Game difficulty and nudge effectiveness

[Ivan Joukov]

Hi and thanks for the game, nice to see it released.

I'm a bit worried about the game difficulty, the nudge feels so powerful to me that it can save almost any ball. To be clear I played 3 games so far, I made 381 millions (3rd on global at this time) and I'm a pretty awful pinball player usually :) On this run I almost was on wizard.

The nudge allows to target easily any ramp, save any bad ball, from any outlane and I never tilted.

It feels like a good pinball player could play for a very very long time without losing and with the multiplier system this should lead to massive billions score.

Do other players have feedback about that ? What were the high scores before Steam release ?

[Tegiminis]

I had the top score in pre-release (second currently, I believe?) at about 390m, and I'm writing the Steam guide, and in my experience the board gets harder the longer you play. As you progress through boss phases on each Tier, the bosses gradually become more disruptive.

Bullets start homing in on you from across the board, killing momentum or knocking you off course. Some bosses - notably, the Priestess and The Hermit - will telekinetically throw your ball, which can sometimes result in an instant drain. Frequently the ball will travel so fast it's hard to keep up. And nudging is not always effective at avoiding outlanes and drains.

Reaching a score above a billion should be relatively easy for an accomplished pinball player, it's true. It's an achievement for a reason. But, in my experience, the first few cycles of the board are "easy mode", and it's not until you start building up large scores that you see how mean Demon's Tilt can get.

That said, I feel like the relative forgiveness of nudging in Demon's Tilt is a big positive. It allows average players like you or I to see more of the board and become invested in seeking high scores. Even if Dr. Pinball The Unstoppable shows up and crushes everyone with a 50b score, I feel like the tradeoff is worth it. I'd rather have a game even people who are mediocre at pinball can get into than one with lower scores.

[Ivan Joukov]

I just scored 800+ millions, I didn't manage to do the x3 secret passage that was the sole thing needed to start the wizard mode.

Anyway yes there is an increase in difficulty that comes at high score but the games are still very long. You have to take it like a real video game run more than like a flipper game as you can easily spend almost 1 hour on just one game.

But it's fun as hell, I'm eager to see the pgms scoring there. The leaderboards were not working for me tonight.

[Tegiminis]

Same! I feel like Demon's Tilt is almost an "endurance game" since you have so many tools to keep your ball alive, and the wearing down of your faculties over this time contributes to the difficulty.

[WIZNWAR]

I'd be curious what you think of the tune in Hardcore mode, The flippers are slightly shorter, there are new Outlanes on Bottom Tier (more realistic design). 1 Ball per play.

[kressenstein]

I played about ten games now, had 80m on my second run and now reached over 100m for the first time. I am a solid "real" pinball player but love video pinball as well. I have yet to figure out the intricacies of Demon's Tilt and the nudging system, which is essentially manual ball movement, similar to Rollers of the Realm, if I remember correctly.

Especially when a video pin is not intended as a simulation, skills on physical pinball tables don't really translate to video pinball. With Demon's Tilt, the ball physics are quite crude but at the same time the gameplay is very fast and unpredictable. Also it's 2D. I haven't gotten into the late game yet, but wouldn't worry about the game being too easy. And I can't see "real" pros crushing videogame pinball players all the time. But let's see how it turns out :)

[kressenstein]

Also, Ivan is humblebragging hard here ;P

[TemmieNeko]

Originally posted by WIZNWAR:

I'd be curious what you think of the tune in Hardcore mode, The flippers are slightly shorter, there are new Outlanes on Bottom Tier (more realistic design). 1 Ball per play.

hardcore felt very nice. It was the first thing I tried. I expected 1 ball. just a quesiton, will you be adding extra ball features for when your run ends? that's always the most fun for me, crossing my fingers hoping the random numbers click to give me another shot ^^b

[<blank>]

why not do it like a classic pinball table, where you get a timed extra ball depending on how well you did, what targets you hit, and what modes you completed?

[Ivan Joukov]

To be perfecty honest I wonder if I don't benefit of a slow running game. Physic seems tied to fps and the game feels like he runs slower than the gameplay vids I can see. Its a problem if you can achieve an easier game by using a slower system. My old rig may have helped me : i5 2,5 ghz, GTX 660, 4GB ram.

I quickly tried hardcore, I thought it was just a "1 ball" mode, nice to see that the table is a special one. The "real" outlanes on the bottom tier are very tricky, I like that I think I'll maybe try hard on that mode now :)

[Ivan Joukov]

With the new patch the game runs smoothly and I can confirm that I was playing in easy super slow mode before it, now it's WAY harder :)