Reviews

• 

  Eddie

  Jan 8, 2023

  Great idea, awful implementation. Worst physics in a pinball game, ever. Customizing controls is impossible. Flying sequences are horrible. Stay away from this unless you just have to play all the pinball games on Steam :)
• 

  Chiquita's foofaraw

  Sep 17, 2016

  This player just exited Momonga Pinball Adventures after 64 minutes, in order to write this review (and consider my future of play with this game. As far as going back in….yet undecided.) It’s an extremely CUTE game, no question about it, and for beginners to pinball, it may be just the ticket. But it offers little along the traditional lines of pinball play or scoring, and instead perhaps might be considered pinball’s first PURELY Steam pinball-hybrid game. To get started in this game; if anyone else looks for the keys to use, as I did, you may fail as thoroughly as I. Here’s all you need; left, right and down arrows. That’s it. And for those beginners previously mentioned there are numerous “valuable hints” offered throughout the game. For example, that the ball goes faster off the tip of the flipper. Or that the ball can be caught by the flippers. (Really good stuff for beginners to know.) The game is the story of cute fuzzy creatures, primarily a flying squirrel named Momo, as they fight the forces of evil.......owls. Momonga Pinball Adventures (MPA) is broken into nine levels. Each level needs to be completed for story continuation, and also has four more accomplishments for optimal completion and scoring. There are also three other mini-games that will be unlocked as the game progresses. Frequently (in fact, very frequently) cut-scenes interrupt the flow of the game to interject story that may or may not add to gameplay, depending on the player. Stars obtained by ball contact count as points (as well as contact with set pieces), even though stars are often obtained by soaring through the skies, entirely independent of pinball. Each of nine levels as well as having five accomplishments, also has three overall levels of accomplishment represented by hearts. For a yet undetermined reason (just at an hour, remember), a timer runs as play occurs. So if you’re a player obsessed with competition and measuring accomplishment, MPA just may be the game for you. Oh, BTW, there are also ten achievements and an online leaderboard, so certainly this pinball game, perhaps like no other, was designed for Steam-style gamers. As far as pinball, well, not really. It doesn’t feel, act or perform as pinball. I never had "pinball fun". I rushed through the first seven levels, plus the mini-games, plus time on Level 8 in less than 50 minutes. Then the bigger boss level comes along, presenting a challenge that at first blush seems way out of scale to all prior levels. MPA advertises itself on the Store Page as “a unique pinball game”, but another game has already taken, and held, the title of Original RPG Pinball game for almost two years. (And in truth, the original feels far more like actual pinball, though admittedly at a significantly higher price.) Momonga is what it claims to be, and at a reasonable price. For players looking for a cute game in which to search specifically for measured accomplishment, one could do far worse. But for those wanting primarily to play pinball, I fear MPA may be a disappointment. Thank you.
• 

  mike.cornell.009

  Sep 17, 2016

  Cute game, but it has visual glitches on OSX (v10.11.6, Macbook Pro stock Intel chips). There's a note on the OSX graphics settings recomending using a certain graphics level - I tested all of them and they all have the same issues. Lots of images and textures seem to flash white; images in the loading screen, images in the cutscenes, some textures during gameplay, even the buttons in the main menu. It's too distracting to really enjoy the game right now, but it has a lot of potential and I'll definitely return to it once it's fixed. When the images aren't flashing, I love the art style, it reminds me of cute action adventure games on the PS2. Recommending to others on Windows, hold off for a bit on OSX
• 

  Crying on the Toilet

  Sep 17, 2016

  15 minutes in I just wanted to say this game is brilliant. Similar to Mario Pinball on the GBA; maybe not as intricate but alot more forgiving. It's a shame diamonds like this get themselves quickly swept off Steam's front store page and hidden by all of the visual novels, F2Ps and Amatuerware pouring in. Also see: Rollers of The Realm
• 

  Chewable C++

  Sep 18, 2016

  Momonga Pinball Adventures is a casual pinball hybrid game and is similar mechanically to games like Sonic Spinball. It is not a "real pinball game". It's cute and relatively polished. The art is nice and clean. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] There are 9 story levels, which are quite short and simple, consisting of multiple playfields divided by checkpoints that are unlocked by completing goals on each playfield. Some segments involved the character flying through a scrolling area instead of being controlled by flippers as a ball. There is a simple, cute story featuring a handful of characters, all of which actually take part in the gameplay itself either as enemies or helpers (there are some multiball sequences). The playfield design includes elements like collectible stars, breakable objects, and enemies that move around and sometimes shoot at or push the character/ball. In some levels, you have 3 lives and can be killed. The enemy fights (there's really only one type besides the boss fight, which is also similar) are cleverly designed to require an initial shot at an object, followed by a timed shot at the enemy. Again, the enemies also move toward and try to push you, and sometimes will shoot things at you. The normal enemies can be stunned by shooting them directly (but killing them requires the aforementioned sequence). Each story level has 5 challenges, but only one is available at a time and they must be completed in order. The first one is always to simply complete the level. There is considerable variety in the challenges including time attack, collection, finding secrets, and a few creative ones like flying in between stars instead of through them in one of the scrolling segments. The 3 bonus levels are one pachinko with finite balls, one endless? pinball, and one (endless?) non-pinball vertical scroller). [h1]Difficulty / Goals / Score[/h1] Simply getting through all the story levels is pretty easy. Perhaps some will find the last level to be somewhat difficult (I found it to be a mild challenge compared to the rest, but didn't have much trouble). However, many of the challenges are very difficult, even for me (a pinball veteran with a tendency to appear near the top of leaderboards). Unfortunately the source of the difficulty doesn't have all that much to do with pinball skills. Sometimes it has to do with randomness - a bit too much so, in my opinion. Sometimes it has to do with non-pinball segments. I think the difficulty of some of the challenges could really use some tweaking. One of the achievements is for completing every challenge. This is certainly by far the hardest one. There is also an achievement for obtaining a 3 star rating on every story level (bonus levels also have star ratings, but do not seem to count towards this achievement). The other achievements are either trivially easy or are a grind (most notably the achievement requiring playing through levels 500 times! - beware!) Star ratings are based on score, which is based on time to complete the level, collecting stars in the level, breaking objects, and hitting the bumpers until they stop giving points. The story levels have Steam integrated leaderboards. Strangely the bonus levels do not have leaderboards despite being much more score oriented in design (2/3 even have uncapped scoring, unlike all the other levels). [h1]Physics[/h1] The physics are super basic. The "ball" moves very slowly and rarely bounces, which reduces the array of pinball skills employed to flipping at the right time - but even there, the ball's trajectory and force doesn't really follow what you'd expect from "normal" pinball. In particular, backhand shots are nearly impossible and transferring the ball between flippers is very awkward and time consuming most of the time. The bottom line is that you are not afforded a particularly good sense of control due to the limitations of the physics despite the very slow speed of the ball. [h1]Issues[/h1] Overall the game is pretty solid. There's some odd physics object penetration and hit detection sometimes, but it's a minor quirk. I did notice some model flicker occasionally. Seems others see it too, but not sure if it's universal. It's tolerable, though, and possibly tends to occur after the game has been running for some time. Noticed a few very, very minor interface issues that hopefully will get fixed (arguably incorrect text in one place, two achievements not showing as unlocked in the in-game interface, but unlocking fine in Steam). [h1]Conclusion[/h1] It's a fun little game, with emphasis on "little". Recommended for anyone, just don't expect too much and keep in mind what this game is and is not.
• 

  Ysora

  Jul 28, 2017

  I love the concept of this game, a simple pinball set-up with a fun storyline and some in-between alternative style scenes. I love the music and could really get into this fun mindset of a flying squirrel trying to save his home because of it... until I got down to 1 heart. The heart beating noise is so obnoxious I had to turn off my sound. Add a button that disables that noise and it's 100% what I wanted and expected from it.
• 

  RHINOREIGN

  Nov 21, 2017

  The concept of this game is great! Game time was WAY TO QUICK, 30min to complete without any real satisfaction... The rest of the time I played was used to complete every challenge for the levels. I think you chaps can do better! Waste of money!
• 

  Mabarial

  Jan 24, 2018

  I really wanted to love this game, the characters and concept are so lovely, adorable, and unique that it inspires all sorts of possibilities in my imagination - ones that I wish were the case. [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] It's clear that love went into designing the game, and it's good first step! But it's an early first step, and I would recommend skipping over this one in hopes that the next step they take fleshes out the concept and gives us a grand adventure to explore in Momonga 2. A casual player will beat all 9 of the very short levels in about 30 minutes to an hour. I've detailed the more pressing issues with the game below. [h1]Preface:[/h1] Before I get into specifics of what state the game is currently in, I would like to say that I am still in love with the concept of this game, and I do hope the creator continues the saga - the core concept and art direction are solid, and with some very minor tweaks this game could still be so much better than it is. I would love nothing more than there to be a series of Momonga Pinball Adventure games, each improving on the concepts and ideas of the last, and refining the mechanics and gameplay loop to be something more adventurous. When I bought the game, I was expecting this to be an exciting mix of adventure game and pinball game, where I got to explore each level, working my way to the end bit by bit, or completing fun objectives on the way to unlock new areas or secrets. What I received was a handful of 60-second pinball levels with very little design, in what feels like it would be a vertical slice proof-of-concept to be shown to investors behind closed doors. It's a great concept, but it's not fleshed out, and the entire game could be finished within 15 minutes on your first playthrough if you have any sort of experience with pinball machines before. [h1]Main Issues[/h1] [b]Buggy Flippers[/b] I only spent an hour with this game, but within the first 90 seconds I had issues with the main character, Momonga, occasionally clipping into the flippers. This would could one of three things to happen: [list] [*]Momonga would shoot off in a random direction at high speed. [*]Momonga would clip all the way through the flipper, making it impossible to save him from falling into the hole below and losing heath. [*]Momonga would barely move at all, having to spam the flipper to get him unstuck. [/list] All three things cause loss of control over Momonga, which in a game where you already have so little control over your ball, really negatively impacted the game more than I'd like to admit. And it happened often enough in my one hour experience that this became one of the biggest issues for me. [b]Poorly Designed Enemy Mechanics[/b] There aren't that many enemies in this game. Two variants of owls, and a boss owl - and they share very similar attacks. They draw a line on the level, and after a short delay, throw a projectile across that line which can hit your character. The boss has an additional attack where he starts spinning and if your ball happens to get near him, you take a hit. The idea is simple: You either wait, holding and manipulating your ball with your flipper to wait out the attack, or carfully move to another flipper or part of the level with a well timed flick to dodge - the problem comes with that in a pinball game, you're not near your flippers for 80% of your time. So often an enemy would start an attack while Momonga was up the playfield, and would fall into the attack's path on the way back down with no way for me to take control or dodge the attack. During the boss fight, this problem is showcased often as the boss's spin attack takes up almost half of the arena, and the arena is so simple that almost always Momonga will be falling back into his attacks. While skillful players can mitigate this by learning the boss's moves, timings, and mechanics, the fight can still unfairly end your run by catching your ball in just the wrong position so that the boss's attacks hit you three times before your ball ever comes back to your flippers. At times it felt like I was rolling dice instead of fighting a boss. [i]Achievable solution: Add an "uncurl" button that allows you to manuever Momonga at a very slow pace walking pace, which prevents him from entering ramps or breaking objects. This would allow you to stall or gain more control when an enemy starts an attack while you are away from the bumper, and adds way more possibilities for enemies and mechanics for later games and levels. It also opens up more exploration options for adventuring if the creator ever decides to create more expansive levels.[/i] [b]Sound Design[/b] While the visual art direction of the game is lovely, the sound doesn't seem to have much direction. The voiced dialogue in the game is a bit grating, with poorly caracatured mumbles which repeated on themselves way too often. Think less Banjo-Kazooe style random grunts, and more a six second recording of gibberish that's put on loop, and you'll be pretty close. Most of the time the dialogue is quick, sometimes too quick - automatically skipping to the next line of text as soon as its finished scrolling on screen, despite it prompting a button to go to the next line. But later I encountered a short line spoken by the firefly that despite its very short length (about six words) lingered for the audio to repeat the full track of gibberish four to six times before it finally continued. I had thought my game bugged out, or that it switched it up and for once was waiting on me to press a button for it to continue, but eventually it automatically went to the next bit of dialogue like nothing had happened. The rest of the game sounds are mostly unremarkable - generic game sounds, and a repeating short soundtrack that's shared through most of the levels. In the future games, I really hope there's a more memorable soundtrack to help with replayability, and maybe giving some of the generic sounds some more character. [i]Achievable solution: Have dialogue either wait for input at the end of a line of text, or have a set timer at the end of each set of dialogue before advancing for the next to prevent the too-quick rush of dialogue and inconsistent pacing of text. Either break up the jibberish into smaller sections and randomize the playback, or have the jibberish only play once instead of repeating.[/i] [b]Camera[/b] In the one or two levels where the playfield is large enough that the camera has to move, I found that the camera snapped to the ball way too fast for how little it needed to move, and with the rapid, quick bounces from some of the smaller side areas, the movement was really jarring. [i]Achievable solution: Increase the dampening time when the camera is forced to move. Just that little bit of softening will work wonders for decreasing the rapid, jarring movement of the camera in the early areas.[/i] [b]Repetitive level design[/b] I don't expect this to be addressed in this game, but it's something for the developer to keep in mind in the future - even though the game only has 9 main levels, the amount of times an area with a heart-shaped collission box appeared is a little baffling. It's repeated so many times throughout the game that every other level - or sometimes multiple times in a single level - it'd pop up. Curved upper left and right corners, with a little dip at the top. The design is great for a couple of tutorial levels, as the little dip at the top safely returns the ball right down to the flippers. But after the tutorial, almost every level still had this same basic shape, with only one or two great exceptions.
• 

  aagstn

  Jul 6, 2018

  The art style and story are very cute and I had hopes for a good pinball game. Unfortunately the flippers are very weak and the physics for the game are not very accurate. It also has some flying sections that you are expected to complete using pinball controls. I did like some of the special levels like the Pachinko level, but overall the pinball aspect of the game lets down the overall experience.
• 

  Noosphere

  Jul 8, 2018

  Buy in in a sale! Beatable in under 50 minutes and ends in a cliffhanger. The game is avaiable on Mobile too! Cool concept, but it falls short. There is only a small amount of levels which are all very short. Levels can be repeated for challanges. Soundeffects are fine but the music during the levels doesn't change and is very generic.
• 

  whitegreyblack

  Nov 28, 2018

  The cutesy look and feel was okay overall, but the "feel" was way off for me at all points during my time with the game. You could not count on the physics to work in a way you'd expect on any given pinball shot, as if an invisible hand was meddling with things constantly. Without the physics and feel being right, the pinball aspect is a detractor rather than a highlight.
• 

  bobbigmac

  Nov 28, 2018

  I picked this up despite various mixed reviews, and really wanted to like it. I like pinball games, and this somewhat story-based approach seems like it has legs. Sadly, the poor physics model, combined with ball-locking (sometimes you just can't get it to the right place because a trigger fires that holds it on the paddle) make this basically unplayable as a pinball game, and just not very fun as a 'platformer with a twist'. The art is nice, and I actually like the flying segments, but It just feels too constrained and clunky to play. I much prefered Rollers of the realm for a variation on the pinball theme.
• 

  Lord Khyron

  Mar 9, 2019

  I can't believe that there are games released nowadays that doesn't allow key rebinding. This is a PC pinball game, that ignoring 30 years or so of gaming, has the flippers mapped to the arrow keys instead of the Shift keys. And you can't change that. I'm giving this game a thumbs down until this is fixed.
• 

  Whakahoatanga

  Mar 19, 2019

  TL;DR: For the price tag it's okayish Pro: - Cute artstlye - Interesting level design. You basically jump from board to board and sometimes fight against the evil owls. You need to trigger the clock with your Momonga ball so that you can attack them. - Two special levels (Panda Dream (Infinite Pinball) and Pachi*nko (Japanese Gambling device) - Leaderboards - Achievements and star rating Neutral: -Voice acting (I considered the gibberish to be cute but others might find it annoying) -Cliffhanger at the end of the story. I'm not really a fan of teased content in a game. Let it be a good one from the start and then add additional stuff. Contra: -Repetitive music -Wonky ball physics -No nudging -Short (9 levels without the 2 "special" ones) Overall 3/5. Buy it when it's on sale.
• 

  Rogue

  Dec 28, 2019

  Cute but not enough content for $6. Worth checking out for $1.
• 

  ImNotNotSatan

  Jun 30, 2020

  less than an hours gameplay, at full price this would have been a negative
• 

  RaZman

  Jul 10, 2020

  Pinball mechanics made into a fun little adventure game. Other than a few brief flying segments you play pinball through small arena settings to collect coins or hit specific objects to move on, I think it works well enough, though the level design is really not made to make the most out of the pinball aspect of the game. The arenas are too "open" and you spend a lot of time (out of the 2-3 minutes per level) just waiting for the "ball" to reach your flippers. The problem with level design is the only real problem I encountered with the game though, not finding the same problems with the physics that other people have mentioned. It was easy for me to look past this based on the game exploring a new concept for adventure/platformers. I liked the neat story and the game mechanics, for the low price it sells for I must recommend it.