Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-10-27. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
Margin Aces takes place in a classroom, which seems appropriate given where the idea came from.
I wrote previously about the original GameLab version and the memory behind it: drawing airplanes and staging epic battles with a ballpoint pen in the spaces where I should have been taking notes. That was usually followed by drawing caricatures of the people around me.
Which probably explains something about my education.
For the pinball version, I brought the machine back into that classroom. This is Machine 04 in TiltLab, and I think the setting is pretty phenomenal.
There’s a chalkboard with an actual lesson on it, desks with open notebooks, a teacher’s desk, and model airplanes hanging from the ceiling. The aircraft kits you earn get added to the room. It feels like a place somebody has spent time in.
And now there’s a pinball machine in the middle of it, based on the airplane battles you were drawing instead of paying attention. You get to play pinball in class, which seems like a fairly substantial improvement on my original approach.
There are some fun details as you progress. The notebook page curls over beneath the glass, and the artwork on the table changes for the next stage. The chalkboard follows along with the real campaign and its date. The classroom lighting changes as you move through the notebook, and there’s a pretty enjoyable audio mix tying everything together.
The table follows the original game’s 1940s battles, and some of that history becomes part of the room around you.
I got pretty invested in playing through it. There are things to unlock, little secrets to find, and enough going on that I kept wanting to see the next page.
As with the other lab projects, this one builds on the machines before it. Folded Thunder gave me the idea that the room could change with the game. Here, the classroom, the notebook, and the machine all follow the same progression. The table also adds moving targets and attacks that can interfere with the ball.
This is part of the broader experiment I’ve been trying to explain with TiltLab. I noticed it happening in IslandLab, GameLab, and some of the other labs: when I keep returning to a concept and deliberately build on what I’ve already figured out, I end up in some remarkable places.
So I’m pushing that a little more intentionally here. How far can I take these machines before I run out of tokens? And what other ridiculous ideas can I come up with along the way?
So far, I wake up each day with another one to try. That part hasn’t been much of a problem.
Go check out Margin Aces in TiltLab. If you enjoyed the original notebook shooter in GameLab, I think you’ll have a good time with this one, too.
Play Now: Tiltlab’s Margin Aces
Connected work
- Play Margin Aces Pinball: Turn the notebook pages and unlock aircraft in the classroom.
- About the machine: Read the rules and follow the parts carried forward from earlier tables.
- The original Margin Aces: Meet the notebook shooter that supplied the aircraft, history, and music.