Plungeez

You are Boni, a young plumber who accidentally falls into the sewers and now has to navigate the underground system to find his way back to the surface. Her only contact with the outside world is through a radio, where he talks to an older colleague whenever he discovers something interesting or new. The story itself is pretty light, though, with most of the experience resting on the gameplay. Although it might initially look like a metroidvania, this is actually a puzzle game built around individual rooms. The goal in each room is to figure out how to open the exit, with platforming skills playing a big part in solving each puzzle. Boni starts with the basics, including the ability to run and jump. She can also automatically grab onto edges when jumping close to them, meaning you do not always have to make a perfectly high or precise jump to reach a platform. After a while, Boni gets access to a plunger that works almost like a double jump. There is, naturally, a very plumber specific twist to it. The plunger can only be used next to a wall or another flat surface. You can use it only once during a climb, so you cannot simply get comfortable and scale every wall without thinking about how you use your jumps. During the adventure, you will find three additional plungers, with each one giving you another jump during a climb. They reset as soon as Boni's feet touch the ground. Platforming and problem solving are closely connected. A big part of that involves fire and the furnace that powers the exit grate, allowing you to leave the room and move on to the next stage. Fire is collected in a lamp, which you first need to find in each stage. There is no stage map, so you have to explore the area yourself. This can sometimes take a while, especially because stages often contain smaller sub stages hidden within them. Once you find the lamp, your next destination is a large lantern. It lights the lamp and gives you the fire you need. From there, you have to carry it to a furnace, which powers the exit door. The lamp is used on the furnace, meaning each furnace effectively has its own lamp that needs to make the journey. Of course, this is a sewer, so there is one rather obvious problem with carrying fire around. Water is everywhere, and it will put the fire out. Thankfully, there are smaller torches placed at certain points throughout the stages. They light up automatically when you pass by them and work just like the large lantern, allowing you to relight the lamp. They are especially useful for cutting down on unnecessary backtracking. And there is a lot of water. It can pour out of pipes, fill entire sections, or simply sit at the bottom of a stage waiting for Boni to take an unfortunate swim. There is no death, though, and Boni is a good swimmer, so falling into the water does not hurt her. At first, however, she cannot dive underneath it. That changes once you find the diving suit. The diving suit is one of several tools introduced throughout the game to help you deal with new obstacles. These include broken pipes that need to be repaired so power can reach its destination, as well as levers that raise or lower the water level. But that’s pretty much it because the game won’t try to make things overly complicated. You also cannot get yourself permanently stuck. There are no situations where you are left unable to climb out or forced to restart a room because you made the wrong move. The game takes Boni through four different sections of the sewers, each containing several rooms. While this might initially make the game seem fairly linear, the sewer system is actually open, and you can return to previous stages whenever you want. You will often have to make the trip on foot, but there are also quite a few teleporting pipes scattered throughout the world. Once connected, these pipes provide a convenient way to travel around the sewer system without having to walk everywhere. There is no real reason to return to a solved stage unless you want to find all 12 treasures. These are hidden in specific stages, but the game thankfully avoids making you search every single room from top to bottom just to figure out where they might be. You get an overall map of the sewer system that shows exactly which stages contain a treasure. Once you find one, the map adds a checkmark to that stage, so you do not have to rely on your memory to remember which treasures you have already collected. The map also shows which stages you have completed, which is particularly useful because the path through the game is not always completely linear. Sometimes you can choose which stage to tackle next. It also shows which stages still contain a lamp, while the final section ties these markers into some of the game's later mechanics. Despite the open structure and optional exploration, reaching the ending does not take long. You will probably spend around two to three hours with the game, even if you take some time to hunt down the treasures. There are no missable achievements either, and you can continue exploring the sewer system even after finishing the game.