While this might actually be the easiest game to learn, it does not necessarily mean that the game itself is easy. Thankfully, the designers were kind enough to allow us to advance and unlock game modes by achieving just a bronze medal; bronze medals are not really that hard to get, actually, for the most part, all you need to do is to complete the level to earn the bronze.

As I’ve said, there are several game modes in Pipe Mania. The storyline mode, aka World mode must be played first in order to unlock the other game modes. Don’t wary, you don’t have to finish the entire World mode in order to play the Classic version of the game; you just have to play through a small chunk of it. At first I was skeptical about all the new features of the World mode, but the more I played it the more I got more and more hooked on it. As a matter of fact I’m confident in saying that the World mode is actually my favorite mode. Classic mode is just too easy now. Back in the day it seemed so much harder, but after Doom my reflexes have drastically improved.

Since the World mode is the new and complex version of Pipe Mania I will spend some time covering all the new gameplay aspects. From a controller perspective the World mode plays the same as the Classic or Arcade modes: you select the grid location where you want to drop your next piece and then you hit the place button. Besides that, Word mode is a new game. The World mode starts with the first stage, Basic Pipes. That’s your warm-up. After that just about everything in the game is different from the original. First of all, in World mode you have a flooze meter. If you have an “accident” and you flooze starts dripping the game is no longer instantly over. Now you have until the flooze meter fills up to fix your plumbing problems. Besides the flooze meter there is also an abundance of new pieces that can be placed. For example now you can have splitting pipes, merging pipes, one way pipes, elbow pipes, reservoirs, pumps, cross pipes among many others. And that’s as much the great part of the game as a problem. Because there are so many pipes in the game and the fact that they drop randomly there is a wide array of designs that can be implemented, but at the same time I’ve gone through 20+ pieces before finally getting the final strait pipe I needed to complete the level. Although flooze is used as the general term is actually not the only thing traveling in the World mode. As a matter of fact, in most of the world mode you don’t even get to build pipes. For example, in the Railroad maps you get to place train tracks. The “flooze” is actually a traveling train. In the Factory levels instead of pipes you build conveyer belts and the “flooze” in the maps are actually white rubber ducks that must be carried to the appropriate painting machine and then transported to the transport van. If a picture is really worth a thousand words, then just check out some of the screenshots; they’ll help make sense of the World Mode. As for the rest of the game, look at it as being the World mode only a lot more basic and in my opinion much, much easier. And if you want to challenge another player, there’s always Game Sharing and AD HOC Mode.