Pinball Master Flipper

Pinball Master Flipper is a 2D pinball game with three game modes: boss, rush, and rhythm.

I worked as the project's level designer, incorporating features such as the roulette wheel at the casino level and the ramps at the city level that change on a timer's countdown.

I also acted as the team's producer on the project. I managed tasks for the team members, updated the project board on GitHub with tasks and bugs when they arose, took notes during weekly team meetings, and conducted playtesting sessions.

Here is the Github.

Here is the Itch.io.

Production

As the team's producer, I organized weekly sprint meetings, tracking project progress, and assigning tasks to team members to be completed and implemented at the end of each week.

I conducted regular playtesting sessions, where up to ten people would test out the game's features; during this session, I would document notes on the way players played the game, recording information on the choices they made, what they struggled with, and what they enjoyed. Most importently I took notes on bugs that players encountered, after the playtesting session I would submit an issue on GitHub project board with the bug the players encountered for the teams programmer to work on fixing.

After noting down bugs encountered by players, I would conduct my playtesting to see if I was able to replicate these bugs and record videos and screenshots for the programmer to use as a reference point when solving the issue encountered by players.

Neon Casino

My goal with the casino level was to replicate the experience of being inside a casino. The main feature of the level is the roulette wheel. When the ball enters the roulette wheel it gains a point multiplier that is decided on the color they land on. If the player lands on green, cards fall from the top of the board and the boards layout changes. The bumpers which are represented as poker chips change color and move positions.

The most challenging part of designing this level was determining the different positions of the bumpers. This level required me to draw up three different level sketches with the different bumper layouts.

It took a lot of playtesting to make sure the level was an enjoyable experience to play. I experienced some issues like the bumpers blocking the roulette wheel and making it too challenging for the player to reach it, or bumpers being placed too close to the walls, causing the ball to get stuck.

Loop Central

This level was designed intentionally to resemble Chicago, even using a photo of one of the train tracks in the loop. Each ramp represents the Chicago train lines: blue, green, red, pink, and brown. The ramps activate and deactivate based on a timer - this is intended to resemble the arrival and departure of trains.

The positioning of the tracks was the most challenging part of developing this level. It required many adjustments due to issues like it being too difficult to enter certain ramps and others too easy. To combat this issue, I adjusted the positions of the ramps after every test and introduced jump pads to the level to launch the ball into the directions of tracks that were more challenging to enter.

Final Factory

Final Factory is the final level of PINBALL MASTER FLIPPER.

This level is intended to be the last level the player plays, and as a result, it's one of the most challenging. The level contains moving bumpers that are intended to add variety to the gameplay. These bumpers can be temporarily deactivated when the player hits the red buttons on the side of the board. The level also contains lasers that activate the appearance of the boss. The boss in this mode is more challenging, too, requiring more hits to be killed, and it has the ability to destroy the ball the player is using.

This level was designed with a factory in mind, The goal with the ramps in this level is to have them resemble pipes, making the ramps more angular than curved. The initial idea behind the moving bumpers was inspired by conveyor belts.

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