Freefall

Freefall has a lot going on, but a juicy lit spinner trumps most other strategies unless you’re lucky enough to survive lots of drop target shot rebounds. The spinner is 500 per spin unlit, 5,000 per spin when lit. To light the spinner, hit one of the two “change selector” side bumpers (but not the top flashing bumper). The spinner will continue to toggle off and on as you hit either of these bumpers, so there’s a 50-50 chance it will be in the same state by the time the ball comes down to the flippers. If the spinner is on, shoot it; if not, shoot it anyway and hope when the ball comes back down the switch hits have relit it. Spinner on or off status carries over from ball to ball. If the ball comes down to the left flipper, transfer it to the right somehow and shoot the spinner, lit or not. While you could shoot the ball up towards the right bumper to toggle the spinner, there’s serious rebound drain risk from doing so; transferring for a spinner shot is safer.

The other potential for big points is bonus and the left chute. It’s a higher-valued choice but riskier. The 3 center drop targets build your base bonus, 2000 for each number; they also score 1000. You collect whichever number in the 3x3 grid below corresponds to the column for the drop target you hit (left/center/right) and the row the lit arrow is on at the time you hit it. The lit row cycles with slingshot switch hits, but also with double-flips similar to “lane change.” If you want to shoot for a target and you have the ball cradled, flip the other flipper to change until the row arrow corresponds to a target row-column pair you need. Completing all three drop targets, regardless of which row is lit, scores 10,000 and adds 1X to your bonus multiplier. If you complete all 9 numbers in the grid, the “Completed Card” light comes on to indicate you have 9 numbers and can get another 9 by finishing them a second time, so a maximum base bonus of 2000 x 18 or 36K.

The 5 left side drop targets also build your bonus multiplier, adding 1X for each completion. The targets score 500 each, but finishing them is bigger - 10,000 for all down, 50,000 if you drop them in order from bottom to top.

Bonus multiplier also goes up 1X if the ball drains through either outlane. Bonus multiplier can go all the way up to 14X - - 2X \+ 3X \+ 4X \+ 5X. Maximum overall bonus is therefore 36K x 14X or 504,000.

You also get 5000 “reserve score” for each “Line” of numbers completed tic-tac-toe style, rows, columns and diagonals. Three-in-a-rows are counted up by the arc of lights below the targets, going up to 20 lines. Bonus multiplier does not apply to the reserve score. You can thus get another 100K at the end of your ball in reserve score.

The points for the far left up-chute are built up from the center target grid. Each completed Line on the grid raises the value of the chute target one level to a maximum of 200,000. If you’ve survived the center drop targets long enough to raise this to 50K or more, forget the spinner and shoot the left chute all day so long as the return from it is safe. Bigger points than even a lit spinner, but it takes longer with more risk to set it up.

The center upkicker between and below the bumpers scores 15,000 and feeds the SKYDIVERS chute to the right. The chute scores 20,000, but awards 45K when you’ve completed all the letters. The S-K-Y letters are the three stand-up targets on the right side on the outside of the chute; D-I-V-E are the four top lanes. R-S are the return lanes, one of each on each side. Each Skydiver letter target or lane scores 5000 when hit.

Multiball is achieved by getting three balls in the center upkicker fed into the Skydivers chute, however for the third lock to count, you must have completed the letters in Skydiver. Lock count is preserved by player from ball to ball, no lock stealing; the ball will be fed to the plunger lane if needed. During multiball, just keep shooting the lit spinner or high-value left chute; if you get some center target numbers while just keeping the balls alive, so much the better.

Key feed: the return from hitting the target at the upper end of the left chute.