If you expect glamour, hype, elaborated movie files or witty conversation coming from a twenty dollar puzzle game then you truly have way too high of expectations. This game is great, but it is a puzzle game where flooze travels down pipes. You don’t really need the latest in gaming technology for that.

I’ll start with the sound first. I’ll be honest, with over 300+ levels in a multitude of versions and difficulty settings I have not managed to beat out the game yet. But, unless there is a movie file at the end of the game, the only movie file that I’ve encountered so far has been the beginning video. The only voice actor in the intro video has been Alfonzo narrating his situation and introducing us to the rest of his family and to his nemesis. After that the only sounds that you will hear will be the music and the sound of traveling flooze and the clicking sounds of pipe pieces being laid out. Considering that Pipe Mania is a puzzle game I think that the sound works great the way it is and once the music starts getting redundant you can always turn the sound off completely (you don’t need the sound at all to be successful at this game). If you like the sound effects you can always turn off the music and keep on the sound. It is entirely up to you.

As for the graphics … let me say this once again: Pipe Mania is a puzzle game. You are not going to encounter the same level graphics as Final Fantasy Crisis Core for example. The graphics are great for the kind of game that it is.

Now I can focus on the actual game. Pipe Mania is a grid based game where pipe pieces are placed in an attempt to connect the starting flooze reservoir with that level’s drain. The game’s mechanics will be covered in the Gameplay and Controls section, but I wanted to mention it here because most of the levels look like a weird-looking chess table with pipes instead of chess pieces placed all throughout it. In other words, the graphics are simple and plain but they more than get the job done.