Among Pipes

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Prison Games

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Review:

Among Pipes is a family-friendly Puzzle Game released as an asset on the Codester Asset Store in 2020 as Plumber AKA Steampunk Plumber, and brought to the Nintendo Switch as a low-effort asset flip in 2021. This game follows in the style of classics like Pipe Dream, where players are trying to make sure pipes are placed to direct the flow of a liquid from a starting point to an end point, although unlike that classic, this game simply has players rotating already-placed pipes rather than placing their own.

The presentation here is okay, but it feels lacking in a few ways. On the one hand, the 2D artwork of the pipes, the liquid, and the little animated robot the liquid fuels are all polished. But thematically the game seems off. Why is so much liquid needed to power such a small robot? Why do we care about powering the robot? It’s not terrible, but it just feels arbitrary. Likewise, the cutesy soundtrack here feels very out of place, and makes this feel like a more juvenile game than the rest of the presentation does.

As for the gameplay, Among Pipes is a decent Puzzle game, and I have to commend it for having over 300 puzzles. However, as someone who remembers the classic days of Pipe Dream, I can’t help but be disappointed that this game doesn’t have an endless mode like that, or in fact anything here other than the pre-arranged puzzles. Also, while the game does have touchscreen controls, they seemed finicky and unreliable, and I much preferred using the more reliable gamepad controls.

In the end, Among Pipes is a decent little Puzzle game with a lot of content, but it’s standing in the shadows of a much greater one. If you just want another Puzzle game to add to your collection, this will suffice, but don’t expect anything anywhere near as compelling as Pipe Dream was.

tl;dr – Among Pipes is a family-friendly Puzzle game that has players rotating pipes to direct the flow of a liquid. It’s a decent game with a lot of content, but it’s not nearly as compelling as the classic game Pipe Dream. Fans of the genre may find this to be a decent time-waster, but not much more than that.

Grade: C

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