Highlighting a few small updates from the Barrels of Fun team coming out of Texas Pinball Festival 2025.
Machine Registration Madness Raffle
For those of you eagerly awaiting the release of game #2 (I know I am), the BoF team announced a cool promotion called "Machine Registration Madness" where all owners of their first release, Labyrinth, can register their game for a chance to win a copy of their next title. The promotion is being run in conjunction with Project Pinball and for every game registered Barrels of Fun is also donating $10 to the non-profit.
To enter, all you have to do is own a Labyrinth machine and register it on the Barrels of Fun website before Wednesday April 30th 2025. Easy!
Find more info about the program and register your game here.
I like that this promotion starts to steer Barrels towards an official loyalty program of sorts for game owners. Despite programs like Stern's Insider Connected and Spooky's Fang Club, loyalty program models still represent unexplored territory for pinball manufacturers. Plus it provides a reason for customers to provide their contact information, which is incredibly important for future marketing campaigns by the company.
Not mentioned in the raffle details, but mentioned by CEO David Van Es during their TPF seminar is that this program is planned to continue to subsequent BoF releases, so whenever they get around to releasing game #3, should you own both prior releases, you'd get two entries into the next raffle for that release.
New Factory Expansion Announced
I think I only saw passing mention of this development in social media channels, but one of the big updates from the Barrels of Fun team during their TPF panel was that they are expanding their production facility from 20,000 square feet to 33,000 square feet! This comes alongside employee headcount growth into the 30s. Taken together, this comes across as a big sign of confidence from the leadership team for their growth trajectory over the next few years.
Next Game Release is Imminent
Finally, they confirmed that the next releases is "imminent". Somehow no one in the larger pinball community seems to know for sure what it could be, but the strongest rumors are pointing to The Goonies or Dune. We'll know one way or another soon enough!
Colin is the chief pixel pusher at Kineticist. He's a lifetime gamer who became enamored with pinball after taking in a family copy of the 1979 classic Joker Poker (the EM version). Since then he's bought, sold and repaired many machines, competed in all kinds of tournaments, and contributes to This Week in Pinball, the New England Pinball League, and Pin-Masters of New England. Previously, Colin spent over a decade working in marketing for agencies and tech startups. He also started and ran a music blog, happy hour website, and wrote a regular craft beer review column for Central Track in Dallas. Once aspired to be an artsy film director.
