Ghoul Juice

Ghoul Juice is a mouse-controlled pinball game released on the Monster High website on January 14, 2011.

Gameplay
The game starts when Sir Hoots A Lot picks up the first of three balls, each representing one round to play. It is up to the player, by clicking the mouse, to select the moment Sir Hoots A Lot drops it into the playfield and commence the game.

As the ball descends down the playfield, the objective is to hit as many objects on the field as possible to earn points. There are roughly two kinds of objects: collectibles and obstacles. Obstacles for the most part consist out of bigger and smaller skullettes. Every time the ball hits one, the player earns five points and the balls gets bumped off into another direction. The same is true for the generator walls in the middle of the field. There is also a number of moving platforms that don't hand out points for hits, but that can influence the direction of the ball. The fourth type of obstacle then, is the most important one. Spread out along the left and right edges of the playfield are force fields, which are worth ten points for a hit. When the ball reaches one, it gets stuck and an arrow starts moving clockwise around the force field. Clicking releases the ball in the direction the arrow points at at that moment.

Collectibles are items littered across the playfield that earn the player more points per hit than the obstacles, but which also disappear after one hit and do not alter the course of the ball. The common items are cherries, lemons, eyeballs and Ghoulia's glasses. Each of these is worth ten points. A more worthwhile target is the golden fly, of which there are two in the field. These flies are worth 250 points and unlike other collectibles reappear after a short while. However, the golden flies also are the only moving collectibles in the game, so hitting them requires both skill and luck. Lastly, there is one collectible worth a whopping 500 points in the game. This is the golden cherries, which is precariously placed just above the bottom pit amidst a relatively large number of skullette obstacles. This means that moreso than any other collectible, the player only has one chance to hit the golden cherries before the round ends.

While the playfield resets every time a new round starts, there is one item that can only be acquired once per game: the fourth ball. The generator that produces this item lies in the middle of the field and can only be entered from four gates. The game throws the player a bone in this though, that while the fourth ball has not yet been acquired, the generator lightly attracts the ball, ensuring that the fourth is earned pretty easily. If the fourth ball has already been handed out, getting a ball inside the generator earns the player ten points.

A secondary way to earn points is to keep each round going for as long as possible, as points are awarded for each second the round is in effect. Gametime in which the ball is stuck in a force field, however, does not earn any points. Points handed out for gametime aren't much though and only are an extra to the points acquired by hitting objects.

Recipe


Trivia

 * Much of Ghoulia's animation and voicework in Ghoul Juic's 'cutscenes' come from the webisode "Cyrano de Ghoulia".