What do you and Mario have in common? You’re both famous plumbers — at least you will be if you pick up Pipe Mania for the PC. OK, so maybe FAMOUS isn’t quite the right word, but honestly, neither is plumber. Pipe Mania fulfills your lifelong dream of being a plumbing prodigy, perilously placing pipe pieces purposely — perchance preventing proscribed products pouring pitilessly precipitating pretermission puddles.
For those of you still reading after my random alliteration, let me introduce you to the basics of Pipe Mania. Many of us have played earlier versions of this game — for example, when it was released in the Windows Entertainment Pack (as Pipe Dream if I recall) an-easy-to-learn, hard-to-master puzzle game. This new generation builds a whole world for you to lay pipe.
For those of you who play Popcap games, the style will be rather familiar. The game opens with a cute video explaining the world you need to repair and introduces the villain whose shoddy plumbing practices have put the world in peril. Choose to play the son or daughter, and you’re on your way.
The rules of the puzzles are simple; basically you provide a route for Flooze (think things that flow, not people with easy morals) to travel from a start tile to the finish tile without interruptions. You can’t destroy a tile with Flooze on it, and leaks (from damaged pipes or if the Flooze reaches the end before you have a new pipe ready) will cause you to lose.
Most of the game centers around the single-player “World” (story) mode. You travel around the island you live on working up to more complex areas. Each area has eight levels, but you don’t have to beat every level to advance, just any six. The last stage of each area is a “battle” in which the character from that area will attempt to hinder your progress.
You start in the Basic Pipes area. Here your father teaches you the basics and introduces hazards (tiles you can’t place pipes on) and introduces a new rule that comes up often: that your Flooze must travel through a minimum number of pipes before you can win.
Once you’ve proven to your father you can piece together basic pipes, you’ll go visit the sewers. Ramona the Crocodile will guide you around her sewers and introduce one-way pipes (where Flooze must enter the correct side) and pumps and reservoirs (pumps speeding the rate Flooze travels and reservoirs stopping the flow of Flooze for a few moments while it fills). Once you beat the sewers, though, you stop using “pipes” for a while.
Next stop is the Railroad. The Flooze is now actually a train with a fixed length. This means you can build over tracks once it’s passed them. It also introduces “Grow” tiles, which allows the train to add a section, and you will be required to end the level with a minimum size.
From here on, you encounter all different types of Flooze. There is the Factory in which you combine and divide streams of Flooze before shipping it out, and Electricity, in which Flooze leap forward from reservoir to reservoir. You help the flow of data on the Internet before finally reaching Super Pipes, and your father’s arch nemesis.
As you beat the World mode, you unlock other modes such as Arcade and Bonus. Arcade is like some of the later world levels in that it scrolls. You also can adjust the scroll speed. If the head of the Flooze is ever not on the screen, you lose. The Bonus games are puzzle versions of the Pipe Mania game. In these puzzles, your speed in solving the puzzles determines your score. Unlike the other modes, there is only one right answer. Puzzles are played on 3x3, 4x4 or 5x5 grid. For the Match game, the board is premade except for a few pieces. You have to put the predetermined pieces in the right places to solve the puzzle. The Spin board is complete, but you have to turn the pieces so they face correctly.
Also unlocked in the World mode are treasures for your treasure room. Some treasures are found, and others you unlock by beating levels; but be sure to check out the treasure room to see what you’ve got. Once you’ve beaten all the stages in an area, you can change your profile to play as the boss from that area.
There also is a Classic mode. You can play (or replay) levels from the original Pipe Mania game. The rules are just the basic ones without the fancy pipes and tiles. How many levels you have access to is again determined by how much of the World mode you’ve beaten.
There is a two-player mode, but it isn’t nearly as much fun as the single player. The layout for versus is confusing, and the mouse is MUCH easier to use than the keyboard. You can play versis or co-op, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you were helping a small child play World mode.
Overall this is a fun game, if you enjoy puzzle games. I was always awful at the original Pipe Dream games and I still enjoyed myself, especially with the Train and Electricity levels. The music is catchy and the graphics are fun, but most of all, it is one of those classic games that is easy to learn, and hard to master.
