Just counted... 81 pins listed on website for freeplay! This will be my first year - how many were there last year?

Counted 109 pins on website! (incl comp games)

Dialed In was lots of fun. I was amazed at how smooth the shots were, great gameplay and flow plus game felt solid and well built. You can tell it was designed and built by the best - so much attention to detail was put into this pin. Absolutely fantastic in almost every way! I would buy one for sure if it wasn't for the...

...scattered theme... just can't wrap my head around it - just too many thematic elements brought together for my liking (cell phone, nuclear reactor, aliens, theater etc). Maybe in home use it would all make more sense and come together in my mind. Also I'm old school in the way that I like pin themes to be cool (in some way) and a guy holding a cell phone in the air just doesn't do it for me. (just expressing my personal view here so let's be nice )

"I also am not a big fan of the lightning bolt guy, so I'm going to use flexible filament in my 3d printer to replace him with a big floppy dick when I get mine. I think it will really tie the ridiculous theme together."

Hilarious! Yes, just one more thematic element and everything will make sense.

More important to the casual player is not how deep the code is but rather whether or not the casual player can understand what's going on at all. It is through the thematic elements that a pin can communicate what is going on and what the goal of the game is.

For example, any player looking at AFM will quickly understand what is going on. From the title alone a player knows that aliens are attacking and there is a spaceship in the middle of the playfield so it's clear to hit the spaceship with the ball. Watch the AFM promo video and it was important to them that the new player quickly understand what the F is going on. AFM is super accessible to any player and that was a large part of why it was so successful.

Now take, in sharp contrast, Dialed In. There is a man holding lightning bolts moving back and forth and there is a phone to the right. The man symbolizes a nuclear reactor? So you have to hit the lightning bolt man so that you can charge your phone with the nuclear reactor? Because players don't charge their own cellphones with nuclear reactors somehow connected to lightning bolt men, there is nothing that the player knows that can make this connection while playing. This is where DI breaks down for me - no cohesiveness in the theme which makes it very difficult to understand.

So my point is that it's not so much that theme itself but how the thematic elements don't connect. It's the complexity that's introduced from the scattered and unconnected thematic elements that is more of a deterrent to the new player than is the code depth (especially for casual player).

But I should add, other than this issue with the theme I think it is a very fun game.