There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is

There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is another such example where there is a slight adjustment. They can still play different just because of rules and manufacturing changes. The AoM/MM layout tends to be called "fan" layout since it resembles a fan outward from the flippers. But then when prompted to define that the forum threads get very long. After all, most shots in pinball are going to be directly off the flippers and therefore will have fan elements - the games that don't respect that tend to be older EMs that emphasize the game-of-chance aspect. I think the main thing making "fan" games feel like that is just in the extensive use of ramps for controlled returns. When the ball returns freely down the playfield it has many possible trajectories, when it goes onto a wireform it rewards you with a clean return every time(barring the ramp shaking loose). So you end up making more of the same shots and you're tested to accurately hit what you know, vs your ability to recover a bad bounce. Drop target games from the 70's like El Dorado present a much different experience since not only are there open bounce trajectories, they change as the targets go down.