Thanks to Pinblend Studios for the review code
Title: Slot Shots Pinball Ultimate Edition
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 02/06/2024
Prelude
This is a set of assorted Pinball Tables, made in Unity as part of a set that’s been available on Steam for a while now. Having been asked to cover this game via Keymailer, I originally planned to decline it due to the nature of my busy queue and assuming it wasn’t anything special, but upon looking at some of the gameplay footage and other aspects of the game, I found myself intrigued by how this little set of tables grew quite a lot over the past few years, and figured I’d give it a spin! After all, while the usual Zen Studios work is pretty hard to top, that doesn’t mean there can’t be other attempts at video pinball in the meanwhile, especially considering the rocky bump that company is dealing with lately.
Thus, we have twelve tables to check out today, all made over the past few years and have been slowly getting updates, with another update even dropping as I was working on this review, a good sign that Pinblend listens to feedback and continues to work on improving this game. Let’s dive in!
Presentation
Being completely honest with you, I got bad vibes flashing back to the Jurassic Pinball review when seeing some of the screenshots for Slot Shots Pinball. The table UI seems very akin to whatever pinball creator was used to make those poor tables, and considering how much of a mess those Switch tables were on a visual and performance level, I was a little uneasy about how the tables in Slot Shots would look, let alone run.
Thankfully, while it obviously can’t match what Zen/Zaccaria are doing for their tables, I found the UI and table designs of Slot Shots to look way better than I expected, and outside of the dot matrix display giving me those Pinball Creator vibes by being pretty dull (though most of the tables give the matrix a nice theme), the lighting for the tables and the performance looks great, even on Steam Deck with low setting enabled. A nice 60FPS can be felt throughout the game, and while the tables are a lot simpler than other recent virtual pinball tables, the targets and table text are easy to read and determine where you need to shoot next, even if you turn down a lot of the visual details. (which you might have to if you’re a deck player like I am, since even all the non-framerate settings being switched to their weakest counterparts makes the fan very active if you want to maintain that smooth framerate)
The music on the other hand is rather generic, with none of the songs being memorable or terrible, though the Vixel land table did throw me into a recent moment of deja vu, since the BGM in that table is straight up out of some of the areas from Jubilee, despite having no visual relation to the game at all. Turns out, both the pinball table and the Jubilee game were composed by the same composer, which explains the reuse. As a matter of fact, said composer made a few other songs for Slot Shots, and I found those contributions to be the best part of the OST as a whole, though still nothing that was ultimately memorable.
Gameplay
Starting up the game, you have the thirteen tables to choose from, an options menu, and that’s about it! No extra fancy bonus modes or special score challenges, though online leaderboards are available for all tables, albeit with a caveat I’ll get to later. Having sampled all of the tables, there’s a clear sign of growth and progression over the years, with some of the earliest tables having pretty basic ramps and not much to do with their layouts, while the newer tables get a bit more creative and fun with the extra playfields, flippers and bumpers, and the physics are solid, and while they’re not nearly as polished as Zen’s stuff, they actually do manage to feel slightly better than Zaccaria’s Physics, which I was pleased with.
Of course, the game’s title makes a big deal out of the slots, and as a result all tables in the game have a slot mechanic as a means to get bonus points. Not much else to say about it, as they do what you’d expect them to and provide you points for hitting the jackpot, and they really aren’t that special besides a means of scoring points. I found it a lot more fun to hit targets and go up ramps and secondary playfields than aim for the slots and leave it to chance.
Still, the game controls OK for the most part. The triggers serve as the flippers, and the game feels rather responsive on a Steam Deck or controller. My only big gripe with the controls have to do with how tilting feels, since to tilt left or right, you hit X or B, respectively, and this just feels very, very weird as someone more used to using the left analog stick for tilting like in most other modern Pinball video games. Pressing in the left stick does an upper tilt, so I don’t get why all the tilt controls couldn’t be mapped to said stick, rather than being shared between the face buttons and L3. Still, I have hope this could be fixed in a patch to make it a lot more comfy for controllers.
When it comes to the tables, I found them to be a mixed bag. The earliest ones I could tell almost immediately were made before the newer ones solely based on how dull their table layout was, lacking much in terms of missions or objectives to complete outside of some repetitive ramps and loops. Even the newer ones aren’t all that great in my opinion, at least when compared to real EM tables or Zaccaria/Zen stuff, but at least you get a fun scoring loop with some of the tables like the Dracula one, and nailing a multiball is just as satisfying as it always is for these kinds of games.
I really got into the Neon Nights line of tables to see how it went from a simple early-era table to a more complex, target-heavy remixed one, and Mystic Ballistic was another surprise favorite, with the bumpers underneath the glass panel leading to some fun scoring strategies, although I soon found it was a little too easy to keep yourself alive if you knew where to aim, and was a little stunned at how hard it was for the ball to fall down the sides of the field. Still, those tables were easily my favorites, and the online leaderboard aspect of Slot Shots intrigued me at first too, until I realized just how barebones it was.
See, you can only bring up the leaderboards once per play session, though you can submit your new score after every attempt you make. Why can’t you view the leaderboards in the main menu, without having to complete a round of pinball? Why is it that if you see the leaderboards once, decide to replay the board again, then submit, you gotta back out to the main menu, re-enter the game, and then clear another game to see the scores? It really feels like a haphazard inclusion and is the biggest bummer on an otherwise decent game, since I feel with some challenge modes like a 1 Ball or Time Attack mode, the leaderboards could really offer a lot of replay value and keep me invested on those easier tables like the aforementioned Mystic one.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Slot Shots Pinball was a game I didn’t have much expectations for going in, but walked away with some optimism, even if the table design is a bit rough. The pinball tables are rather basic and don’t have much to them outside of a few cool means of scoring points (with some like the Alien one being painfully boring to play), and while you can clearly see the very impressive growth the dev’s made when comparing one of the earlier tables to a newer one, this game still has a few warts to iron out, mainly with how tilting feels on a controller, the wonky leaderboard system, and hopefully adding some extra bonus modes for the tables down the line for some much needed variety and challenges.
Once you find a table you like here, the game is fun and controls very well, if a bit taxing if you’re playing this on a Steam Deck, but outside of besting your score a lot of these tables failed to engage me in the same way even super basic EM tables have in the past. My favorite tables here are Neon Nights Ultra, Dracula, and Mystic Ballistic, which give me hope more tables with those fun scoring tricks and targets get added in the future, and considering how the dev team seems really receptive to feedback, hopefully the feedback I provided here will help out a bit too.
Just a shame some of the earlier pinball tables are pretty generic duds that won’t engage you for long, or will look nice, but not have much in terms of missions or variety to keep things interesting for that long. You’ll basically know and have hit everything in a few of these tables in no time at all, which I’d normally use as a reason to say to skip the entire set altogether, but damn, the physics do feel nice and the good tables that are here are still really darn fun, and I’m eager to see more brought to their standards. A promising start pinball fans should keep watch on!
I give Slot Shots Pinball Ultimate Edition a 6 out of 10.