Acorn User
1st June 1990
Pipemania is a game in a genre of its own. I expect some people will make an unjustified comparison with Confuzion (if they can remember that far back!), purely because of a slight graphical similarity, but this game is truly original and a refreshing change at that.
This is one of those deceptively simple-looking yet fiendishly addictive games that will hold your interest far longer than the average mindless shoot-'em'up. Gameplay consists of trying to arrange a series of blocks containing different shapes and lengths of piping, to provide a convoluted passageway for a strange liquid which insidiously begins to creep along it.
After a while the liquid draws ever closed to the end of the pipe, you are running out of room on the board, the music reaches fever pitch and it all becomes too much! Progressing through the 35 of so levels, the available pieces become more varied.
This arranges 'one-way' pipes around 'bottleneck' types which the liquid takes a while to fill, providing a temporary reprieve for the poor player. Surprisingly intricate networks can be constructed which loop, twist and can even go off the edge of the screen to reappear on the other side!
Pipemania combines all the best elements of several games. For example, on the bonus levels, the player (or players - two can play co-operatively) have to construct the usual passageway by dropping the pieces one by one into the playing area, in a style reminiscent of Tetris.
This is more difficult than it sounds, so I chickened out and used ont of the (manifold) cheat modes, which will doubtless be revealed to all of your lesser mortals at a later date.
Other features such as password entry to levels, the one or two player option, a choice of keyboard or joystick control and a slower training speed for the less nimble-fingered add up to make this an outstanding piece of work.
Those of you who have marvelled at the names in the high-score table of Repton Infinity, will be pleased to note that the author of both these games has produced some more of them. (Seth Maori or Patty Euroclown for example!)
This game has existed in one form or another for some months now, but has had to be rewritten no less than three times, certainly not through lack of skill, but because of the publisher changing hands.
As you can imagine, starting more ot less from scratch three times has resulted in a slick and polished final product, without which anyone's collection is incomplete.
An Archimedes version is in the pipeline (Sorry, I couldn't resist that one!) which is considerably smoother, more colourful and far more graphically varied, with marbling-shade effects among the improvements. This is only a few weeks away, and will be well worth the wait.
Screenshots
