I like that there are no ads essentially, but if you watch ads you can earn bonuses. You start out with permission for only one table and I am happy with Medieval Madness. You earn experience points as you play that move you up levels. After a week I am on Level 17. It gets harder to advance levels as you work your way up. When you advance a level you get bonuses that can slowly authorize other tables. Doing daily challenges also earns bonuses. After getting enough bonus table parts and tickets you can start doing 5-minute challenges on other tables. So I have gotten to play most of the tables, which are mostly good with unlimited lives. Looking forward to having enough table parts to play on some of the tables for real, but having enough tickets to authorize those will be a problem. Do lots of challenges since extra challenges only cost 20-30 tickets and usually earn 100 or more, plus parts. Getting zen coins is much harder without paying real money. The network often fails to connect and there aren’t a lot of instructions, so I am only giving 4 stars. But the tables are 5 stars without the baggage.
It’s by far my favorite pinball app. I haven’t been playing it for very long. However, I’ve played it long enough to have earned a Ed decent amount of parts, tickets & such. Today I opened it up to play and it’s been completely wiped. All my data, my 1 table, my credits, my tickets, all of it is gone. Every time I open the app I have to choose my first table, as if I’ve never played the game. Once I play the 1 game it says it can’t connect to the server & to try again later. Since all my crap was wiped, I even deleted it & downloaded it again. When I close the app out completely or delete it & then reopen it, I have to start all over again and I get the same message. Err rrIt’s also a bit confusing as to what you need to obtain to completely unlock an additional table, it’s as clear as mud. I thought I had unlocked a 2nd table at a given but nope it wants more stuff b4 I can play it. It would be great if you could make playable tables more obvious & what all needs to be done to make a table eligible for free play would be very nice. Oh, and I agree with one of the previous reviewers, BRING BACK TALES OF ARABIAN!! Or something like that, lol. I just remember enjoying that table for a long time. I was actually looking for it when I came across this app.
Should have just paid the $30 from the start, to unlock all the tables. Unfortunately, this is a one-time offer, and the game tracks you by your Apple account, so deleting the app doesn’t work to reset this. Without this one-time purchase, you are trapped in an endless IAP grind. You only get to play timed challenges on one table, that quickly gets very boring. It would take weeks of grinding this, and/or spending way, way more than $30 to get less than what I would have gotten if I had just taken that one-time offer up front. A scam, and a really unethical way of running things. I hate micro transactions and IAP and mandatory commercials and in-app “coins” that you have to pay real money for. Zen should be ashamed. Zen Pinball is a great app, you pay once per table and then have the table forever. Williams Pinball should have also been the same way, but they squandered that chance. The final straw is the one-time $30 offer, locked to your Apple account so it’s absolutely final, and if you wait too long it’s forever gone, and you have no choice but to tackle the endless IAP grind. No thanks.
I had just started getting into pinball on my iPad when I found the collection but then realized that I only had a month to pick up the tables I wanted from TPA. I planned to buy all of the Williams and Bally tables from Zen but after seeing how they have set up the tables as a Freemium pay to play concept I was skeptical.I purchased the bundle with the first seven tables and enjoyed being able to play just the table but I quickly noticed that the ball physics going up some of the ramps seem to be off. The ball will almost to the top of the ramp then come back down. This is really evident on Medieval Madness. Also, the ball physics are messed up and the ball sometimes acts like it has a mind of its own. I enjoy the tables that I currently own and actually like the ‘idea’ of the daily challenges but the convoluted pricing structure of the app is absurd. You shouldn’t have to bust out your algebra skills to figure out how much a table cost and then have to grind through countless ads to maximize the table functions. Seeing as I missed the opportunity to acquire most of these tables on the other app, I was hoping to be able to rectify that with the Williams app. With its current pricing structure and difficult to navigate interface I’ll give the app 2 stars.
A disappointment due to poor ad and server stability
I already own most of the tables on Pinball FX, but I wanted a way to play on a vertical display without building a cabinet. Sadly, I had been unable to make much progress beyond my first free table until I upgraded my iPad, so the minimum specs are now woefully out of date, but even on a current gen device... I get frequent 5-10 second delays on a waiting dialog, as it seems the app repeatedly drops the server connection while browsing the challenges. The same table seems to have variable physics behavior from game to game; I’ve seen auto-plunges fail to enter the table, as the ball action gets dampened randomly. And it is a gamble if I try to watch an ad to start a challenge or claim a 4th reward; either the app hangs or crashes outright during some ad loads. Rebooting my iPad doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’m afraid to buy IAP, and I suspect some of the ads I’ve seen were not paid out to the devs due to the bugs. I really do want to pay a little more to unlock extra challenges and physics models, but I don’t feel confident that Williams will let Zen keep the IP license if the game stays in this state. FarSight already lost it due to neglect; I’d hate to see it again.
I’m a huge pinball nerd. So when I heard about this I got on it right away. There are some great tables and it was a bummer to have to get tons of parts to get 2 stars JUST to play it. But I liked the machines so I kept going. Then, for some reason this morning, it took longer to load than usual. No biggie. The when it did I got the “welcome” and “pick your table” screen. I lost everything. I’ve tried rebooting my phone and the app yet it still just arbitrarily decided to delete it all and want me to start from scratch. Not cool. Get this figured out and fixed and it deserves much more than one star. Until I get at least my progress back it stays as poo. Update: 24 hours later and it all magically returned. Nothing was done differently but the fact it’s back and the app is working pleased me. Aside from this annoyance it really is a decent app with great graphics and sounds. When it’s deleting my stuff? 1 star. When it’s working? 4 stars (losing one star for taking forever or paying thru the nose to unlock tables enough to play)
I’m able to play the game now, thank you for the quick response to my last review, and I gotta say, I do enjoy the game. I have qualms with there being two locks on the table upgrades and the grind being a little steep, but it’s nothing I’m not willing to overlook. The tables look fantastic and play well, and I appreciate the detail put into them. What I’m unable to overlook is the load times for everything. My device is pretty fast, and heaven forbid I tap anything because the same “Fetching Data | Please wait.” prompt comes up for anywhere between ten seconds to a minute and a half. Whether that’s for playing a table, winning a challenge, getting rewards for the challenge, tapping to watch an ad, closing the ad when it ends... there is a load time for everything and it brings the game to a screeching halt (especially when it comes up with another prompt that says there was an error connecting to the game server). If the servers were faster, this game would be just about perfect for pinball lovers who are willing to grind. There is so much potential here and all it needs is some touch-ups at this point!
I swear they must be running this game’s server on a 1st generation raspberry pi connected via a single T1 line. The endless server bugs, problems and slowness with this app are insufferable and make it almost unplayable. The game is also extremely greedy, demanding hundreds of dollars in micro transactions to progress. In addition, the game does not work properly on modern iPhones. It puts controls and buttons right under the notch, so you cannot see the game display and buttons are out of reach. Sound doesn’t work when closing and reopening the app, and for a while I was unable to do daily challenges due to the countdown timers for refresh being stuck at 18,000 days remaining. Overall, this app is a sloppy, buggy mess. I would strongly advise against spending any money on it at all in its current state, and instead playing Zen’s much better PC game, Pinball FX3. Edit: After MONTHS the developer has still not fixed the issue. This game works correctly maybe 60% of the time if you’re lucky. The bugs on modern iPhones are still present and it seems that no effort has been made to fix them in this shameless cash grab of an app. I’m disappointed.
The game play is fine; nothing stands out from typical pinball on a phone. Flipping is often read as a swipe which pauses the game but that’s probably caused by a setting in my phone. The table selection is outstanding! Williams really did make some of the best. The real problem here is the system of currencies and in-app purchases. It feels like a terrible money grab. It’s difficult to actually buy a table; if you buy one through coins, you get a 2 star table that is limited in functions (and of course the amounts of coins you can buy don’t align with the costs of the tables in coins). So after you buy one, you have to continue to collect tickets. A fully functioning, 4 star table costs between $15 and $20 but even then it’s a bit unclear what you actually get. When you load the app it comes with a “free” game that doesn’t have all the functioning. It seems very strange to have these classic tables presented in a way that uses modern techniques designed to confuse the consumer and get them to pay for more than they want. Just sell us the games for a reasonable price so we can play them. You really need to go back to the drawing board with this one.
First things first, I love this app. If your looking for digital pinball that is just as good as the real thing look no farther. The physics are spot on. Everything from the ball to the paddles to the bumpers have weight to them. The sounds are authentic. This truly is the next best thing to actually playing on the real life tables that have been flawlessly recreated here in mobile digital form. The down side to this app is the connectivity issues. For some reason the game must fetch data from it’s servers constantly. You click free play, it fetches data. Arcade mode, fetch data. Collect rewards after completing a free play object...fetch data. This would be a nothing burger if that game fetched data no problem. However, it is all too common to find the game not able to connect to game servers. It’s a shame because I truly love this game. If server issues were address and fixed this game in my book would be 5 stars out of 5.
I like it! But I paid instead of watching endless ads
I decided to buy all the tables at the beginning because I didn’t want to grind through the challenges. Personally, I thought it was worth it. It’s interesting to see Zen’s remastered special effects on the classic tables. And I love the practice mode where you get unlimited ball saves for an hour while you learn the peculiarities of each table. The only real problem I have is that it doesn’t allow me to rotate the screen to landscape mode. I play on an iPad and it’s just easier for me to hold it lengthwise. Another issue I have is the live pinball competitions betting real money. I’m a good player and I’m afraid I’ll get hooked after winning a few bucks from newer players. Then the game’s matching engine will choose some pinball demigod to challenge me and he (or she) will drain my bank account while I shout, “No! Let me try it one more time! I know I can win!” Needless to say, I haven’t jumped into the multiplayer for money option yet.
This is a great pinball game with some classic actual tables. Super fun to play and the idea of getting parts to open up other tables is novel and keeps you excited to play the over 20 tables you eventually can open…….Or you can just drop some cash and open them right away if there’s one you’re too excited to wait to get. Now, that being said, the internet cuts out on you quite frequently keeping you from getting some of your daily table parts and even your rewards (can be the coveted, “table parts”. So that’s a pretty big bummer. There’s also a weird gambling interface under “multiplayer “ but it’s pretty gross looking interface and constantly shoves the “PLAY FOR CASH!” button under your nose making you feel like a dirty hole in the wall casino gambler. The only thing missing is the stale cigarette smoke and the coin stained fingers. That’s just not how it’s done. Everyone knows your cash gets slapped on the glass before you bet someone you’re the Wizard of the table.
This is by far the best game on the App Store. The tables are well detailed and emulated, the sounds are amazing, and the gameplay is extremely addicting! The best part is the daily challenges. You can continuously pay tickets to buy more challenges, and the pricing is perfect. You don’t have to spend any real money to advance tables in this game, or receive cosmetic rewards. However, this also leads to its biggest flaw. I would easily give it 5 stars if I didn’t constantly lose rewards due to the server not responding or being down. I have easily lost out on over 20+ table parts, countless tickets, and coins. It’s really frustrating to finish a table expecting the rewards you earned only to have the server screw up and take your rewards with it. If it wasn’t for this, this game would probably be perfect, but that is inexcusable.. The daily challenges are to earn rewards and unlock tables. Hard to do that when you can’t get said rewards..
I’m new to playing Monster Bash…may be the best pinball machine I have ever played. I currently play it on an iPad mini 5th generation (plays great but screen is small)…I may need to buy an iPad Pro to get a larger screen. Attack from Mars is quite nice also. Medieval Madness is next on my list to explore. I’d pay $9.99 for each of these 3 but have not figured out how to buy these other 2 yet. Update: I have been doing the daily challenges now for months …I have all the tables (except Indiana Jones which I have not purchased yet - when will the half price sale be?) up to 3 stars except Medieval Madness which is now at 4 stars. The graphics enhancements are cool as you get more stars on each table. The challenges make it more fun to play ( I like earning something for playing)…I played most of my “real pinball” in the 80s - Eight Ball Deluxe time frame… these Williams tables are fun to play…I would like the option to get all the tables “uncensored” but they just took out cuss words, a little violence and tobacco and alcohol graphics - they should probably sell an uncensored IOS version to make the adults that really want the games to be “original” happy. I was thinking of buying a full sized virtual pinball machine but this is better in a way…I can play it anywhere (living room recliner is my favorite spot).
I’ve played pinball almost all of my life, and got very good at it no matter what game, but the Williams pinball game has so many things wrong with it, that its hard to explain.. The left flipper on the game has an extended area in which you can push to use the flipper, but after playing250 games, I found that the flipper on the left side didn’t work 57 times when you pushed it, which caused you to lose the game.. The right flipper is set up the same way as the left flipper, but it also didn’t work on 31 occasions.. if that is one of the strategies to keep you from winning a game, then the game is just not worth playing.. And the app itself never allowed me into check into the table.. The highest game on there was roughly 7,700,000,000,And though I broke that record 13 times, one game in which I scored 21 billion, it didn’t register.. so I have stopped playing until it’s fixed,Or something is done about it..
I play this every day, because I’m a casual pinball enthusiast; Zen has been doing Pinball for a long time, and in my opinion the Williams tables are the best in the biz. The physics, sound, and graphics are top-notch, and the daily challenges keep me coming back. The bugs are numerous and game-impacting. Frequently, there are connectivity issues that prevent collecting earned rewards. Other times, the ad breaks will cause the app to stutter and perform terribly (Even on the latest iPad Air)…Most issues will require you to force-close the app and restart and you’re back in business. Some of the timed challenges don’t appropriately stop the timer during unplayable moments and cinematics. At the end of the day, the issues it has are not enough to keep me from playing, or every so often dropping a few bucks on some Zen Coins, I just love pinball more than I dislike the issues.
This app is amazing, but to not be able to nudge the machine is absolutely pointless, otherwise I would give 5 stars over and over again. You guys need to update this app with a relocated nudge in the middle of both flipper so it’s easy to access during gameplay. to at least give us a chance to manipulate the ball before it drains straight down the middle or outlanes. This is also the reason I won’t purchase tables when I have no control over the outcome of ball drains. Please, please add a nudge feature at the bottom of the table in between both flippers. There are multiple forums and threads about how useless the nudge features are on this app. Hope you guys see this. -Zildjian
Such a shame and waste of a great license opportunity, Zen. I've been an immense fan of your past table implantations and have spent countless hours and money playing Zen Pinball on my iPad, so when I saw this had released with tables I loved from my childhood I was extremely excited. I just can't describe the varying degrees of disappointment that set in within minutes of opening the app. From little things like taking away the ability to play in landscape orientation to the ridiculous interface with challenges and unlockables. You guys had made pinball gold in the past and now just took it all and threw it away. Please make these brilliant, classic tables available for purchase in your far superior Zen Pinball app, even at a premium, and let us just enjoy the games the way they were originally intended without all the noise. Attack From Mars and Medieval Madness are two of my favorite tables ever, and I'd gladly pay to play them normally (and in landscape). Sadly, with this interface, it's a disappointing delete. Really hope you change your minds on this and revert to your superior tried and true.
Update: I give the game 5 stars for the tables. I bought them all for $30 and am not disappointed. Look forward to more in the future hopefully. Review: I’ll say overall that the scheme Zen Pinball has worked out with this game is not successful. It is over-complicated and - like the current industry trend in monetizing games - it is designed to milk the customer for money. Farsight Studios had a simpler and more comfortable design of letting you play until you reach a high score, so basically every table can be demoed. Pinball is a relaxed American pastime. Yes it’s expensive to put quarter after quarter in a table in an arcade and lose quickly, but it’s simple. Pinball is a simple, relaxing slice of Americana and this is too manipulative and complicated. I will still probably buy the 10 tables for $30. The UI is actually very slick and good-looking. It’s a very polished product. It lacks charm but - the tables are very realistic and attractively designed. As a digital simulation they’re very sharp. I prefer the charm and laid-back qualities of the Farsight Studios’ Pinball Arcade - it’s less confusing, overwhelming and micro-managing to the customer. It’s more intuitive, comfortable and lets you interface with the tables easily. Those tables are very good too. It suits the pinball experience quite a lot more. The tables in this game are very good and the UI is polished.
One of my biggest peeves with this game is that I’ve already purchased a lot of these games on a different app. They used to sell before this one. also once when I first got the game, they gave me the option to upgrade to all the games But they took that away and now I can’t buy as a package all the games together for 30 bucks or 35 bucks whatever it was they were charging. So I gave up on this. I play it once in a while because I paid for it but it’s not as much fun when I can’t go back-and-forth between all the games and I already spent more money on individual games than it would’ve cost to unlock everything so they should have a way of watching that and kind of give people as a bonus that games once they’ve hit them the number or even twice the numberof what it cost to unlock the entire thing and they should re-offer that periodically so that people have the option to get all the games if they want them
One of the most frustrating aspects of this issue is that it affects players' ability to fully enjoy the game. Specifically, completing daily challenges may result in an error message that reads "there was a connection error to the Game server" or "insufficient Zen Coins." These messages can be discouraging and may make players feel like their efforts are going to waste. Furthermore, because the problem has persisted for so long without being resolved, it's understandable that players may be hesitant to spend money on other pinball tables from the same developer. After all, if the developer isn't able to fix this issue, what other problems might crop up in the future? Overall, it's unfortunate that this pinball app suffers from connectivity issues that haven't been resolved by the developer. While the app may still be enjoyable to play, these errors can detract from the overall experience and make players hesitant to invest further in the game. Hopefully, the developer will prioritize fixing this issue in the future.
I am generally impressed with this app. The tables are mostly true to the originals, the physics seems correct, and while patience may be virtue if one chooses not to spend real money here, it is fun enough to be worth keeping to the grindstone in order to move ahead. However... I would like to know what genius came up with the idea to place the pause button at the left flipper control. On an iPhone, the screen is too small to have my thumb over the flipper and still see what I’m doing with it, but to move my thumb to left in order to see results in pausing the game about one out of every five hits. Honestly, the frustration of this situation often compels me to just turn it off. I’m old enough to remember playing real pinball frequently, and I don’t remember being able to pause the game at all. I appreciate the option, but it could be somewhere (just about anywhere) on the screen that would be infinitely less obnoxious and intrusive.
While the game isn’t bad, there are some glaring issues. The biggest one is that the controls don’t always work. There are times I’ll hit the correct spot and the paddle won’t move. It always happens on the left paddle. And while the first table is ok, some of the others are too busy. Also, they have the side troughs that just seem to easy for the ball to go down for an easy loss. Update: I have deleted this game. The more I played this game, the more I dislike this game. The physics are horrible, including multiple times that I hit the ball, it circled around and went down a side chute that put it past my flippers, yet if I didn’t hit it, it would have gone down the center. This didn’t just happen multiple times as I stated, but happened at least three times in a row! The tables are just busy, many are completely pointless and boring. The ones that aren’t are way to busy, so it feels like you can’t get any of the specials on the table. Don’t get this game, not worth it.
Just with any other good mobile game you’re limited without the use of micro-transactions. I’ve had this app for 3-4 months & have only had the ability to play on two tables (second one not even unlocked for Arcade Play). While In theory you could win other tables by simply playing & earning the multiple in-game currencies… I can safely say it’s near impossible. The Zen coins, Table Parts, Arcade Tickets, Table Boosters, & the god-awful Table Promotions all just add layers of difficulty in obtaining Pinball tables. It’s all extremely convoluted. Don’t mind shelling out $15 for a virtual recreation of a Pinball table? That’s fine! This game will be great for you then. Pinball gameplay is the best you can get on your mobile phone for sure. Also sprinkle in the amazing visuals. There’s a lot to love about the game itself, but the pay-to-play element makes it fall flat onto it’s face. You won’t even get a chance to play on a majority of tables; just one or two if you’re persistent enough. Williams’ Pinball company was such an integral part in Pinball history. This app could’ve been a sweet homage to the company’s legacy. After-all, Williams’ did churn out some of the best tables in Pinball’s heyday. The Getaway being one of my absolute favorites. In my personal opinion… This app is not cutting it. Just greediness to it’s absolute limits. Such a shame given how many great tables are presented in-game. With all of that being said… It’s a no from me dawg.
First, I LOVE pinball, but game is 100% garbage. You get one table (the eternally frustrating Attack From Mars) and can play daily events on various tables to grind for parts and tickets, and have to sit through a 30 second ad EVERY TIME you win an event (reach that event’s goal). The UI is a mess, with a confusion of of tickets, parts, coins and other crap that just confuses the experience. And there’s the utterly confusing “promote your table” scam. This translates to waste days of your life grinding through events, hope you can win enough parts and tickets off the random prizing, while being forced to watch ad after ad after ad for games even worse than this one. You’ll spend more time waiting, cursing at the game and the cluttered, confusing interface, all while wondering why you ever installed this app. Save yourself the emotional stress and avoid it. Instead, go download Pinball Deluxe Reloaded, pay $6 one time for all the tables, and have an immensely better play experience (pair it to a Bluetooth game controller for an even better time).
I would give this game 5 stars, however I took away a star bc of how hard it is to enjoy the game with not paying for basically the ability to play it. It feels more like a demo. Once you think you’re about to unlock a board with 5 parts bam it hits you with it needing 20 to play in arcade. That’s not right. I then took a 2 star away because when you decide to run an ad for an extra card the “x” to close the ad I way too small to touch. (Using an iPad mini newest gen) maybe will work with Apple Pencil but still way to small. Otherwise the graphics are stunning and it feels like a real pin ball machine. I wish the game would just charge a flat fee of $5 to $10 bucks to play and have it just be unlocked. And no you cant ask for 30 bucks to unlock bc this is not a 30 dollar game. Let’s be real here. Maybe 15 at most. Lol
Frustrating how awful the controls can be. My left flipper randomly decides to not respond pretty much every game, but then works right after I lose a ball. The tables are annoyingly long and somewhat confusing to unlock. Promoting to level 1 isn’t enough even though it seems like it so then you need to grind out 15 more parts which takes forever unless you pay. Too expensive as well or I probably would have purchased some by now. Gimmicky Zen coin sold in 25, 150, 350, 800 etc so when a table costs 250 you pretty much will always have some left over so you have to buy more to have enough for another table. Super lame option to purchase what is essentially normal physics, what physics am I playing with by default then? The answer is Willy Wonka physics. I really love the feature of being able to accidentally answer a phone call while tapping for my right flipper, super fun. Also for the daily challenges it seems to be the ones that you have to watch an ad to play and meet the objective with one ball it always takes a bad bounce or goes directly straight down the middle much more frequently so you have to watch the ad yet again to have another chance, like it’s rigged. Forgot to mention that there are constant errors or fetching data messages that 9/10 times don’t go through. Easy to uninstall this one, the more I think about what a greed fueled cash grab this game is makes me hate it.
I think that any well-rounded pinball player knows that nudging the table is an important component of play. Now, I do understand that it’s hard to implement this mechanism into a mobile game, but why does it have to be stupid hard just to nudge the table a little?! It takes nearly all my finger strength just to try and nudge, and it doesn’t do anything at all, which is unbelievably frustrating. Literally almost threw my IPad at the wall. The reason this is such an issue is because I literally can’t do anything if the ball rolls down the middle, ruining challenges and making the game annoying to the point it’s not even fun anymore. Honestly, I feel the best way to easily implement nudging is to simply have a D-Pad kind of thing in the bottom corner so you can just tap and not waste all your hand strength for nothing. Another more minor thing is the challenges themselves are wayy too hard, and are still considered “easy”?! It takes me months just to get about 1 billion points on one table, how do you expect me to get 1 billion something in 5 minutes? I think the difficulty could be lowered a bit so people can enjoy more tables and not rot their brains playing Attack On Mars for the rest of their lives. Everything else about the game, though, is fine, so I’ll give 3 stars.
Great pinball gameplay ruined by poorly designed app
The pinball games themselves are great. Even the convoluted coins and tickets system to unlock tables can be forgiven. But the game is just wildly buggy. It seems to be a combo of poor mobile game design and bad servers, but it constantly gives connection errors which cause you to be unable to play and to lose prizes, and ultimately ruins the game experience. Does it on every iOS device I have tried, on several different internet connections that are all fast and reliable, so I’m confident it’s the game that is the problem. And apparently this is nothing new - a google search shows that others have complained about the same issues for years. I would have been willing to invest some cash to buy coins and speed up my progress, but no way given all the bugs. It’s too bad, a lot of wasted potential.
This app is friggin sweet! The play, the sounds everything is awesome!! The “promoting your table” and earning nuts and bolts, tickets, Z things and who knows what else is beyond confusing. I don’t even know what I’m doing. But it’s to fun to put down! The free challenges are great and creative but they glitch and freeze after you watch the ad. sometimes it saves your progress but sometimes it doesn’t. I bought the iphone to hdmi adapter (the official apple one) but when it syncs to the tv there is the slightest bit of lag. a fraction of a second, and with games that isn’t gonna work. too bad because it looks freat on a big tv! This app deserves an award! dunk the drunk on Hurricane!! Forget about it!! A+A+A+A+A+!!!
I am a pretty decent pinball player and have played my fair share of physical and digital tables. My experience has been terrible with these games. I’m playing on an IPad Pro and the flippers are dropping dead on random occasions...especially the left one. There is no way to reliably “catch” or “hold” the ball or even dependably “flip” the ball when the flipper drops randomly. I have checked the usual problems...closing all apps and browsers and making sure the game is the only thing open. I have changed positions on the screen area (within the control zones) among other attempts. I have emailed the problem to the developer and heard nothing but crickets in response. What usually happens is they ignore your emails unless you post a less than stellar review on here...then they miraculously appear and offer up vague “help” that is never addressed. I am giving up and uninstalling. It’s no fun when the game doesn’t deliver a simple reliable control. It’s a shame.
This is the worst pinball app I’ve ever played! You can’t play the table without all the BS. It’s too bad because the tables seem to be good but not worth going through all the crap to play. Getting ready to delete app it just isn’t worth it! To bad I’ve just played the theater of magic on pinball arcade and it is far more superior! It plays like pinball is supposed to be played. You play three balls and that’s your score! None of the bs zen studios and Williams put you through! I don’t see this being a winner! I won’t be playing unless you change to just buying a table one price and you own it and not 30 bucks. I’ve bought many zen tables and my main problem with them is the ball is to small. The Williams balls are better but the crap you put us through is a none starter. You need to rethink this. Don’t see this being a success! And check out pro pinball timeshock it is the best pinball of all! It plays like a real table it’s the best of all tables available!
To begin...the Williams tables offered are not top tier. But they are tables not normally seen outside of a pinball museum and for the retro pinball fan, this collection may be exciting. I’m not a fan of the convoluted way in which features are unlocked, but I appreciate the recent consolation that Zen offered to obtain many tables through challenges. My main gripe is the quality and functionality of the ads shown in order to get that last suitcase option. I can instantly tell that my game will freeze and not allow me to collect an award when certain slot machine ads are shown. These ads need to be able to work properly. I would never entertain the thought of downloading an advertised app if it freezes your server due to shoddy programming. In general, the server drops connections on an average of once every day or two. I hope that this can be improved upon.
Good recreations of original - but no multiplayer!
Hard core pinball addict here - I have been playing this game since it’s release. A few things - tables are to expensive since it became free play. But the MAIN complaint, it does not have hot seat. The number one best part about pinball is playing three ball pinball with friends. This has a multiplayer using the Skills platform - but that isn’t the same as passing and playing with friends. I own about half these games (physical machines) and this app is a great way to play when I am out of town, to polish your skills. Zen has a great software product when it comes to pinball, they just got greedy with this one. I originally bought all the tables, now you have to buy z coins and tickets to get a table.. I just wanna buy them once.
Funhouse was even better than I remember it! The physics, graphics, gameplay, animations, sounds, everything is spot on! All except for the sore wrists. I’ve never liked large phones but after playing funhouse I’m going to need to get a bigger phone for more fun!! Thank you for this amazing and realistic pinball simulator. I must say I was skeptical at first and the app languished unplayed after I downloaded it months ago because I figured it wouldn’t be very good. Today I noticed the app and thought let me give it a try. I’m so glad I did. It has blown me away. And now I can’t stop playing. Thank you thank you thank you!!!!
I just tried out this app because it has a couple of pinball games tha t I like and which Pinball Arcade does not have anymore. What a disappointment. The creators say that you can play any game for free, but when you try to choose a second game, they say you have to essentially have more “tickets” to unlock the second and following games. So -how likely is it that a new player is going to have enough tickets to unlock a new game? NOT VERY LIKELY. So how are you supposed to mainly get the tickets? BUY THEM, of course. In addition to that, the instructions are unclear and confusing. Why this game has a higher rating than Pinball Arcade is beyond me. I deleted this game right after I figured out how to get out of it. I’m just going to be happy with Pinball Arcade; you should try that one. Don’t waste your time on this Williams game, like I did. Learn from my mistake.
This is the best pinball game I’ve found in the App Store. Tables are interesting and varied, physics look realistic, very fun to play. I bought a $20 gem pack just on the principle that creators of good games should be rewarded. The reason it got 4 stars instead of 5: 1) The most annoying thing about an otherwise fine game is how long it takes to connect to the servers. For example on the daily challenges, sometimes it takes 30 seconds of “fetching data … please wait” before the challenges appear, and half the time it fails to connect altogether and you have to try again. 2)It would be nice if you could “disown” certain tables. I like to try all the tables, but some of them are fun to play and some are not. It would be nice if, once you decide you don’t like a table, there were a mechanism to prevent that table from popping up in the challenges. You can always bypass a challenge you don’t like for a few tickets, so there is a workaround, but I find myself bypassing a lot of challenges before I find a table I enjoy. Otherwise, nice job on the game.
First off, yes it costs money if you just want to play a lot of tables fast; however given that this is Zen Pinball which is arguably the best Vpin you can get, it feels more like you’re just purchasing a game and not a bunch of micro transactions. I’ve tried all of the pinball apps available on the App Store and this is by far my favourite, even with the other Zen options. If you have patience and don’t want to spend money, then you get your first table free, and you can then grind and unlock tables by earning points and “machine parts”. So the free option is there, but I didn’t feel bad about spending money as they did such a great job.
Lots of tables. After a bit of grinding you can get two stars to play anytime you want. Be sure you pick the first table correctly that you want as you cannot change it after selection. I don’t know what the pro physics is and game doesn’t tell so I don’t know if I should grind or buy that option. When there is an ad which has the x button slowly light up on a circle around the x, then the game crashes 100 percent of the time. Often the server is unavailable. I would like an option to remove certain tables from the challenge rotation and since I can’t I am reluctant to enable one star for some. Overall the tables are fun to play.
I have been playing this game for a couple weeks, just know upfront the developers will beat you to death with micro transactions. It’s pay to win. In order to advance in the game you have to purchase everything and there are several machines to upgrade. What you can play is smooth and transitions well. Inputs are accurate. The only real problem with this game is the pay to win concept. This is very clearly a means to get into your pockets. You could spend several hundred dollars very quickly and not be in any better position then you were to begin with. I’m scoring it low because of the pay to win concept and over the top push for micro transactions. If you just want to play and don’t care about winning then stick with the Arcade mode and enjoy.
I want to love this game because I love pinball, and when I play at a real arcade, I’m actually very good. So it’s no coincidence that every time I play a virtual pinball game I suddenly am not that good. The closer I watch how the ball moves and how it reacts to the flippers, the more obvious it is that they adjust the physics of the ball to usually bypass the flippers by going dead center. in real life it’s very rare for the ball to go perfectly down the center, but in this game, I literally have to restart after less than 20 seconds of playing about 50 times before the physics seems to go back to normal. it feels exactly like Dave & Buster’s, where every game is just random chance and zero skill. it’s very fun when the physics are not being screwed with, but you have to play dozens of games before the physics normalize. shame on you developers for ruining such a lovable classic game
So I noticed this game has a multiplayer feature which has 2 different modes and one of them is for real money. So I put 30 dollars in and played dozens of matches or I should say, I played dozens of games and saved my scores. I was expecting to play head to head with another player but instead you pay for the game you play in hopes that score will be matched with another player in the future. It’s been 24 hours and I have only been paired up with one another player for one match which I won for 1$. The rest of my 30$ is still pending the results of another player even after a full day. So if I want to play for real money again I have to put more money in even though I have yet to lose any of it. I’m obviously refusing to go that route as I have only seen 1$ come back to me. Very sketchy method of doing business here.
If you want to play the tables, they are pretty decent, although the “non-pro” physics just seems like they tilted the playfield, so the ball is harder to push up into the playfield. (An old scam tactic where places would raise the back legs on the table.) But if you want to BUY a table, SAVE YOUR MONEY because the purchase options are a FRAUD. You CANNOT buy a table. You MUST perform their challenges for “parts”, and they require progressively more. 25 for level 2, 50 for level 3, 100 for level 4. And THEN you can use your tokens to buy it. But you can’t earn parts for a specific table. It’s a random assignment. So you’ll pay for tokens with no way to use them for YEARS. Or you can buy random parts for a whole lot of tokens. Its the same SCAM that these places use where you soend $120 to earn tickets to buy a prize that retails for $45. You can also watch ads to randomly earn parts. No surprise lots of them are for SCAM slot games, where you can earn hundreds of dollars into your PayPal account! (Sure you can.) It’s disgraceful that Williams associates themselves with this kind of FRAUD, and that Apple allows it. Don’t get fooled! Save your money. Play, get tired of the tables and challenges, and move on.
I love this app. Many memories with Cirqus Voltaire
I randomly had an idea of playing pinball and wanted a machine for myself, I then saw the prices being like a gazillion dollars. So I thought about two of machines that I grew up with, Cirqus Voltaire and Twilight Zone. I got this app like last week and I DIDNT NOTICE CIRQUS VOLTAIRE WAS AN OPTION!!!!! So I picked Getaway II, not knowing a childhood favorite was there until too late. Oh well, $9.99 later and I’m having a blast with Voltaire. Zero complaints with the app. Would much rather pay $10 for an app than $13,000 on EBay. Just one question though, could y’all possibly put Twilight Zone on here? I believe it’s from 1993.
The pinball tables are great, but the app around those pinball tables is insufferably buggy. It really ruins the experience. Here are some of the issues I’ve encountered: 1) Many ads will cause the app to crash once the ad is closed. This has caused me to lose a significant amount of my rewards. 2) The app is frequently unable to reach game servers. This often prevents you from playing challenges and receiving rewards. The very first time I opened the app it was unable to reach game servers! Talk about a poor first impression. And this has continued to be an issue in the many weeks since then. 3) Pinball tables will sometimes have no sound, but the ads in between will have no sound issues! The only way to fix this issue is to restart the app. 4) If you switch to another app, then back, the countdown timers in the app get messed up. The only way to fix the issue is to restart the app. 5) If you look at table info for more than one table, you are shown table info for the prior table rather than the current table. I’m a software developer myself and I frequently wonder how these bugs made it past QA.
I’ve loved pinball since I was a kid so being able to play high quality emulations of these tables is a delight. This should be a no brained purchase for sure, right? But I utterly hate the greed on display in the game. I hate the micro transactions, the two different currencies that do different things and are earned in game at different rates. I hate that earning a table involves some weird calculus of tickets, coins and “parts” that can’t be earned easily. And while you can certainly buy the tables, you may not buy all the bells and whistles like “pro level physics”. That’s a level four ability. And you may be able to earn a table with tickets, you won’t be able to just play it at your own leisure until it’s ranked to level two. And all of this comes down to greed. When the tables were licensed to Far Sight, you could just buy them and playing. But now it’s come to this. I hate it and I hate the company for forcing people to jump through these hoops. So I play what I have unlocked with no anticipation of necessarily unlocking any more. If there’s a decent deal that lets me get a table for a reasonable amount ($20 is not reasonable!j, I may take it. But I will minimize my outlay on this as much as possible.
I was hesitant at first when I heard Zen got the license to the Williams tables. Zen always felt it catered to a more casual pinball player by having much more forgiving physics. With this game, you can work to earn “Pro Physics” for each table. Combined with the great art to recreate each table, this feature feels like a pinball simulation! If you don’t own the Williams tables on another platform, this is not a bad way to start. I play on my iPad and iPhone. The only complaint I really have is with nudging when using touch controls - it just doesn’t work well and hope they will allow for us to at least customize the locations of where buttons are.
Great pinball games held back by awful monetization
As the title says this game has some really fun pinball games that work really well on the phone but the monetization of this game is beyond ridiculous even for phone games. Even if you pay money to purchase pinball cabinets certain features and game modes are locked behind major grind, this along with the challenges that require you to watch an ad to play and wait 24 hours to play again (unless you spend tickets) is just awful. The game begs you to spend all of your money and I refuse to support it. Also the game has some serious server issues clicking any option from playing challenges, spending currency, watching ads, or viewing the story freezes the game as it tries to connect (and often fails).
I downloaded this app because I’ve seen reviews that it’s the best pinball app around but, how do I PLAY? All I have is menus that ask me to pay to unlock things. I’m supposed to unlock tables by doing challenges, but I can’t do any challenges without any tables unlocked. I collected 50 free tickets by watching an ad, and 1 free part by watching an ad, and have to wait hours to be allowed to watch more. Reviews said you’re supposed to be able to choose one free table at the start. I did not get that option. Did that change and this app no longer has any free options?
This game represents the best and worst of modern development. A decent mobile pinball experience (because the Williams table design was legendary) stuck behind some of the worst F2P monetization practices. It’s a software monetization product, disguised as a game, with the singular intent of getting whales to spend hundreds of dollars. You just want to play your favorite games? For eighty bucks? No? Well you can play for free by working one table at a time like a full-time job, and go through these I-can’t-believe-it-passes-Apple-cert ad experiences. 3-2-1 just kidding here’s another pop-up… (Whoops did you accidentally install that age of sail battling game you have no interest in? I wonder why it was so easy to make that mistake…) Say No to psychology manipulating cash grabs. Lyman Sheets is spinning in his grave.
