Following rumors which were confirmed the other day with a tease, Multimorphic has announced not one, but two new pinball creations, as being available now. Both are based on popular novels, the first being the “LitRPG” novel series Dungeon Crawler Carl, then the second is the classic series Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. Let’s take a look at what these games are all about.
What Is Dungeon Crawler Carl?
Where the Ender’s Game saga has been around since 1985, and it had a movie about it made back in 2013, I won’t spend time on introducing that series. I also have read several of the books (not the entire saga), while I have yet to pick up Dungeon Crawler Carl.
In case you are not familiar with the latter like myself, Dungeon Crawler Carl started as a novel published in 2020 by Matt Dinniman, and has since grown into a series, currently sporting eight books and soon going to see a TV series about it. Here’s the setup for what it’s about:
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.
Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
Kind of sounds a little bit like Smash TV meets D&D, which makes for a good connection for this to jump into the amusement industry.
Multimorphic’s Dungeon Crawler Carl
Multimorphic has not been a stranger to taking on licenses that the likes of Stern & Jersey Jack seem to avoid, such as they did with Weird Al’s Museum of Natural Hilarity and Portal. This duo announcement is rather interesting though in that they are both based on novels; while Ender’s Game did get that movie as mentioned, most people will know the name from the books.
Their P3 platform is certainly the most unique in the industry, as it not only features a playfield where the lower 3/4ths uses an LCD screen, they also allow owners to swap out playfields/games with kits. This does make the initial cost of a P3 machine higher than a standard game, but then the kits are vastly cheaper than buying a whole new standard, so it can even out well in the event that you have a few kits to swap.
For Dungeon Crawler Carl, here’s a quick synopsis of what sounds to be their most in-depth game yet (taken from the press release):
In the game you play as Carl, accompanied by Princess Donut, navigating through the challenges and dangers of the dungeon: fighting mobs, casting spells, building your viewer count, collecting friends and figuring out not just how to survive, but how to get vengeance.
The playfield is loaded with mechanical interactivity, including a 360° double-level disk that brings interactive features right in front of the flippers, such as a target bank, kickback, moving shot paths and a player-loadable and controllable cannon. Additional playfield features include a six-ball Mana stack with multiple ball-releases, a bashable Mongo cage with magnetic ball lock, sling-lock ball stops on each in-lane, a Princess Donut sculpt with LED eyes and a jump ramp with magnetic catch-and-fling action.
They have certainly stepped up their design game a notch, as it is “the first P³ game to feature hand-sculpted 3D artwork and illuminated features by award-winning artist Davey Price of Stumblor Pinball.” It also has a unique, circular upper playfield that is mechanized and contains a bank of targets; I’ve not seen anything like this before, and it looks pretty cool(it is also present on Ender’s Game – more on that in a moment). Overall it’s a nice looking machine, and I think that it will turn heads. Here’s the upper playfield that sits above where the monitor goes:
Here’s the game’s trailer that gets into detail on the features; you can also read more in the press release, here and find the game on P3’s website for ordering, here.
Multimorphic’s Ender’s Game
I almost missed this one, as they released the news about them simultaneously, and the emails that came through were truncated and I thought that it was just an accidental repeat. One interesting thing that P3 is doing here is similar to what Spooky Pinball had done for a time – releasing two games simultaneously that reuse playfields, but are different licenses/themes and apply them accordingly. Although it’s worth nothing that this isn’t a 1:1 playfield replica – the upper deck portion is a bit different and tailored towards the elements of the game, while that unique “disc loop” playfield/mechanism is re-used.
As mentioned, Ender’s Game is a story that is familiar to me, and by the looks of things, they’ve faithfully adapted the iconic battle training elements from the books. In case this is a series you’ve missed though, here’s the synopsis on what they incorporated into the game from the first novel:
In Ender’s Game, you play as Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a six-year-old prodigy who has just arrived at Battle School with no idea that the fate of humanity rests on his shoulders. The machine asks the same question as the novel: can Ender find the balance between the compassion of his sister Valentine and the aggression of his brother Peter? Tip too far in either direction and consequences follow.
Progression through the game mirrors Ender’s climb through Battle School: players make allies, survive confrontations with rivals, develop skills through training and prove themselves in battle.
Survive it all and players advance to Command School, where the final simulation awaits. Succeed there and Ender becomes fleet commander. But as fans of the novel know, not everything in Ender’s world is what it appears to be.
Here’s the upper deck area, which also includes “a large, two-sided captive ball balance mechanism, into which the player can load up to six balls and transfer them from side to side to adjust their levels of compassion and aggression.”
Like with DCC, here’s the Ender’s Game trailer, press release, and game page.
Thoughts
While more people than ever are eschewing reading in favor of listening to books on audio, or worse, just scrolling through their looksquirrel! feeds, I still enjoy it. No matter how you consume them, books still have a strong cultural impact, and plenty get in front of people who don’t want to read when they become films (like Project Hail Mary did earlier this year – and that boosted book sales). While other pinball companies have done themes that originate from novels before, they’ve always focused on the big blockbuster film version instead of the books.
I get why they do that, since your average person will identify Jurassic Park or The Lord of the Rings based on their movies first. But with rare exception, what is the rule? That the books are always better than the movies. This also leads us to a point I hadn’t considered before – that a well-read audience is more likely to seek out and enjoy a pinball machine than a movie going audience will.
As I’ve argued many times before, the challenge with grabbing a player with pinball is that they are so complex, that your non-pinball acolyte gets confused by what they see, even if the theme is appealing to them. How many times I’ve had someone ask me “what is the point of this [pinball]?” as it’s just a cacophony of lights, art, sound, and toys. Nobody reading the mini-novel of rules on the lower left – unless they are into pinball. What better audience to try and appeal to than by people who actually take a moment to read? That’s where I think that this is a smart appeal.
The question though for the commercial side of things, which Multimorphic does not put a lot of focus on, is how many locations will grab one or both of these? Even in trying to appeal to a well-read audience doesn’t guarantee anything, and the entry point for a P3 machine is over $12k after shipping+tax. I’ve only heard of one Weird Al out there, and a few Portals, although I’m sure there have to be more. Still, they are harder to find, as MM doesn’t market much to the commercial side – they don’t go to IAAPA or Amusement Expo, they don’t sell their games through distributors like Betson/AVS/Shaffer/PrimeTime/etc (they do have a distro network as you can see at this link, they’re just focused on the collector side).
This leads to the factor that I’ve brought up too many times to count before, where pinball is in a very weird place in the market. Most sales come from home collectors, and when there are locations that grab them, often any earnings you hear about are cherry-picked from locations where any game overperforms in those spots, but not in the majority of the industry. I don’t want it to be this way, I want pinball to be in the top 10 of every game room, but this is just the reality for your typical arcade & FEC venue(and why most FECs don’t bother with them).
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