Mayachin Shrine / Pinball Shrine (Tears of the Kingdom)

This entry contains minor spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom; read at your own caution.

About

Mayachin Shrine, aka the Pinball Shrine, is a puzzle room in The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that proved infamous among players for its difficulty. The room requires players to build a makeshift batting device in order to whack a moving ball toward a hanging target. However, many players struggled with figuring out the intended solution, leading them to share their improvised solutions online following the game's May 2023 release, as well as share stories about their failed attempts to solve the room.

Origin

In Tears of the Kingdom, the Mayachin Shrine is centrally located, making it a shrine players may discover early in their playthrough.^[1] Upon entering the shrine, players will see a ball rolling down a slope, a button, an activation switch and some stakes and poles. The button causes a hanging target to appear and the switch quickly turns a mechanism 180 degrees.

The intended solution is for players to attach the stakes and poles to the turning mechanism horizontally, creating a makeshift "flipper," akin to the flippers of a pinball machine. They then hit the switch at the right moment so the makeshift flipper hits the ball towards the target (walkthrough by YouTuber Perfect Score shown below).

One of the earliest notable posts about the shrine was posted by TikToker @charmy._bee on May 19th, 2023, who showcased themselves whacking Link off the map, gaining over 745,000 views in 11 days (shown below).

Spread

On May 21st, 2023, Twitter user @miukumauk^[2] posted a screenshot of themselves in the shrine, writing, "this game is so humbling I have no idea man, not a clue, IQ zero." The tweet gained over 2,900 retweets, 2,200 quote tweets and 41,000 likes in nine days (shown below).

In response to @miukumauk's tweet, several users agreed that the shrine made them feel foolish and began posting videos of the alternative solutions they came up with to "solve" the shrine. On May 22nd, Twitter user @Nekyismyname posted a video of themselves abusing the game's "recall" feature to pass the shrine, gaining over 130 retweets and 3,100 likes in eight days (shown below, top). The same day, user @no__translation then posted a video of themselves accidentally launching the ball backward at Link, gaining over 270 retweets and 2,600 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, bottom).

Other prominent alternative solutions include a May 20th TikTok posted by user smallant in which he simply fired bomb arrows at the targets and forewent the "pinball" portion of the shrine altogether, gaining over 1.1 million views in 10 days (shown below, top). Several Twitter posters showcased how their makeshift flippers broke upon "swinging," but the debris hit the target with enough force that they were able to make it out of the shrine (example by @tech3lazy shown below, bottom).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References