Have you ever heard anyone tell you about an experience in which they felt more than themselves? A time when they felt they had ascended to something more? Me neither, but I think Brainpipe helped me see what someone experiencing that might see. Well, maybe that’s not the sort of thing they’d see, but it sure was fun nonetheless.

You are, as far as I can tell, something that’s trapped in a pipe or tunnel within your deep subconscious (hence the game’s name), and your task is to ascend to the level of Unhumanity. Basically, you get to turn into something cool and unhuman. But, of course, the pipe you travel within isn’t at all the usual one you’re thinking of.

Not that I’m saying I know what sort of brain-transcending spiritual-esque type of pipe you would usually think of, but I still doubt you’re thinking of the same one as what’s in Brainpipe. Colors and shapes swirl around you while you navigate within a first-person view. The shape of an eyeball is your guide as far as your general location.

You, the eyeball on a quest for unhumanity (though you’re pretty unhuman as an eyeball, or at least unattached), must coast, float, dodge and generally avoid anything and everything within the pipe that’s gunning for you. Purple spheres of swirling chaos, lightning-esque poles of light and other shapes that are bright and colorful pretty much spell death for you, good eyeball, if you collide with enough of them.

Luckily, you have the ability to slow time itself to avoid certain doom. (Who says being an eyeball doesn’t have its perks? Oh yeah, nobody. Oh well, if they did say that, you could then prove them wrong.) Granted, your time-slowing powers are not infinite and take a bit of time to recharge. Unfortunately, I had the wonderful lack of memory that I had that power.

Not that the power was difficult to activate. Press and hold the left-mouse button and bingo, instant time-shifting powers of impressive wondrousness. I just sort of, well, forgot I had it in the heat of the moment when the vast array of colorful eyeball-ending death rocketed toward me. But then, if I did die, that just gave me more of an “I’ll get it next time!” attitude. And given that Brainpipe was immensely easy to pick up, I was able to get decimated completely and be back in the game with but a few mouse clicks.

The menu itself is presented with eyeballs as buttons, each with a small icon to designate what they do. The icon with a reversed arrow meant exit the game, the one with the big “GO!” sign on it gets you into the game, the “?” button displays a few paragraphs of text that explain the game, etc. Overall, the user interface was about as intuitive as you can get. I thought it was great; even if you weren’t sure what “GO!” meant, you could still click it, select a level and end up playing the game promptly.

Level selection was easy as well. You see a simple slider that goes from one to 10 with the title of “Skill Level” before you enter gameplay. This means that you can, if you’d like, skip right to the final level of crazy-colored shapes of eyeball death. However, be advised, if you’re new to the game, you’ll die pretty darn fast. I sure as heck did.

The first level was relatively easy, just to get you into the swing of things, but what I found great was there was really no need for a tutorial — and you don’t get one. The text from the main menu’s “?” button explained everything simply enough. Fly through the pipe, gain unhumanity, become an eyeball of transformed epic awesomeness. Pretty easy to understand, but then the game itself does get complex and tricky. Steering your eyeball can get hectic when the objects flying at you in addition to objects that need dodged or maneuvered around is, well, quite numerous.

While all of this avoiding death and ascending to greater awesomeness is going on, you’ve also got another goal. There are small little glowing items, called glyphs, that you have the option of collecting. When you die, you get to see all of them that you’ve collected. The things that they are (or at least the titles they have) vary greatly from glyph to glyph. I saw anything from a treasured memory to an ignored dream. Overall, the uniqueness of each glyph made it so I wanted to collect them all, just to see what they all were.

Not that I did collect all of them, yet, due to avoiding that darn death thing, but hey an eyeball can dream. Some glyphs are extra glowy; they’ve got gold trim, and these bling-having glyphs are used for something later on in the game that I won’t say, but it’s interesting. So, all in all, getting glyphs is fun; they’re weird, and they help your score. And, the score continually goes up as you traverse Brainpipe.

I didn’t get the maximum score by far I’m sure, but then I was enjoying the music and sounds in the background while playing. That counts as a reason to not get all the points and glyphs, right? Well, when you listen to the sounds and music, they really go with the level. There’s a faster pace for faster parts. The sounds matched the levels in an excellent way. Plus, sounds ranged from people to thunderstorms. It made Brainpipe feel like a trip through the subconscious (or at least a weird part of the brain) complete with glowy eyeball death, most definitely.

Although, the aforementioned glowy death incurs a smaller score, comes usually in shades of purple and can make any good eyeball shiver in their ... uh ... contacts? But, I’d definitely say dodging the glowy death and eventually reaching ascension as well as gaining a big score was a huge bunch of fun. You get to pick your starting level/difficulty, the menu is intuitive, Brainpipe is easy to pick and play and it is fun.

Where else do you get that sort of treatment as an unattached-to-your-body eyeball-type entity? Only in Brainpipe, my friend. Pick this one up if only to see how far you can get, be challenged and ask “is this really what the subconscious looks likes?” It’s fun, weird and wacky. I definitely recommend it.