Pipe Push Paradise

Great "Stephen-sausage-roll-like" :D If you like the genre absolutely worth the price.

100% completed. Very good, ends before it overstays its welcome, and felt satisfyingly difficult, although the difficulty may have been slightly lowered for me having played Steven's Sausage Roll and Can Of Wormholes first. Given the whole Ouroboros of inspiration happening there, if you're thinking of playing either of those other two games, I'd recommend playing Pipe Push Paradise first! (Spoilers for endgame: Remember to check the boat after reaching the "end"!) :)

Brilliant sokoban-style puzzle game which is of medium length (took me ~11 hours to complete all puzzles). Puzzles fell into three categories for me: 1) it's obvious there is some weird gimmick or new trick you have to learn, and once you understand the insight, the execution is usually straightforward, 2) nothing obviously weird, and the direct way to solve it feels "close" but is just barely off so you end up having to rethink the whole thing from scratch, and 3) classical push puzzle where you have to carefully maneuver pieces in a tight space I think there was a lot more room to explore the mechanics (certain pipe shapes only appear a few times and certain tricks are only used once or twice), but what is here clearly demonstrates the developer's amazing sense for designing puzzles. Overall it was a pure joy to solve these puzzles, so it's highly recommended and it's a shame it seems to be rather obscure. Similar games I've played recently are Stephen's Sausage Roll and Can of Wormholes. If you liked either this is a must play.

The game is mostly sokoban with 3d rotation of irregular shapes. The special mechanics aren't used as much, and most puzzles boils down to just pushing the block in specific ways, rather than to figure out creative solutions to include the special mechanics. If you were looking forward to the crazy mechanics and their intertwining systems, you will be disappointed here. (Can of wormhole is better for that purpose) It's not difficult once you realised that. Just a lot of trial and error until you figured out where to push the pipes and place them in which 3d orientations. Some puzzles requires very specific movement with exactly enough space to push things through, most are quite lenient. 5 hours of gameplay, watched guide to figure out the steps along the way. There are 2 more bonus area full with puzzles left for me. Regardless, it's a pretty cool game.

[h1]Overall = 8/10[/h1] A pipe pushing plumbing puzzle game with a very relaxed and laid back atmosphere. The puzzles are difficult but good as they slowly bring in new mechanics without explaining them, letting you have those ‘AHA!’ moments yourself. The graphics are simplistic and clearly show each of the elements, but some more details could have made exploring the island more interesting. The characters and narrative also feels a bit pointless and the map isn’t very informative as it doesn’t show you which puzzles you’ve unlocked. The bright colours and music adds to the idyllic charm of the setting and as every move is tracked, it’s easy to undo mistakes or restart levels but having an in-game hint system would have been nice to help you when you’re completely stumped. It’s a great game which keeps on giving as even after completion, there’s additional puzzles to complete and tricks to learn which was nice. Using a controller I found I kept double stepping, so recommend using a keyboard instead.

An excellent very difficult puzzle game, often compared to Stephen's Sausage Roll. What this game does well is it makes you navigate between high-level and low-level logic. There is the high-level of figuring out where pipes should go, and the low-level of maneuvering them around. There is a satisfaction in realizing just how much deeper the puzzle goes, just how much it offers, and it has a couple of "aha" lynchpins that are quite satisfying. In this sense, it is very much like Stephen's Sausage Roll, and fans of that game would enjoy this. Unfortunately, expectations also need to be tempered, as it falls short compared to Stephen's Sausage Roll in some ways. For starters, it doesn't have meta puzzles. Additionally, Stephen's Sausage Roll masterfully blends the high-level and low-level thinking in that it requires you to interweave between them frequently and constantly. When a low-level move makes you realize the high-level is impossible, you need to revisit the high-level approach. This is not as strong in Pipe Push Paradise, where the high-level approach is usually discovered immediately. Stephen's Sausage Roll also has very tight design in its mechanics, introducing very few new things, while fully exploring all of its possibilities, even the unintuitive edge cases. In Pipe Push Paradise, more mechanics are forcefully injected into the game in order to add interest, and they are not fully explored as much as they very well could be. Your imagination is terrified at how cursed some of these level designs could get, but even the hardest levels never touch that ceiling. Part of the reason could be just how loose the rules get with some edge cases. The game is also much shorter, so that means less mileage. Pipe Push Paradise's harder levels are also not especially tight, often having many solutions, some very simple, whereas Stephen's Sausage Roll has extremely tight solutions when it wants to. Don't get the wrong idea though, all in all, still a wonderful puzzle game with level designs that are a labor of love and use a good dose of creativity, without overstaying its welcome. Just keep expectations tempered when it's compared to Stephen's Sausage Roll, one of the all-time greatest.