Silverball guide · Creature from the Black Lagoon
The jackpot is the machine
Creature looks like a game about everything — ramps, saucers, menus, video mode, a creature that vanishes into a whirlpool. It has one scoring engine, and it snowballs.
Multiball is the whole game
There is a lot to shoot on Creature and almost none of it is where the points are. The big scores come out of multiball, and specifically out of a loop that gets permanently better every time you complete it.
The loop is this: build the playfield multiplier, find the Girl, rescue her, collect the jackpot, then light and collect the super jackpot. Collecting a super jackpot immediately doubles the base jackpot value for the rest of the game. Do it again and it doubles again.
The base jackpot starts around 40M and creeps up by roughly 200K with every jet bumper hit, all game, whether you are in multiball or not. It can get very large before you ever collect it. Then the doubling sits on top of that, and the playfield multiplier sits on top of that.
So the objective is not to start multiball. It is to make each multiball leave the next one worth more. Everything else on the playfield is either helping you get there or giving you something to do on the way.
Build FILM
Multiball needs F-I-L-M, then a lock at either saucer. Each letter has its own job and they are cumulative — once you have one it stays collected, so you can work on whichever you are missing rather than starting over.
F comes from spelling K-I-S-S at the left saucer. I comes from opening the Snackbar, which needs the four menu targets. L comes from completing the P-A-I-D lanes. M comes from the right saucer while SLIDE is lit.
The letters pay 2M, 4M, 6M and 8M as you go, and collecting all four in order adds another 8M as a sequential bonus. Worth knowing, but not worth contorting your game for.
K-I-S-S is the friendly one, because the left saucer can be shot over and over. The plunge can complete it too. And completing K-I-S-S a second time normally lights an extra ball, collected at the Center Shot — so the easiest letter on the machine is also one of the better routes to another ball.
One warning: the game tightens up once you have collected a jackpot. The easy Snackbar route to spotting menu targets goes away and the full K-I-S-S skill shot stops being offered. Build your next multiball before the machine starts taking the shortcuts back.
The Snackbar is the shot to learn
In normal play the Snackbar gives a random award and can spot the I in FILM. That undersells it enormously.
Once multiball starts, the Snackbar is the centre of everything. It is one of the three search targets. Find the Girl and it becomes the rescue. Rescue her and it becomes the jackpot. Collect that and, after the jet bumpers, it becomes the super jackpot. Then the whole sequence begins again.
Which means one shot carries the entire scoring engine of the machine, and you will need it from both flippers under multiball pressure. If you only practise one thing on Creature, practise the Snackbar from the right flipper.
Build the multiplier before you get paid
This is the single most valuable habit on the machine.
The playfield multiplier starts every multiball at 1X. During multiball the left ramp becomes the Creature Ramp and feeds the whirlpool, where each trip spots a letter in CREATURE. Complete CREATURE and the multiplier goes up a factor — to a maximum of 4X on normal settings, 3X on hard, 5X on easy.
It applies to everything that matters: finding the Girl, the rescue, the jackpot and the super jackpot. A 40M jackpot at 1X is a nice noise. The same jackpot at 4X is 160M. That gap is the reason to care about CREATURE at all.
So do not rush the Snackbar just because the jackpot is lit. If you can hold one ball and work the other up the Creature Ramp, build the multiplier first, then collect.
How many letters a trip through the whirlpool spots depends on your machine — a steeper table moves the ball around more. Learn yours. And resist sending both balls into the whirlpool at once: they collide, lose their momentum and come back down together in a mess. Control one, farm with the other, and stop farming the moment the multiplier is maxed.
The machine will not tell you it has hit the ceiling until you complete CREATURE one extra time, so know your maximum before you start.
Find her, rescue her, take the money
When multiball begins, three search targets light: the left saucer, the right saucer and the Snackbar. Shoot them until you find the Creature and the Girl. There is no pattern to learn — the location is random.
Finding them pays 5M times the multiplier and lights the Snackbar for the rescue. The rescue pays 10M times the multiplier and turns the Snackbar into the jackpot. Collect that, and now the jet bumpers decide when you get your super jackpot.
The number of bumper hits required is not fixed. It moves around, usually somewhere between ten and thirty — and it doubles for the second cycle within the same multiball, triples for the third. Players have reported it reaching seventy-five.
That escalation is balanced by the rewards escalating too: the second time through a single multiball, the search and rescue awards are doubled on top of the playfield multiplier, and tripled the third time. A multiball you can keep alive through several cycles is worth far more than several short ones.
Never let a dead multiball die
If you lose a ball during multiball without having collected a jackpot, the machine gives you fourteen seconds to shoot the Snackbar and restart it.
Take it. Every time. A successful restart resumes multiball in exactly the state you left it — search targets, rescue progress, CREATURE letters and the playfield multiplier all intact. You have spent a ball building that; the restart hands it straight back.
Two things to know. You only get one restart per multiball. And the fourteen-second timer does not pause while the ball is rattling around in the jet bumpers, unlike most other timers on this machine — so a ball that disappears into the pops at the wrong moment can quietly run the clock out on you.
What is free on the way, and what to ignore
P-A-I-D is worth singling out because it does two jobs at once: it gives you the L in FILM and it advances the bonus multiplier, up to 10X, after which further completions pay 5M. The plunge can complete it outright, which makes the skill shot genuinely valuable.
Do not confuse the two multipliers, though. The bonus multiplier affects your end-of-ball bonus. The playfield multiplier is the one attached to the enormous multiball numbers. Build both, but know which is which.
The rest is entertainment. Mega Menu can reach 20M. Big Millions climbs quickly on the right ramp. Unlimited Millions does the same on the left. Move Your Car can theoretically reach 80M through a perfect sequence of Center Shots. Double Feature doubles up to 16M off repeated left ramps before you collect it at the Center Shot. Twelve right ramp shots eventually light Super Scoring.
They are all good fun and some are properly worth having. None of them permanently improves every future multiball, which is what a super jackpot does. Take them when they are free or when they line up with something you already need — right ramp progress, KISS, P-A-I-D, Snackbar work, extra balls — and otherwise keep your eye on FILM.
Learning to see the shots
The hardest thing about Creature is not the rules. It is that you cannot see half the machine.
The Creature Ramp hides the left ramp entrance, the Snackbar and the Center Shot. The habitrails sit over the inlanes and outlanes. The playfield is deliberately, gloriously cluttered.
So move your head. Look around the plastic. Find where the Snackbar actually is rather than where you assume it is, learn the angle into the left saucer, and learn the Center Shot. Once those are familiar the machine stops feeling random and starts feeling like a game you are playing on purpose.
The plan, in one place
Early on, build FILM and take side awards when they come to you rather than chasing them. K-I-S-S and P-A-I-D are the useful ones. Work towards your first multiball.
Once multiball starts, build CREATURE and get the playfield multiplier as high as you safely can before you collect anything.
Then run the sequence: find the Girl, rescue her, take the jackpot, work the jet bumpers, take the super jackpot. Then go round again — the search and rescue awards are worth more the second time through, and the jackpot you are chasing has just doubled.
If multiball dies before you collected a jackpot, go straight for the Snackbar restart.
Between multiballs, rebuild FILM. The machine is really asking one question: how many times can you turn the Creature loose, and how much can you make each time he gets out?
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- Creature From The Black Lagoon rule sheet, written and maintained by Kevin Martin
