Pipe Dream - for NES

Pipe Dream is a puzzle game about plumbing under pressure, developed by Distinctive Software and published by Lucasfilm Games in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. You are handed pieces of pipe, some straightforward and some distinctly awkward, and asked to join them into a working line before a thick substance called flooz reaches the end of what you have built so far. Pipe Dream stands out as one of the few Lucasfilm Games titles of its era with no story at all, just a clean idea carried out with real bite, and it belongs on the short list of puzzle games that take a sentence to explain and hours to put down.

Play is a race against your own pipeline. Pieces arrive one at a time and you set them on a grid, planning a route while the flooz is already moving, which means you are building ahead and correcting your own thinking at the same time. Awkward pieces can be laid over ones you have not used yet, bends and crossings let you stretch a route out for extra credit, and each stage asks for more pipe laid before it will let you pass. Two players can take turns at it, which turns Pipe Dream into a short, sharp contest of planning speed.

Players still love Pipe Dream because the pressure never eases and the blame is always yours: there is no bad luck in it, only the piece you placed two seconds ago. It is immediately readable, it suits short sessions and long ones, and it is very hard to watch somebody else play without wanting the controller. For collectors, Pipe Dream is a tidy piece of history, Lucasfilm Games on the Nintendo Entertainment System with Distinctive Software behind the code, from the year the puzzle boom was at its height. It is one of those cartridges that gets passed around the room.

• Genre: Puzzle
• Players: 1-2
• Region: NTSC
• Release Year: 1990
• Developer: Distinctive Software

Cartridge Only: No Box or Manual
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Condition & Authenticity
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