Xenotilt: Hostile Pinball Action is a sequel to Demon’s Tilt, itself a spiritual successor to the fossilized Devil’s Crush game for TurboGrafx-16 and, later, Sega Genesis. I have not played Demon’s Tilt, but if it’s anything like Xenotilt, I am not the target audience. I enjoy Xenotilt, but my rapidly-calcifying brain has trouble following the eponymous hostile pinball action. This is a game that is incredibly impressive on every level, and I will absolutely recommend it to anybody out there who likes video game pinball, but you should know what you’re getting into.

In Xenotilt, you are presented with a three-tier pinball table which might bring to mind Kirby’s Pinball Land. Each tier is dominated by a central monster, be it a mechanical squid, shield-covered skull, cybernetic succubus, etc. Whacking said entity with the pinball causes it to both lose HP and react by showering you with flack. Interestingly, you can “cradle” the ball on a flipper’s crook and press down on the D-pad to fire a variety of weapons upward depending on how much ammo you’ve acquired, which is useful for taking out the many minions the monsters send out. The game relies heavily–maybe too heavily–on “nudging” the ball, which does not mean “nudging the table,” but nudging the ball itself with the left stick. This took a lot of getting used to. You can be punished for nudging it too much at a time, but nudging is something you’ll need to get used to to achieve high scores, perks, and multiball mode.

Don't worry, it's laser targeting is based on movement.

The game offers a few different modes: Normal mode is a great way to get a feel for the tables, the physics, and the goals. EX Mode is where the real meat & potatoes are, and involves rescuing people from a handful of mini-tables, each of which has its own gimmick, like a robotic, laser-belching dinosaur skull. Rescue survivors to gain more abilities, and destroy a given boss’ core (which has a very narrow window) to get more boosts. EX Mode is my favorite mode despite my lack of skill, which we’ll get to in a second. Crisis Mode ramps up the difficulty level significantly by giving you just one ball and a time limit–you have to aim for and hit time extensions to keep things going.

As much as I like it, though, Xenotilt is not really for me. The game’s score tallies and effects are extremely intrusive, and I often found it difficult to see my ball at all with all the point bubbles, explosions, lasers, minions, and messaging going on around it. It doesn’t help that Xenotilt’s table is relatively narrow, all things considered, and all the lateral space is dedicated to messaging and that multiball tower. The ball itself is downright microscopic, especially when playing Xenotilt in Handheld mode. It does support TATE mode, though, and the Switch 2 has a TATE solution out of the box, so if that’s your jam, it does make things a little easier to see, but not as clear as on my TV, where I still have trouble keeping an eye on the ball.

I'd like a little more room to move, please!

Xenotilt is fun but hard and a little too chaotic for my tastes.