maninahat
Since: Apr, 2009
01/27/2023 00:00:00
Nope, can`t edit this review either. And nor can I submit a bug report about it! For some reason the submit-bug button doesn\'t work. Have I got a restriction or something?
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.Leave a Comment:
The Dude Abides
A snail man in a skirt, "Dude" as he is known, loses a sandal down the drain. In retrieving it, he finds himself trapped in a subterranean sewer world that he must navigate and escape. Thus is the set up for Full Pipe, one of my favourite, weird little point-and-click adventure games to recommend to the unsuspecting.
Full Pipe is the brainchild of Russian surrealist cartoonist, Ivan Maximov. Maximov has a fondness for mixing the strange and the mundane, and giving us cute and ugly critters in apocalyptic landscapes. I recommend all of his works (uploaded to youtube). In keeping with his style, Full Pipe takes place entirely in a sewer that is crammed with odd looking freaks whom the dude happens upon. The main aim of the game is to figure out what the hell they want. Everyone is mute, so it is about interpreting context clues and gestures. If you can solve their problem (done through inventory puzzles and mini games), they will open up the path for you.
The main appeal of Full Pipe is its charm. It has got that melancholic tinged cuteness of Winnie-the-Pooh, but packaged in a way that is more suitable for grownups, with a dark sense of humour and occasional adult themes. There are a lot of laughs for a game without a single spoken word of dialogue.
What eats into this enjoyment is the crudeness of the puzzle and level design. The sewers is a maze spanning in every direction, which can be quickly navigated by an ever expanding mini-map. Whilst this spares you having to slowly waddle your way from end of the complex to the other, it is difficult to get a sense of progression. Worse still is that several of the puzzles are tedious to complete. There is one extremely annoying one involving adjusting water levels that forces you to solve it through trial by error, slowly waddling from one valve to another to reset the puzzle each time.
Fortunately, the game is short enough that it doesn't outstay its welcome. The unchanging dreary backgrounds would become aggravating in anything that lasted longer than a few hours, and so Full Pipe manages to get away with being a fun little diversion. The only other issue with the game is its inconsistent availability. Its store page on steam tends to disappear for years at a time, but I believe it has gained a second life as a phone/ipad game.