🎇🥘🍄🛠🌝🌚🌈🪩🔮⚔️🎆

i’m pretty stormy about a high energy anime pinball RPG being stuck to a gacha format like this, because it’s never going to be as fun as it could be. it also kind of needs to exist in this space to make sense as an unfolding layered team builder. i’ve had some satisfying highs from months of buildup with this game, but everything’s tilting so much that we’re starting to plateau.

after putting together the tools for the hilariously cool sounding ‘dark multiball’ team, i think my time with this game is come to a close. other fun builds i’ve put together are levitate combo, dragon powerflip, and coffin count, all with the help of the small & dedicated world flipper community. a handful of lovingly detailed spreadsheets exist on the internet, explaining how various obscure mechanics can work together for optimal play. there’s no sense of competition between players (other than bragging rights), since online play is collaborative. better teams for one mean better runs for all.

this isn’t to say that players are the only ones bringing character to the table. the worlds of world flipper push their bubbly shonen trappings to the extreme:

🧜🏻‍♀️ a brash isekaied pirate captain has a flirty mermaid princess follow her around
☁️ a freed beastman prisoner found in one world is increasingly implied to be the missing heir of another
🗡 a cursed hero must teach & rely on others as he learns the true machinations of the imperial systems he once served

and those are just beats from the a-plot! hundreds of side characters come with individual vignette episodes when you pull them, fleshing out their deal & the universe as a whole. it’s a mess of a story, but the love put into it is obvious, tropes and all. countless lone wolf characters are won over by a warm welcome from the main quartet with a home cooked meal. biweekly gag comics add an element of slapstick to the cast that rounds out their darker moments. there’s an optimistic complexity that shows you broken characters building something outside what should be possible together. how can you not get inspired?

so, it’s all a good time, until we look at the pieces needed to keep this engine running. along all the fanfare and fun, grinding for materials takes up about 95% of the game. these will let you build your ideal teams, unlock new abilities & equip game-changing weapons. it’s even fun when your newly finished team gives you the tools to tackle content for characters of another element! you’ll get to play with your new kit, characters bouncing around the course casting flashy abilities every few seconds. each round is like an interactive fireworks show. well designed teams will weave intricate combos that create a fun engine to tackle different types of levels.

but then you need to grind more. and more. and the power creep starts to settle in. harder bosses require newer, more optimal characters, who you also need to upgrade. victories stop meaning as much & the temptation to turn on auto battle grows.

ultimately, this is what keeps people around for online games, not just gachas. there’s a sense of progression that’s encouraging to see your characters go through every day as you work through your own personal battles. your work hours may be unbalanced as all hell, but you can whip your phone out in a free moment and get your dailies done. it’s like casting a small spell, a personal prayer for a better tomorrow.

i defs needed this prayer over the last year and a half, unintentionally lining up with my bout of long covid i’ve had to claw my way through. money is tight, and i’ve been able to build almost every optimal team with little more than luck, patience & consistency. most days logging on & watching the auto battles play out was the only thing my brain could manage.

things are starting to change, though. i just got on disability after working towards it for over a year, and i’m finding that things are very slowly starting to get better. i’m able to get out of bed about half of the week, and i’m looking to see what i want to change with my new options. world flipper feels like it’s been played through at this point, so i think i’m ready to take it out of the routine.

i’ll probably come back to play through the new plot beats, but those take so long to come out. i honestly think that with the teams i have now, i can come back in 6 months to play a bit & peace out again! there’s something reassuring to finding your own ending to a game, and i think i’ve got mine.

A very casual oriented gacha which is perfect for me since every gacha I've played is GO HARD GRIND HARD GRAAA. I really like the writing in this game, the characters all feel very human and fun. Story's simple but fun enough, gets pretty interesting in the later parts.
Gameplay's fine, you can have some real fun moments and it can be fun to turn on auto and see big numbers go. Music is solid but it feels like the devs AND fans forgot to upload the OST to YouTube. Graphics are very nice pixel art and the Dragalia Lost guy is still great at making art.
Honestly I go back to this game because of the writing. It appeals in ways I really, really like and I love the small stakes character interactions between the cast. Literally every playable/gachable character is likeable, and also usable so you won't be (that much of a) liability picking favorites as long as you go for a theme. Objectively this ranks simply "good" but this game just makes me really happy.

I've all but sworn off mobile gacha games, but played this in my heyday of them using the japanese version, fumbling around with the different options to brute force my way into understanding it, because I love pinball, I loved dragalia lost from the same studio, and I love the furry characters in it. It holds up in english! A very fun progression and gameplay system, has the hallmarks of a good gacha(autoable, but fun to play hands on as well), and fairly generous with the currency. The story in a gacha game is never something to write home about, but it's also fairly interesting nonetheless.

Man, I love Pinball so much. It's one of the things I've missed most during the pandemic, I absolutely adore whacking that silver ball around. Learning a machine, it's ins and outs, the different modes, scoring, all of that stuff. Love it mate, LOVE. IT.

Anyway, World Flipper is a pinball themed gacha RPG and it's rubbish. I got right into it for a bit and then realised I was just getting gacha treadmill'd. It's skill-less, joyless, rubbish.

God, I'm glad I don't know much much money I've put into the LOTR Pinball machine that used to float from place to place in Glasgow, I absolutely adore that game.

I found the main story of World Flipper to be just engaging enough to see it through (at least, to the point it's currently stopped at), but I really found that the game became a lot more interesting once I had the means to really build a competent team. I'm not a gacha player and those elements still grate on me, but now that I've settled on some units I like and a good set of synergies, I'm finding I don't have to think about them all that much. It's fun to figure out small ways to optimize the setup I have with different sub-units or weapons, and to slowly build out the mana boards of my mains in ways that do perceptibly show up in gameplay. It's got some decent loops — just wish many of them weren't locked behind the horrendous stamina mechanic and gacha pulls.