Plumber: the Pipe Rush

Note: As of reviewing, I have played the first ten levels. This is a fun game which at its most basic is about using pipes to transport toxic waste from point A to point B without a leak. However, the gameplay contains a lot more nuance and presents additional challenges as you progess through the levels. The pipes come in multiple shapes and some of them add extra directions for the waste to travel while others create a "dead end", allowing you to make the waste travel a certain direction. You will not always have the pieces you want, so there is some tetris-esque strategy involved in deciding when to trash one of your current pieces to try for a better replacement or to improvise with what you currently have. Additionally, some levels already begin with pipe pieces present, so you have the option of placing your pieces strategically to connect with these or to work around them as if they were an obstacle. One feature that really comes in handy to save time on the early levels (in which the toxic waste moves quite slowly) is the "fast end" button. If you press this button, the waste will travel very quicky through the rest of the pipe you've laid out. Just make sure that before you press the button you've connected the pipe from start to finish without any openings for the waste to leak into the surrounding water. The main downside for me is that the tutorial is a bit weak. Some aspects of the games like moving unwanted pipes to the trash (click and drag), the correct orientation of multi-directional pipes, or under what conditions a misplaced pipe can be replaced have to be learned through trial and error.

I really like this game. It's a simple concept, but challenging and different every time. And it's fun to see how complicated you can make the pipeline. The only issue is that I wish that when it does fail, it was easier to see the board to see what went wrong. A bunch of stuff is displayed over the board after a failure which makes it difficult to see the problem.