Zen Pinball: Sorcerer's Lair is the seventh downloadable addition to Zen Studios' impressive repertoire of video pinball tables. If you've been keeping up with each and every new table, you're going to want this one. Not because it boasts radically superior design in any way, shape or form -- but because it's just as good as all the others.

Zen Studios is very unpredictable when it comes to theming. Some releases feature videogame themes, while others are completely out of left field. I'm not really sure where the inspiration for Zen Pinball: Sorcerer's Lair came from, but based on the artwork adorning the table, it may very well have been something as simple as a Saturday morning cartoon. The two children on the playing field (and their ghostly companion Whisper) are doll-like hybrids of Western and Japanese animation, and it works well enough. As always, the special events look fantastic; the titular sorcerer cuts a menacing figure, and the tree guarding the Freaky Forest ramp is a mix between Mortal Kombat's haunted face trees and the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter.

As always, the sound design almost bears no explanation. No wrong steps are taken, and while the soundtrack is whimsical and befitting of the subject matter, it won't have you wishing for MP3 releases. The voice acting is also appropriately cheesy.

Zen Studios knows how to make a pinball table. They know how to construct unique situations, as well as unique solutions to each of them. Clever secondary flipper placement goes a long way in this one, and players with a knack for pinball physics will find themselves scoring loop bonus after loop bonus. There are lots of special objectives, but these will only be accessed and completed by those with a great sense of timing -- and even better reflexes. They are the ones who will occupy the top of the leaderboards.

Even if you're not a pinball wizard, Sorcerer's Lair is still great fun to mess around with; dumb luck does have a role in pinball, after all, and there are almost as many happy accidents as there are unhappy ones.

Naturally, the value of Zen Pinball: Sorcerer's Lair is directly influenced by how much mileage you've already gotten out of the main release (and its many add-ons). Personally, I'd pay two and a half dollars as long as the content was solid -- and it's certainly solid. There are a lot of secrets buried in this table's design, and they should give you sufficient enough bang for your two bucks and a half. And, let's face it: a few minutes at a modern pinball table costs more than this entire release does.