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Halloween

Spooky Pinball, 2021 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

Open Halloween in the Pinball Genie app →

Designed by Koris Barloff with code by Fawzma & Bug (later updates by Matt Kemp / Luke Peters), Halloween adapts John Carpenter's 1978 film across a five-lane fan of shots (left orbit, left ramp, center ramp, right ramp, right orbit) feeding two elevated mini-playfields — the Strode House (with flippers) and Smith's Grove Sanitarium (gravity-fed, no flippers) — plus a third, purely decorative diorama.

Skill Shots

Before plunging, cycle the flippers to pick which lit shot counts as the skill shot; harder/farther shots score more. There's also a hidden secret skill shot: cycling to the lower-right Judith lane target and hitting it off the plunge instantly traps the ball at the Judith Tombstone instead of requiring the usual 5 hits — a low-risk opener that banks Tombstone Multiball progress.

Jack-O-Lantern Modes

Eight story modes (Death in the Driver's Seat, Bob and Lynda's Demise, Counting Bodies, Escape the Kitchen, Let Me In, Laurie Slashes Back, Stalker, First Kill) are qualified by clearing the 3 center drop targets and shooting the right scoop to pick one. Winning two in a game lights an Extra Ball; winning enough (operator-configurable) qualifies the final wizard mode. After a set number of mode wins (default 3), the next scoop shot becomes Jack-O-Lantern Multiball instead of a mode pick.

Multiballs

Three "story" multiballs each carry a Super Jackpot: Hedge Multiball (lock a ball at each of three hedge scoops, then reveal-and-collect jackpots via the left ramp, with the middle hedge scoop lighting for the Super Jackpot once all three jackpots are collected), Sanitarium Multiball (a 4-step qualifying chain on the middle playfield — drop target, scoop, two standups, drop target, scoop — arms it for the next drain, and once all six patient jackpots are collected the middle-playfield entry scoop lights for a 500k Super Jackpot), and House Multiball (qualify House Attack via 5 center-ramp hits or the instant "Dirty Pool"/Eye of the Needle crossover shot, then beat Myers' and protect Laurie's health bars on the upper playfield under a 60-second clock). Once a multiball's Super Jackpot is scored, it can't be re-qualified until Boogeyman is cleared. Separately, the secret skill shot or 5 hits on the lower-right target lock a ball for Tombstone Multiball — a 2-ball, stackable multiball with a flat 2x scoring bonus.

Blood, Store & Scoring

Blood is Halloween's currency: 3 for lighting a mode, 6 for winning one. Banked blood grants a live scoring multiplier and unlocks a store at the Jack-O-Lantern scoop: 1 blood = 1M points, 10 blood = 2x scoring for the rest of the ball, 12 blood = an instant Extra Ball. There's no classic ladder-style playfield multiplier — scoring boosts instead come from banked blood, Tombstone Multiball's flat 2x, and the "Dirty Pool" loop (repeatedly threading the House-qualifying ramp cleanly for a stacking multiplier).

Combos

Left orbit, left ramp, center ramp, and right orbit all count as combo shots — alternating between them (never repeating one back-to-back) chains escalating value. The best repeatable "money" sequences are the House Multiball crossover reset loop (Super Jackpot relights everything on collection, effectively uncapped), the Hedge Multiball reveal-and-jackpot cycle, and — inside the final wizard mode — the knife-insert double-jackpot loop.

Wizard Modes

Boogeyman (mini-wizard): score the Super Jackpot in all three story multiballs, then relock all 6 balls across three phases (3 hedges, 2 scoops, 1 crossing shot) to fire a 6-ball finale with every major shot lit. The Night He Came Home (final wizard, added v1.14): qualified by a configurable number of completed Jack-O-Lantern modes; race through story locations against a fuel clock, collecting hurry-up location jackpots, knife-insert double-jackpots, and a 10-million-times-balls-in-play Super Jackpot at Judith Tombstone once per location.

Editions

Standard, Blood Sucker, and Collector's Editions all run identical code and playfield rules — differences are purely cosmetic/hardware trim (powder coat, knocker/shaker, speaker lighting, topper).

How Halloween plays

Michael Myers has come home to Haddonfield, and you hunt him across a graveyard, three hedges, an asylum deck and the Strode house itself. Bank blood to buy scoring, drive each of the three story multiballs to its Super Jackpot, and survive The Night He Came Home.

The loop

  1. Knock down the three center drop targets to light the Jack-O-Lantern scoop, your hub for mode select, the blood store and any waiting extra ball.
  2. Start an easy pumpkin mode off the scoop and win it to earn blood, then spend blood at that same scoop for doubled scoring you keep for the rest of the ball.
  3. Lock balls at the three hedges, up on the asylum deck, and inside the Strode house to run the three story multiballs.
  4. Cash the Super Jackpot in Hedge, Sanitarium and House multiball to qualify Boogeyman, the six-ball finale.
  5. Start enough pumpkin modes to reach The Night He Came Home, where the knife jackpots and the tombstone super pay the most anywhere on the machine.

Reading the lights

  • Jack-O-Lantern Scoop (mode) — lit: Clearing the three center drops lights the scoop, and while it is lit the mode select, the blood store and any earned extra ball are all waiting there; the drops reset after each trip so you can relight it over and over. · then: Start an easy pumpkin mode and win it to earn blood, then return to spend ten blood on doubled scoring right before a multiball so the boost rides across every jackpot. Blood keeps building all game rather than resetting, and every mode you start here also climbs you toward the final wizard. · control: Either flipper button: cycle the scoop award list -- an unplayed pumpkin mode, a blood purchase, or a lit extra ball -- so you drop in on the one you want (the scoop is lit and holding you at its award menu)
  • The Three Hedges (status) — lit: Shooting the left ramp reveals Michael behind a hedge for a few seconds, which lights that hedge scoop to accept a lock; a locked ball stays locked, and trapping one at each of the three fires Hedge Multiball on its own. · then: Lock all three for the friendliest multiball on the machine, reveal-and-bank the three hedge jackpots, then cash the Super at the middle hedge -- the first Super also adds a ball, and that Super is one of the three you need for Boogeyman.
  • Judith Myers Tombstone (status) — lit: Five hits on the lower-right lane target, or the hidden skill shot straight off the plunge, trap a ball behind the tombstone drop; the trapped ball releases into a two-ball multiball whose flat double scoring stacks on top of anything else you have running. · then: Start it underneath a story multiball so the flat 2x compounds everything, and shoot the tombstone during the multiball for a Super that raises later jackpot values. In the final wizard this same target pays ten million times the balls in play -- the single largest award in the game.
  • Smith's Grove Sanitarium (mode) — lit: The entry scoop lifts the ball onto the asylum deck, where a lit standup or drop is the next link in a four-step qualify chain; there is no flipper up there to save a miss, so an off-line shot just rattles until it settles. · then: Run the left standup, the right standup and the drop-then-scoop to arm the multiball, which begins on your next drain. Its Super is the second of the three story supers that qualify Boogeyman.
  • The Strode House (mode) — lit: Five center-ramp shots qualify House Attack and divert the ball up to the house deck, where its own upper flippers wake up; rip the spinners to drain Myers' health while the upper drop chips Laurie's, and the middle standups heal her, all against a hard sixty-second clock. · then: Beat Myers, then shoot the upper drop into the crossover to start House Multiball, where every orbit and ramp lights for jackpots feeding a climbing crossover Super. Threading that crossover clean between its two drops -- the Dirty Pool loop -- qualifies House Attack instantly and skips the five ramps.
  • Combo Shots (shot arrows) — lit: The two orbits and the two ramps each count as combo shots; alternate them without repeating a lane and every link scores more than the last, and this same set is the win condition for the first easy pumpkin mode. · then: Chain a full four-way pass for escalating points, doubled while Death in the Driver's Seat is running. Keeping the ball moving through these shots is also how you feed the hedges and grind center-ramp hits toward opening the house.
  • Knife-Blade Standups (shot arrows) — lit: Lit knife blades stud the ramp and orbit mouths; clearing all six wins the Escape the Kitchen mode, and once the final wizard is running a blade you collect turns red so a second hit on it doubles that jackpot. · then: Sweep the six blades to win the kitchen mode for its blood. In The Night He Came Home, double a red blade, relight the dark ones at the crossover, then cash the tombstone super at ten million times the balls in play -- the biggest single hit on the table.

Lane change: not verified for this machine yet.

Start scoring

Does Halloween have an action button?

Spooky did not put a button on the lockdown bar here. What Halloween does give you is a second flipper button on each side of the cabinet, wired to the pair of flippers up on the House playfield — they do nothing until the ball is up there for House Attack, then they are the only way to aim at the spinners. The plunge is automatic, so you pick your skill shot with the main flippers and the ball leaves on its own.

Goals in Halloween

Every goal below is tracked step-by-step, with shot paths drawn on the playfield map, inside the app.

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