Camp Bloodbrook is the latest pinball table from Zen Studios for their “Pinball M” line of tables – a more mature offering of content mostly relegated to the horror side of themed pinball tables.
Make no mistake, Bloodbrook is Friday The 13th in every way but the name. And that’s fine. The amount of licensing issues that franchise has had over the years and more recently with its own video game – just go the homage route and don’t worry about it.
The design of the table and all aspects of it are wonderfully “Campy”. The massive machete lane is the first thing that will likely catch your eye as you look over the play field. That lane has a multi-ball aspect to it. The old abandoned “cabin in the woods” takes center stage on the field and also has a multi-ball aspect to it. You might also catch a glimpse of a dead lane with a small circular area of water – another multi-ball aspect. Over to the left of the table you’ll find another dead lane leading to a bell and, I suspect, another multi-ball aspect (though I never triggered this one).
Outside of these features you’ll find a loop lane for the whole field on the far right side while the left lane matching that loop will take you directly to the bumpers at the top. Another lane on the left will wind the ball back to your left flipper or over down the machete blade to the right flipper. There is also a direct lane on the right for the machete as well and next to that is the dead water lane. In the center is another dead lane but it contains a circle of bumpers that, when hit enough, will trigger a mission.
The play field is pretty open for the most part. Not as much as some and not near as cluttered as others. It seems to find a “just right” position as far as that’s concerned. But the table, just like the masked killer stalking the campers, shows no mercy in certain aspects. We’ll start with the multi-ball. Like most tables, Camp Bloodbrook requires you to trigger a ball lock. But unlike some tables, you have to trigger the lock for each ball you lock. Take the water area, for example. You need to shoot the ball in there twice to trigger the ball lock and a third time to lock the ball. Do it twice more and a third time to lock the second and again for the third ball to trigger the multi-ball. This goes for ALL the ball locks. The cabin multi-ball requires you to spell “CABIN” in the drain lanes to trigger. The machete needs the ball to go through twice before locking a ball. This isn’t really a complaint – it’s just how the table’s mechanics work. You’ve really got to put in that effort to get those multi-balls going. Keep in mind if you start a table mission, none of the progress will count towards locking balls or even triggering the lock. It would have been nice if those missions would still count towards table goals, but they don’t. This is different, however, from the cabin missions. The cabin missions are small unselectable side quests that you can complete while just playing the table normally.
Getting back to the table, the only issues I had with it were the lane widths. There is no wide mouth to them and the ball needs to be pretty direct when aiming for the ramps, otherwise you’re hitting the lane ends (which spell “Storm” – once activated, points on the board are tripled for a small length of time). Then there’s the issue of ball placement, at least for me. And it sort of goes hand in hand with that ramp lane issue. If the ball is on one side of the board but you need it on the other – you better hope your aim is REALLY good to get it up the ramp you need it to go to get to the other side. In my video you’ll see me constantly pick the first table mission which requires going up left and right lanes about 7 times. In an hour of play, I only beat that mission a single time.
Overall, I enjoyed the table. I kept wanting to see more multi-balls but given the time it takes to trigger the lock for each and the table missions not helping to progress that, it never happened a single time in my game play video. I did, however, stream the game earlier (lost to the video format gods) and managed to pull off all but the bell multi (if one exists, seems it might). My score never made it past 100 Million, but I think with more time I might be able to make that happen. Leaderboards show some amazing scores and I’d like to aim for a few of those as well. The theming is top notch given this is a play on FT13. It almost feels like they made it to secure that license but it never happened so they changed a few things here and there and came away with a nice look-a-like. Regardless, the mood is there and the music is fantastic. The skill shot is an easy one compared to most tables and the scoring, if you can manage the position of the ball and really get those lane shots perfect, can be massive. It’s a table I’ll find myself playing again and again (I really want to master those lane shots), especially during the spooky season.