quicker. Demon’s Tilt was an indie title and presumably a labour of love, with original music, pixel graphics, and the actual pinball physics coded from the ground up. Sure, the price can be higher because of that. There are a lot of factors that mean that in theory, a one off indie game with original graphics should cost more than any one FX table DLC.
But let’s put this into even more perspective. I can get Stardew Valley on Steam for less money than Demon’s Tilt. A game in which I’ve easily logged over 100 hours, and will almost certainly log 100s more. A game that objectively took longer to develop, has an engine that supports a lot more functionality, a ton more gameplay, way more music, way more hand crafted pixel graphics, and is overall a more complex and honestly better game. And it costs less. Hell, indie classic and famous time sink Terraria costs even less than both of them, being almost half the price of Demon’s Tilt. Now even if this was the best damn pinball table in the world, I think that asking for a price higher than two of the best, most successful and playable indie games of the last decade is nothing less than outrageous.
At the absolute maximum, and considering every factor that went into its development, this game should be no more than about $10 USD, or £7. Especially considering I could get a Pinball experience that is objectively better in every way from Pinball FX, both in table theme, amount of tables for the same price, physics engine and general finished product, $20 is simply not a reasonable price for this game. If there were as few as three different tables in Demon’s Tilt rather than one, I could begin to see that as a reasonable amount to ask for if the gameplay was good, but I would laugh in the face of even the very best pinball game on the market if it wanted $20 for a single table.
Conclusion
My enthusiasm for this game drained faster than a ball bearing into a pinball table gutter. While it has all the hallmarks of something I should love – a horror themed pinball game with retro music and a pixel art vibe, it just fails in being any of the genres it attempts to be, and ends up a thoroughly boring and disheartening experience.
Who would I recommend this game to? Not beginners at pinball, as it would do a disservice to what an actual table feels like to introduce them with underwhelming gameplay like this, and sour them on the idea of pinball before they’ve really given it a chance. And I wouldn’t recommend it to an experienced pinner, as they’ll find no real meat on the bones of this game compared to better competitors. If you really like the idea of pinball flippers as a game mechanic, but don’t actually like pinball, this may be a game you’d get an hour or two of enjoyment from, but that’s it.
Final verdict: Both Pinball FX and Pinball M have at least one free table, and are games that are free to download. More tables are purchasable through DLC, but even the free ones should give you hours of entertainment. You can get a more fun, engaging, and enjoyable pinball game for $0. Given those market conditions, I would say that Demon’s Tilt is not even worth redeeming for free, as there are much better options elsewhere. It will be uninstalled from my computer posthaste.
Can I give a game 0/5 stars? For something which I wouldn’t really recommend to anyone, ever, I can’t think of a more fitting score, but if 1/5 is the lowest I can go, then that is what it shall be.
