TiltLab · Machine 03 · On the floor
Folded Thunder
Pip the paper dinosaur, rebuilt as a pinball machine that stands inside a pop-up book of his world. Four worlds, four of Mr. Blank's machines to break, a captive ball at the heart of the table, a loop the loop, and a storm when you play fast enough.
The idea
Can the room a pinball machine stands in be part of the game?
Chrome Orbit asked whether a browser tab could make a steel ball feel heavy. Midnight Ride asked whether one table could carry a whole game. Folded Thunder looks up from the glass: a real machine stands in an arcade, but a machine in a browser can stand anywhere. This one stands in the Foldlands.
The game it comes from is Folded Thunder, where Pip, a small folded dinosaur, races across four changing paper worlds to break the machines of Mr. Blank, who wants the world flattened into one perfect prediction. On the table, every world is a pop-up page. Its sky is the dome over the cabinet, its origami ground is the floor, and its papercraft (mountains, gates, windmills, fans of paper leaves) stands round the machine in rings. Break a world's boss and the whole page folds flat, and the next world unfolds in its place. In THUNDER the sky goes dark and lightning comes down round the cabinet.
Nothing on the table was drawn from scratch. The playfields are baked from the game's own ground tiles, skyboxes and title art; Pip, the bosses, the Drop-Bots and Mr. Blank are its sprite sheets, cut out like paper and stood up in 3D; the backglass shows its storybook. The music is the game's soundtrack, and most of the sound effects are the game's own.
On the playfield
Every part, and what it does.
| Part | From the game | What it does | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| The ball | Pip | Pip folded into a ball: faceted teal paper, a cream belly and his coral bandana, its tails streaming behind him. In multiball the extra balls are gold leaf. | – |
| Blank Works | Mr. Blank's workshop | The scoop at the top right. It opens each world's boss fight, holds the two-ball lock, and lets Mr. Blank out at the end. When it holds the ball, Pip unfolds out of it and celebrates. | 7,500 · lock 30,000 |
| Meridian Core | The heart of M.E.T.E.O.R. | A captive ball in a brass channel where Midnight Ride's cannon stood. Hit it hard enough to drive it to the switch at the top. It hurts bosses, pays the super jackpot, and is how Mr. Blank is beaten. | 15,000 |
| Momentum Loop | The loops of the speed stages | The left ramp: a paper speed tunnel at the mouth, one full vertical loop, gold rings, then a climb to the back and a steel wire down to the left flipper. | 20,000 |
| Speed Arc | The title's speed arc | The right ramp, coral paper with gold rings. When the lock is lit, a diverter at the top drops the ball straight into Blank Works. | 12,000 |
| Third flipper | – | A short flipper on the right wall, worked by the right button. A ball that comes round the orbit and down the wall lands on it, and the Speed Arc is right in front of it. | – |
| Kite Lane | Canopy kites | The left orbit, with a paper spinner and a kite fluttering over it. Round the top, down the far wall and onto the third flipper is a wall run. | 6,000 · wall run 8,000 |
| Drop-Bots | Blank Works drones | Three drop targets wearing the game's Drop-Bot sprites. Knock all three down to light the lock. | 3,000 · all 15,000 |
| F-O-L-D lanes | – | Four top lanes, each a chime. The flippers move the lit lanes. All four raise the bonus multiplier and light the Fold Shield. | 2,500 · all 15,000 |
| Fold Shield | The fold-shield power-up | A kickback in both outlanes for twelve seconds after F-O-L-D. | 2,500 |
| Pinwheel bumpers | Valley pinwheels | Three pop bumpers capped with spinning paper pinwheels. They pay coins. | 1,000 + a coin |
| The stage | The run | Behind the top wall, Pip runs in front of the world's sky with its papercraft scrolling past. Bosses unfold here like a pop-up page, and Mr. Blank watches from the end. | – |
| Flippers, slingshots, plunger | – | Chrome Orbit's lower playfield, unchanged for a third table, with paper-fan slingshots. Plunge into the flashing lane for a skill shot. | skill shot 30,000 |
The rules
Open the gates. Break the machines. Keep the future open.
- Gates. Each world lights two of its five shots in gold. Hit either and two more light. Three gates open Blank Works.
- Bosses. Shoot Blank Works and the world's boss unfolds: Big Compass, Sky Scissors, Hot Press, then Star Wheel. Its weak shots blink white; hit one to drop its guard, then hit the Meridian Core while it is down. Bosses take three to six hits, and they fight back every fifteen seconds: Big Compass pins the Momentum Loop shut, Sky Scissors cuts the Speed Arc and the Fold Shield, Hot Press shakes the table and softens the flippers, and Star Wheel pulls every ball towards it.
- Mr. Blank. Break all four and he comes out himself: The Blank Meridian, four balls, every shot lit for jackpots, and six hits on the core to win the Meridian Key. Win and the Foldlands fold up again for round two, with tougher bosses.
- Thunder Multiball. Clear the Drop-Bots to light the lock, then lock two balls. Three balls, jackpots on the loop, the arc, the Kite Lane and the wall run. Three jackpots light the super jackpot on the core, and after that the Momentum Loop lights add-a-ball.
- THUNDER. Loops, ramps, orbits and combos fill the momentum meter. Full momentum is fifteen seconds of double scoring, a storm round the cabinet and lightning in the sky.
- Coins. Bumpers, lanes, the spinner and the Drop-Bots pay coins. Drain with thirty and they buy the ball back, once a ball.
- Three balls. Break two bosses in one game for an extra ball.
Things to unlock
Pip's story stays open between games.
Everything here is saved on your device.
Pip's paper · six colours
- Teal: his own. Open from the start.
- Coral: a twelve-second ball save. Score 500,000 in one game.
- Gold leaf: coins count double. Collect 300 coins.
- Ember: momentum fills half again as fast. Break Hot Press.
- Midnight: a twenty-second Fold Shield. Start Thunder Multiball.
- Thunder: every ball starts with the lock lit, and THUNDER lasts longer. Beat Mr. Blank.
The storybook and the worlds
- Fifteen pages: the game's storybook panels, from the prologue to the Meridian Key. Each world opens its first page; each boss you break opens two more. They unfold in the corner as you play, and stay in the storybook on the title screen.
- Start anywhere you have been: once you reach a world, you can start a game there.
- Your best score on this machine.
What you hear
Paper, chimes, thunder, and the game's own sounds.
The parts sound the way every TiltLab machine's parts sound, from the shared kit. On top of them: Folded Thunder's own sound effects (coins, springs, the bosses, the loop, the shield), decoded into the same sound book, and paper sounds written in the browser while the machine loads.
The speaker · Folded Thunder only
- The pinwheels: each bumper is a chime and a crinkle of paper.
- F-O-L-D: four chimes, climbing a pentatonic scale.
- The bosses: the game's own deploy, telegraph, hit and defeat sounds.
- THUNDER: a rumble when the meter fills, and a thunderclap for every bolt that comes down in the room.
- The worlds: a page of paper folding and a run of chimes when one world folds away and the next opens.
The music and the wind
- Each world has its track from the game's soundtrack, streamed from the GameLab rather than copied. Bosses, multiball and Mr. Blank each change it; the title plays the theme song.
- Each world has its wind: the game's four paper-wind atmospheres play under everything.
- The lamps keep time: an offline beat map of the soundtrack drives the lamps, the pinwheels and the room.
- Turn it off with the ♪ button. The sound effects stay.
Under the glass
What makes it run.
- Physics
- The shared TiltLab table rig: Rapier 0.21 at 120 steps a second. New for this machine: a captive ball whose stop only it can feel (collision groups), a third flipper sharing a button, coil strength a boss can weaken, a pull a boss can bend the table with, and four balls at once.
- Ramps
- A ball that enters a ramp leaves the physics and rides a smoothed curve. The Momentum Loop adds a speed tunnel that pushes it and a full vertical loop; the paper floor follows the loop with rotation-minimising frames.
- The room
- A sky dome, an origami floor and three rings of the world's papercraft cut-outs, each a creased card that catches the light and casts a shadow. Paper clouds, kites, pinwheels, origami cranes and drifting confetti, leaves, embers or stars. Each world folds flat and the next unfolds like a pop-up book.
- Playfield
- One layout file holds every wall, post and switch. The lower playfield is Chrome Orbit's; the arch, orbit, bumpers and scoop are Midnight Ride's, rearranged round the captive ball. There is a playfield for each world, swapped in when the world changes.
- Testing
- A headless bot plays whole games in Node to catch stuck balls and dead ends, and a script drives the whole story, all four bosses and Mr. Blank, through the rules.
- Camera
- A play view that fits any screen, a slow title orbit with a miniature's tilt-shift, and short cuts for the bosses, the lock, multiball and each new world. Turn them off in the pause menu.
- Controls
- A / ← and D / → (or Shift) for the flippers (the right one works both right flippers), Space to plunge, Z and / to nudge, Esc to pause. A gamepad works. On a phone, use the three pads at the bottom of the screen.
- Loading
- The first world and the table, about 9 MB, arrive before the first ball, then every shader is compiled. The other three worlds load in the background while you play.
In the lineage
Machine 03, after Midnight Ride.
Folded Thunder starts from Midnight Ride: its upper table, its lock and multiball, its scripted ramp rides, and its unlockables that persist between games. From Chrome Orbit it keeps the lower playfield, the sound kit and the start-up loader, which now also racks sound effects.
The shared table rig grew again: captive balls, more than two flippers, and the hooks a boss needs to fight the player.
Its new idea is the room. The first two machines stand somewhere. This one stands somewhere that changes as you play.
Play Folded Thunder · Back to TiltLab · The original: Folded Thunder in the GameLab.