Homepage   |  Reviews  |  Competitions  |  Guest Rooms  |  Miscellaneous  |  Editor

When the flowing gets tough, the slime gets flowing…! Well, it does if you’re playing Pipemania 3D from Empire Interactive. This is an adaptation of the hugely popular game where variously shaped sections of pipe must be connected together in order to redirect flowing liquid into a drain. It’s a game that’s played on desktops the world over by anyone and everyone that wants to kill a few minutes (or a few hours) and, like all the simple concepts, it’s incredibly addictive. 

This Empire conversion, however, is not for the desktop; it’s a colourful 3D alternative designed especially for the Playstation and it’s cartoon-style graphics and wacky characters will appeal to just about every age group. In saying that, it’s not a game that you’ll find particularly easy to master and it will need good spatial skills, strategy and speed to beat the 50+ levels.  

Pipemania has its roots founded on the Tetris-type games but instead of using various shaped pieces you have straight, bent and jointed pipes as the basis of the puzzles. Each of the isometric-viewed play areas has one or more input points from where the slime will soon begin to flow and the idea is to redirect it safely to the drain. It’s not too difficult a concept to grasp but the problems arise when you realise that the drain is not available at the beginning of the game and only appears once the flow has begun. This means that you could be headed in totally the wrong direction and will need to quickly rethink your battle-plan. The other problem is that the pieces of pipe can only be placed in the order that they appear so several may have to be discarded in unused areas of the board before you get to one that you can use. 

Discarded pieces or those unconnected to others disappear after a moment or two, which is very useful otherwise you’d soon find the board full but also sometimes frustrating when attempting to plan a strategy. Nevertheless, these are the aspects of the title that make it so infuriatingly fascinating and nurture a determination not to let it beat you. The other frustrating aspects are the obstacles that often bar your way (making it even more difficult to find the right piece of pipe) plus the bonus items and power-ups that you must pass through in order to reach the secret areas of the game. Some of the bonus items have a distinct effect on the inexorably advancing slime including reversing the direction of flow so there are a few surprises waiting for you to discover. 

There is a storyline behind the increasingly more complicated gameplay and this involves a happy little pipe planet in a galaxy far away. One rogue pipe-person isn’t happy with the idyllic lifestyle and decides to pump toxic waste everywhere but wherever there’s a bad guy there’s always a good guy ready to confront him and players take on the role in order to rid the planet of pollution. This will take you across 18 distinct islands filled with their own brands of problems but if you’re ready for the challenge – play on…!