Williams™ Pinball

Williams Pinball gets only three stars from this long time pinball enthusiast (nearly 50 years). Zen Pinball undoubtedly make amazing, state of the art games. The graphics, sound, layout and physics are stunning and are as close to the real pinball experience as one can get without sinking quarters. The games are so faithfully replicated that they ironically become the problem with Williams Pinball for me. Pinball machines were designed to make money. Period. To say the games in Williams aren’t easy would be an understatement. They can be frustratingly difficult. Now I should mention I am quite biased because I simply love the original Zen Pinball iOS app and it’s 80+ tables. They aren’t so technically designed to take your money and you stand a far better chance of lasting more than 15 seconds. There is less space between the flippers and more forgiving ball saves. In Williams the balls often drain before they even hit the flippers. Get more quarters! I get a far better pinball experience and more fun out of the original Zen Pinball app than I do Williams Pinball, and at a fraction of the cost (and there are no ads). It’s a shame it appears Zen has abandoned Their iOS app to pursue the more expensive Williams games. There are still slots to fill! If the original Zen Pinball app, which I give five stars, didn’t exist I would consider this a five star game. But by comparison, Williams sadly falls short of its predecessor with its gimmicks and difficulty. If you want a realistic pinball challenge, Williams Pinball may just be what you are looking for. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend the original Zen Pinball app over Williams.

1) I started playing the game a few months ago and am frustrated with network connection issues. Download and upload network tests are excellent, so guessing it’s an issue with the server backend, time out problems. Problem happens after nearly every free session while “fetching data”. 2) Also the calculations for the time until the next challenge is often a very large number, like over 2000 days. Force quitting and restart the app usually resolves the problem. 3) exiting the app on the iPhone 13 Pro is difficult. When you swipe up to leave the app the Arcade button is activated. Please consider moving the buttons on the main screen to allow for iOS gestures. 4) I am new to gaming and the currency scheme is confusing. Tickets are fairly easy to earn but cannot be used to purchase Table Parts or Zen coins. Purchase Zen coins to get a random selection of table parts, and still not able to get nearly enough to then upgrade any table. I’ve also purchased about $70 in Zen coins and have upgraded 3 tables to 5 star. Lots of money for a game that has constant issues retrieving data. 5) I enjoy being able to play on the iPad or iPhone and and have the same level of play. 6) Also like the games and added animation. Playing virtual pinball helps my eyes track the ball, learn flipper skills like catching the ball and aiming where to shoot, and beginning to understand the challenges or target sequence. 7) oh yea, the volume is often off for no apparent reason. Have learned that using the iOS lock rotation then unlock rotation fixes it. Very strange workaround, but it works. … Thanks!

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.