Zen Pinball: Paranormal

Celebrate Halloween with some unexplainable pinball phenomena.

Zen Pinball remains one of the best ways to experience high-quality pinball from the comfort of your living room. Where Zen Pinball excels is in its ability to concoct an alternate reality in which actual pinball machines remained a commercially viable venture. The pinball tables are not designed to induce easy nostalgia; they are the tables that would exist if actual pinball tables were still made today.

“Paranormal”, Zen Pinball’s newest add-on table, is the epitome of this concept. An exploration of all things supernatural, the table embraces all sorts of movie and television cliches and applies their supernatural implications to the game mechanics. The centerpiece of the table, the Bermuda Triangle is both fascinating to watch and an appropriately unpredictable and disorienting gameplay feature.


Meanwhile ghosts, demons and monsters lurk on the edges and in the background of the table, waiting to be disturbed by the player. Doing so will trigger a number of different paranormal events. The amount of depth packed into “Paranormal” is both its’ greatest strength and weakness. At times the table can feel extremely busy, and individual goals can be hard to isolate.

Still, for the existing Zen Pinball fan, it doesn’t get much better than “Paranormal” as a pinball-oriented opportunity to gear up for Halloween. Most likely, you won’t quit after the season has past and you’ll still be discovering new surprises well into the Spring.

Review copy provided by publisher.