Full Pipe, a very small, under-the-radar game by Pipe Studio, is a very interesting take on point-and-click adventure games.
The game starts with a small spectacled man with a snail-like rear end (that for some reason has a Matrix-esque port on the back of it) tossing and turning in bed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an odd appendage of some sort nabs one of his two slippers, pulling it into whatever netherworld it slithered out from. Thus starts the very odd, sometimes borderline disturbing foray into the land of "what the F is that".
Most of the game is confusing and oftentimes it takes more than a few dozen clicks to figure out who does what. When you finally figure out that you have to give the guy who eats items through a drawer in his stomach and excretes globular egg-like objects that then encase the item in question, you feel a bewildering sense of fulfillment in figuring out what the hell is going on, if only for a moment. A large portion of the puzzles are very obscure and obscenely difficult, but you tend to enjoy the answers when they finally come to fruition.
The ambient sounds, music, and animation are what bring this game to life. The sounds give an odd sense of foreboding, even though there is no danger to be had in the entire game. Each of the characters sound and look like a great deal of personality was given to them, even if you don't hear any more than a few grunts and squeals from any of them. Most of all, the music (when there even is any) is very ambient and unobstructive to anything else, letting you focus on, and sometimes even highlighting what you need to be paying attention to for the current task.
Overall, Full Pipe was a wonderful, confusing, and frustrating experience that left me feeling very proud of myself for finishing it. Only someone who has spent a large amount of time playing point-and-click adventure games can get a sense of enjoyment out of it, though, but in the past, that tends to be true for a large portion of the games that make up this niche genre. I actually found out recently that the game itself had been discontinued on the Steampowered store, and it's sad that this title went under the radar for so long. R.I.P. Pipe Studio.
The game starts with a small spectacled man with a snail-like rear end (that for some reason has a Matrix-esque port on the back of it) tossing and turning in bed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an odd appendage of some sort nabs one of his two slippers, pulling it into whatever netherworld it slithered out from. Thus starts the very odd, sometimes borderline disturbing foray into the land of "what the F is that".
Most of the game is confusing and oftentimes it takes more than a few dozen clicks to figure out who does what. When you finally figure out that you have to give the guy who eats items through a drawer in his stomach and excretes globular egg-like objects that then encase the item in question, you feel a bewildering sense of fulfillment in figuring out what the hell is going on, if only for a moment. A large portion of the puzzles are very obscure and obscenely difficult, but you tend to enjoy the answers when they finally come to fruition.
The ambient sounds, music, and animation are what bring this game to life. The sounds give an odd sense of foreboding, even though there is no danger to be had in the entire game. Each of the characters sound and look like a great deal of personality was given to them, even if you don't hear any more than a few grunts and squeals from any of them. Most of all, the music (when there even is any) is very ambient and unobstructive to anything else, letting you focus on, and sometimes even highlighting what you need to be paying attention to for the current task.
Overall, Full Pipe was a wonderful, confusing, and frustrating experience that left me feeling very proud of myself for finishing it. Only someone who has spent a large amount of time playing point-and-click adventure games can get a sense of enjoyment out of it, though, but in the past, that tends to be true for a large portion of the games that make up this niche genre. I actually found out recently that the game itself had been discontinued on the Steampowered store, and it's sad that this title went under the radar for so long. R.I.P. Pipe Studio.
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