World Flipper (Mobile)
I’ve always liked video pinball games, even when I was a kid. One of the video pinball games I remember on the NES was Pinball Quest. It stood out because it combined elements of pinball with an RPG fantasy quest game. Granted the game was super frustrating but the idea was neat and I’m surprised game makers haven’t revisited that concept more. But now they have with World Flipper, a free-to-play mobile game that combines both pinball and RPG elements (reviewed on iPad here).
There’s a story to this game, but we won’t go into it much here. Basically your team uses the “World Flipper” to travel to different lands, battling the forces of a dark lord along the way. You’ll fight on a themed pinball table. You’ll pick a party of three who are your ‘balls’ represented by little pixel characters. You’ll tap on the screen to activate the flippers to send your party up the table to hit bumpers and enemies. You’ll complete the stages once all the enemies and a boss are defeated.
If you can hit a bunch of bumpers without using the flippers, the flippers will get charged and next time you use them, your characters will do a spin attack for more damage. After a while, you can also swipe up, left, or right to activate a skill. After using the flippers, you can also tap the screen again to make your party home in on an enemy to bump into them for damage. Avoid falling past the flippers and dodge enemy projectiles to minimize damage. If your party loses all its energy, you must start the stage over again.
Only problems I had with the game are that you do have to wade through story text a lot, which I think is unnecessary for this type of game. Leveling up your characters and equipping things to them is also a bit fiddly, as these types of games tend to be. And it almost delves into endless clicker territory at times, or at least it feels that way. But I still enjoyed the simple pinball gameplay and 16-bit style graphics and anime characters. Plus it’s free, so I say it’s worth a try!
Kid Factor:
Defeated enemies just disappear, so the game isn’t very violent. Reading skill is helpful for the text, and parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.
October 20th, 2021 at 8:55 pm
Neato! Wish I could play it on consoles. My phone’s too busy with business these days.