Tainicom has brought the pinball experience to your Windows Phone with Pinball League: The Juggler. How does the song go? He's a pinball wizard there's got to be a twist....
While you may not become a pinball wizard with Pinball League, we found it to be an entertaining game to pass the time with. The 3D graphics looks really good and the realistic game play represents pinball machines really good.
Ease on past the break to read more about Pinball League: The Juggler.
Getting Started
From the main menu of Pinball League, you can swipe up and down the online leaderboards (to the left of the screen) that are broken down by day, month and all time high scores. To the right, you have your settings button, about button and most importantly, the start button.
The settings menu is simple and straight forward. You have settings for the camera, music and tilt. Camera settings include:
- Automatic: the game view automatically follows the pinball around the game.
- Free-Cam: You move the camera around the game table by tilting the phone.
- Static: This is a stationary camera where the full game table is in view.
I like the camera options but I found myself concentrating too much on the view with Free-Cam and not enough on the game itself.
The Tilt option allows you to shake the pinball table, much as you would in real life, to accentuate your shots. Shake too much and the game tilts.
The Game
Once you've got your settings down pat, just tap Start and you are sent to the pinball table view. The game starts with a overlays at each corner of the screen. To the upper left, you have a pause button (or you can use the back button on your phone); to the upper right is a settings button; and to the lower corners is your flipper buttons. These overlays will retract and give way to your game stats (balls remaining, score and bonus level).
To launch a ball into play, just swipe down on the center of the screen (an on-screen reminder will show up). Tapping either bottom corner of the screen will control the respective flipper.
If your ball passes by the flippers without scoring a single point, your ball is saved for you to try again (a do-over of sorts). Once you've played your three balls and your final score is tabulated, you can submit it to the Pinball League online leaderboard for braggin rights.
So, how's it play?
For a basic pinball table, The Juggler does nicely. Graphics and animations are well done and the table layout has just enough bells and whistles to keep you interested.
My only nit on game play is that the table will get a little stale after about an hours worth of playing time. It would have been nice to have seen multiple table choices with the game or better yet, additional tables that become unlocked based on your scores.
Overall Impression
I liked Pinball League: The Juggler and if you're a pinball aficionado I think you'll find it appealing as well. The game ran smoothly with no bugs, glitches or crashes experienced. Animations were smooth and game play realistic. You can't shake the pinball table with your hip but the Tilt feature will let you use the Windows Phone accelerometer to give your shots a little something extra.
There is a free trial version available for Pinball League: The Juggler that will let you play until you reach a score of 5,000 or greater. The full version will run you $1.99.
You can download both here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.
