Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye

Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye is an immersive, campaign-driven pinball machine released by Stern Pinball in January 2025 to celebrate 50 years of the iconic roleplaying franchise. Designed by Dwight Sullivan, the game fuses traditional arcade pinball with pen-and-paper RPG elements, featuring a world map of Mid-Western Faerûn, deep character progression, and multi-axis mechanical playfield toys.

Players take on the role of members of the Dragonshield Guild on a quest to thwart the evil dragon queen Tiamat from escaping banishment in Avernus and triggering the War of Dragons. Along the journey, players must interfere with rival villains like Xanathar, Balinor, and Sammaster. The narrative unfolds via in-game adventures and tasks dictated by player choices, culminating in three distinct story endings. Narrative narration and character voice work feature prominent talent, including Matt Mercer, Michael Dorn, and Kevin Smith.

Before plunging the ball, players choose an initial character class from four defaults: Paladin, Cleric, Wizard, or Rogue. Each character possesses unique statistical modifiers and passive perks, such as the paladin dealing extra damage to dragons or the cleric excelling against the undead. Additional classes like the Ranger, Barbarian, and Bard can be unlocked by completing specific campaign objectives. Through Stern Insider Connected, the PinSave system records character experience points, inventory items, and campaign progress across sessions and machines worldwide. Players can also purchase gear, upgrades, and healing potions at Fizmo’s in-game shop.

The mechanical centerpiece of the Premium and Limited Edition models is Rath the Relentless, an advanced multi-axis animatronic red dragon that tracks the ball, blocks shots, roars, and physically spits pinballs during multiball chaos. Another standout toy is the electromagnet-powered Gelatinous Cube, which catches and traps the ball to initiate its own dedicated multiball. The game also features a player-controlled metal deflector shield deployed via the lockdown bar button to save the ball from draining down the middle, a disappearing playfield trap door leading to dynamic underground levels, and pinball's first roguelike dungeon crawler mode, which features weekly procedurally generated layouts.