Piping Hot

Lucky me gets to write the first review for Piping Hot... sigh. Piping Hot is a 2D retro pixel ripoff of the Commodore Amiga game, Pipe Mania (copyright The Assembly Line 1989). This is also somewhat famous as the hacking minigame from Bioshock, although the implementation here is of inferior quality to that minigame. The game isn't notably different or better than Pipe Mania, and features almost identical gameplay as you click on various pipes to orient them in a manner that allows water to flow from the source to the destination point, thus completing the level and allowing you to move on to the next one (or not). When the ambitious business plan involves trying to get paid for an entire game that's not even as good as some other developer's minigame, it's difficult to foresee any great success. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. While there …