Among Pipes Review (Nintendo Switch)

I know this is going to seem like a mad game to review but I’ve been obsessed with pipe puzzle games since Pipe Dream on the NES, Pipe Mania on the Amiga, and the countless clones over the years as well as all mini games that feature this game mechanic in many AAA games today.

Despite all the mobile ported shovel-ware on the Nintendo Switch, no one has ported any form of pipe game to the console that I spend most of my time with these days so when I saw Among Pipes pop up on the the download store recently I had to check it out.

The original home computer pipe games played quite a bit differently, where you had a start and and end point and had to lay the pipes to get from A to B using randomly generated pieces of pipe the game provided you with. Among Pipes take the newer approach seen in many of the mobile phone clone games where the pieces of the pipe are already laid out on the board and you just need to rotate them to complete the path.

At first this was a disappoint but once I got into game I found this offered different but still fun challenge that scratched my pipe game itch. 

The puzzles start of painfully easy and slowly increase in a complexity with no difficulty spikes at all, and huge number of levels to challenge your skill. 324 puzzles in total spread across 27 chapters. For reference I’ve been played the game for over 6 hrs and am currently on level 256 making it solid value for £5 asking price at launch.

I have a few minor complaints such as no D-pad support when playing with a controller but my main issue is with the timer for the puzzles. The timer ticks down as you try to solve each puzzle in order to give you ranking after completion but once the time hits zero… literally nothing happens! The whole gimmick of these games is the race when the liquid starts flowing through the pipe and your franticly trying to extend the pipe to buy more time whilst you try to get to the exit but here nothing happens, not even a ‘time up’ message. You literally have infinite time to complete every puzzle with a one star rating. This just seems like a crazy designed choice to me.

But that being said I would recommend this game to fans of the genre. I avoid all the free to play mobile games because the ads are annoying and I hate micro transactions, so I’m more than happy to pay a small fee once to have may hours of uninterrupted game play. I would have liked a second game mode with the classic pipe dream style game play, and the decision not to have the liquid flowing in the pipes is still mind blowing to me, but what you pay for what you get makes Among Pipes a worth while addition to your collection if like me you enjoy this niche genre of game.