Angry Birds Stella Pinball is a fan-made virtual pinball adaptation of the 2014 spin-off game Angry Birds Stella and its 2014-2016 two-season animated web series. Designed as if Zen Studios were to make it as part of their ever-growing, massive library of well-acclaimed virtual pinball tables, this table has the player re-enacting various episodes from the series, while helping Stella recover photos from her album, before engaging in a final encounter against Gale, the Bad Princess and ruler of the Pigs, with the fate of Golden Island at stake.
A full description of the table and its rule systems can be viewed here
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Angry Birds Stella Pinball contains the following tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Feature: A 30-second ball saver will be granted at the start of each ball. Once it expires, you can turn it on again by shooting Poppy's ramp five times to spell her name.
- Combos: With curvy lanes that encourage highly fluid ball motion, this table lets you execute graceful combos that will remind you of how elegant and powerful Stella's parkour skills are.
- Fun with Acronyms: The table's Arc Words / Tag Line invents a new meaning for the popular acronym/chat shorthand "BFF", which originally meant "Best friends forever!", replacing the word "best" with "bird".Stella: "Can anyone say bird friends forever?"
- If My Calculations Are Correct: Dahlia tends to say this more often than not to reflect her nerdy persona as The Owl-Knowing One - and also uses this trope on the player if they screw up the Skill Shot or make a weak lane shot. For instance, when you start up the Pig Power hurry up mode, she would say:Dahlia: "According to my calculations, if I can pretend to be Gale, I can get the Pigs to build the bridge we need."
- Minigame: The third mission, To the Bitter End, takes the ball into a mini-playfield representing the huge volcano at Golden Island, where you guide Stella and Gale out of the volcano before the lava dooms them both in the Season 1 finale. You can also revisit the playfield if you start Gale's side mode, based on the Season 2 episode "The Golden Queen", and help her find a Golden Egg back inside the volcano where she once was trapped in.
- Mythology Gag: This table is based on both the 2014 spin-off game Angry Birds Stella and the animated two-season web series that followed its release, and does well to represent the best of both worlds.
- Each of the unique abilities of Stella's friends from the game are represented throughout the table as uniquely designed lanes and ramps. (For instance, Willow's power is represented as the left orbit, which leads to a a mini-flipper in the opposite orbit that can shoot a crossramp.) Plus, you're encouraged to recover Stella's lost photos by beating all main missions and most side modes, as well as looking for additional ones - so that you can get a huge score boost for beating the wizard mode. You can even recover lost belongings that were stolen from the treehouse in a side mode called "Lost and Found", if you can search throughout the table and then beat the Pigs that stole them.
- Many missions and side modes are based off of the events of most, if not all episodes from the web series. The scoring display shows clips from the web series, meaning that you'll more often than not see both the limbed versions of Stella and her friends (as toy figures on the table) and their original, limbless looks simultaneously.
- Some of Stella's lines from The Angry Birds Movie also end up being spoken from the table. Like this gem:
Stella: "Surf's up, you guys!" - Neck Lift: Gale does this to Willow when you start "The Portrait" to reflect how the episode begins with Willow getting captured and forced to paint a big picture of Gale to leave.
- Role Reprise: Kate McKinnon reprises her role as Stella.
- Score Multiplier: Raise the score multiplier by executing a 5-way combo or longer, but bear in mind that it's only good for the current ball unless you win a multiplier hold from Willow's random award.
- Shout-Out:
- The asymmetric design of the table was inspired by that of Zen's pinball adaptation of Star Wars Rebels. The table also features two variable-strength lanes that work similar to the one on that table, which is a large, over-arching left ramp with a flag that's used to light Force Multiball.
- The skill shot and magna saver were taken straight from one of Zen's original tables, Tesla. The ability to earn three magna saves (and not lose them from a ball drain) from lighting all return lanes also comes from Zen's pinball adaptation of Jurassic Park. Both Stella and Jurassic Park also feature a variable-strength ramp in which weak shots up it would drop the ball into a bumper area.
- The magna-save system is also implemented in a table with six return lanes - like Zen's pinball adaptation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, except that the magna-save is unified instead of being split into individual kickbacks.
- This table has a flag at the left large orbit that awards a random prize, a part that came straight out of Zen's pinball adaptation of Alien vs. Predator.
- The Lost and Found side mode functions a little bit like how one plays a side quest on Zen's pinball adaptation of Fallout. The Friendship crossramp also looks like a ramp that came straight out of that table as well. The process for starting Golden Egg Multiball is also identical to that of Fallout's Mutant Multiball mode and both tables share the same method for raising the score multiplier - performing combos. The way a ball is locked for Dahlia in Friendship multiball - a tiny gate that blocks off her ramp's return habitrail - is the same mechanism used to lock a ball for Mutant Multiball, which allows it to be picked up and stored by a nearby figure.
- The last two steps for completing the final phase of the wizard mode to trigger the victory multiball (hitting the bumpers a certain number of times, then shooting a ramp) are reminiscent of the wizard mode of Alien: Isolation (Zen Studios), only that you play with one ball.
- Retrieving Stella's lost photos to boost the reward for beating the wizard mode works akin to the obsidian stone scoring system used in another one of Zen's original tables, Sorcerer's Lair, where you have to get as many stones as possible to beat the sorcerer and earn bigger rewards for the final wizard mode. The mini-playfield is also inspired by that table's Cellar mini-playfield.
- The mini-playfield uses a zipper flipper mechanism taken from the Holocron mini-playfield of Zen's Star Wars pinball table Masters of the Force. The ability to activate a center post is taken from the mini-playfield of the Zen original table Pasha.
- The hurry-up mode "It's Mine!" plays similar to the wizard mode of the Williams table Tales of the Arabian Nights, "Genie Battle", except with just one ball and no ball saver, in the sense that you need to quickly hit lit lanes to push a tug-of-war power meter shown on the scoring display over to one side to win. The Stella table also borrows Nights' skill shot structure and system.
- Drop targets are scattered throughout the table and block entrances to major lanes, similar to Zen's original table Wild West Rampage.
- The activation method of "Own the Sky" is the same as the one used for the "Prospering" side mode in the pinball adaptation of CastleStorm.
- Some voice lines are also a nod to a few other Zen Studios tables:
- If you use a magna-save correctly, Stella might say, "Saved by my trusty bubbles!", as a nod to what Spider-Man would say when the ball saver is used in his Zen Studios table ("Saved by my trusty webs!").
- When the ball saver is used, Dahlia may tell the player "Come on, focus!", a common ball saver quote in some Zen Studios tables like Marvel: Fear Itself and Fallout.
- Skill Shot: At the start of each ball, you use the slingshot-like plunger to launch the ball into play, but you can make a skill shot if you aim it precisely so that the ball passes through one of three lit hoops.
- Spelling Bonus: Spell the names of various characters to trigger side modes or perks. Stella grants a magna-save that fittingly reflects her bubble power, Poppy activates the ball saver and Dahlia starts a hurry-up mode.
- Suddenly Voiced: While the characters in the spin-off seldom say anything intelligible in the web series, they get full voice roles on this table for the first time ever.
- Taken for Granite: Many lanes of the table start turning to stone during the Golden Egg Multiball due to the Egg's petrifying power.
- This Cannot Be!: Willow will let out a variant of this when you start the Golden Egg multiball as she witnesses her biggest fear coming true: things are turning to stone!Willow: "The dream I had! I can't believe it's all happening for real! Everything's being turned to stone! This can't be happening, right?"
- Timed Mission: Most modes are played on a time limit, including the second phase of the three-part wizard mode.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: If you gather all of the island's three Golden Eggs, locking each one by hitting the Golden Egg bumpers and shooting the middle sinkhole, you can release their dangerous power to petrify most of the island, bringing Willow's nightmare into reality like in the third-to-last and penultimate episodes of the series.
- Video Mode: Shooting the right orbit 3 consecutive times will unlock a video mode based on the Season 1 episode "Own the Sky" where Stella goes hang-gliding. You use the flippers to control her in a first-person perspective, dodging rocks so that she safely descends.
- Wizard Mode: After you attempt all five main missions, you will unlock a three-part wizard mode where you help Stella and her friends confront Gale once and for all, re-enacting the events of the Series Finale You Asked For It! The first phase involves getting Stella to try and steal the last Golden Egg while Gale's sleeping, the second phase has you helping Stella evade Gale after failing to take it, to avoid being turned into a golden statue and lastly, after taking the Egg and turning Gale to gold, the last phase has Stella reversing the Golden Egg's effects on the island and destroying it by throwing it into the ocean.
