PinOut title screen
PinOut is a Mobile Phone Game for iOS
and Android, developed by Mediocre. It was released on October 27th, 2016.
It features a different take on pinball, with a continuous canyon of a table where the goal is to ascend as far as you can before a timer runs out, rather than scoring points. To that end, it’s divided into eight sections, and includes power ups and mini-games scattered throughout the playing field.
PinOut contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: A battlefield, it ain’t, but “amazing” and “technicolor” are fitting words to describe the eight sections you cross.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game offers two lanes to the next section after the first three, giving the player a chance to grab as many as 50 extra seconds should their ball slip by the section’s first flippers.
- The ball slows down slightly when it nears the flippers, giving the player more time to aim. This can throw off one’s timing, though.
- Continuing is Painful without the checkpoint in-app purchase; if you don’t purchase it, or if you’re going for the Stamina achievement, you must start from the beginning of the eight-section gauntlet every time you run out of time.
- Endless Game: Sort of. While there are finite levels, clearing the last one sends you to Overtime.
- Final Boss: The eighth section, in a sense. There are several red ball releasers throughout the level, actively attempting to hamper your progress.
- True Final Boss / Wizard Mode: Overtime, which sends you through all the levels again, except with no checkpoints, no extra time, and no color coding. You get as far as you can before you run out of time.
- Retraux: The mini games, which take place on the dot-matrix scoreboard where the timer normally resides, and include chiptune music.
- Video Mode: The mini-games, natch.
- Synthwave: The music, which was created explicitly for this game. The artist even released vinyl and audio cassette (but not Compact Disc) physical versions of the album.
- Timed Mission: The ever-present timer, which normally only halts while you’re playing a mini-game; however, there are items to slow or stop the timer temporarily.
