Pipe Mania Reviews

It was a rainy night when I decided to give Pipe Mania a spin. The city outside my window was a haze of neon and bad decisions, and I figured this old dame of a puzzle game might distract me from the weight of the world. But instead, it felt like she pulled me into her web—a slick, polished trap that looked promising, only to leave me wrestling with frustration and regret. This wasn’t my first tango with the pipe puzzle genre. I’d seen her offspring in games like BioShock, where puzzles had more finesse and let you think your way out of a jam. But this? This was a relic of the past—rough around the edges and unforgiving as a double-cross. [hr] [h1][b]The Allure: A Dame with Style[/b][/h1] She had looks, no doubt about that. The presentation was all class—animations that flowed like bourbon in a cheap glass, sound effects that clinked and clattered like poker chips in a smoky backroom. She even had the audacity to bring some personality to her act, with themed levels and quirky settings that felt like walking into a speakeasy full of colorful characters. And for a moment, I was under her spell. I could see why she’d become a legend. Over 250 levels, a name that echoed through the annals of gaming history—this was the kind of dame you didn’t just forget. But the deeper I went, the more I realized she had a nasty streak. [hr] [h1][b]The Crime: A Rigged Game[/b][/h1] She didn’t play fair. From the first level, I knew I was in for trouble. The pieces she handed me? Random, like pulling cards from a stacked deck. Couldn’t rotate ‘em either. Try building a network of pipes with tools like that, and you’re just begging to get burned. And the penalties? Oh, she was cruel. Lay a piece you don’t use, and she’d dock your points. Try to fix a mistake? She’d dock you again. It didn’t matter what you did—she’d find a way to make you feel like a sap. Then there was the Flooze. It surged through the pipes like a mob enforcer after a debt. You only had a few seconds to plan before it came barreling down the line, forcing you to slap pieces down and hope for the best. Strategy? Forget about it. You were playing her game, by her rules, and she didn’t leave much room for finesse. [hr] [h1][b]The Mystery: Why Bring Her Back?[/b][/h1] There was something tragic about it all. Why bring this old dame back, dressed up in new clothes but still clinging to her outdated ways? She didn’t even have the decency to adapt to the times—no resolution scaling, no modern controls, no forgiveness for mistakes. She was a relic, and she didn’t even try to hide it. I couldn’t help but think of all the imitators that had done her act better. BioShock’s hacking mini-game came to mind—cleaner, sharper, more rewarding. Even the cheap knockoffs I’d stumbled across on Steam had more sense than this. [hr] [h1][b]The Verdict: A Classic That’s Seen Better Days[/b][/h1] She wasn’t all bad. She had charm, she had history, and she had content—more than enough to keep someone who could look past her flaws busy for a while. But me? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been had. [b][u]Pros:[/u][/b] Stunning visuals and sound design. Nostalgic appeal for those who remember her heyday. Plenty of levels for the masochists who stick around. [b][u]Cons:[/u][/b] Random, non-rotatable pieces kill any chance of real strategy. Harsh penalties punish experimentation and mistakes. The Flooze’s relentless march makes planning impossible. Outdated features with no modern conveniences. [b]Final Thoughts:[/b] She was a dame with a past, and maybe that’s enough for some. But me? I need more than style and history to hold my interest. I need substance. And this game didn’t have it. So I put her back on the shelf, poured myself a drink, and wondered why I ever gave her a chance in the first place.

Pipe Mania is an ancient game from 2008. It's a whopping 16 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware. This is a re-hash of 1989's Amiga game, Pipe Dream/Pipe Mania, but it's not copyright infringement, it looks like Empire Interactive are a valid copyright holder for it, so that's something. That doesn't mean this is a great game... Pipe Dream has been rehashed so many times (heck, it's the hacking minigame in Bioshock), and this teenaged rehash isn't a winner. You get some different skins/game modes etc but is that really what was needed to make a smash hit out of something that would today be more fitting as a Flash game? Nope. And I'm never going to tell gamers on Steam to spend money on glorified Flash games. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio, due to the age of the game, it predates the 16:9 widescreen gaming standard established back in 2006. It's possible they're marketing this towards people using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game is being specifically marketed towards people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. It's obviously not going to look right on a modern 16:9 gaming display. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Pipe Mania is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $4 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.