Game review by Joseph Van Buren
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BrainPipe: Simple, Psychedelic, and Sub-Cerebral
The independent developer Digital Eel has a history of creating games that go beyond the conventional familiarity of gamers’ expectations. After all, this is the company responsible for Weird Worlds, which was known for its “weirdness” (yes, an appropriate title indeed) yet won an Independent Games Festival Award in 2006. Their latest venture, BrainPipe, is another example of visual brilliance and non-traditional subject matter.
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Playing BrainPipe is like traveling through the Matrix on acid. In a first-person view, you travel down a psychedelic wormhole, a twisting tunnel into the deepest parts of the mind, rendered in colorful 3-D graphics. You navigate through the levels collecting glyphs and avoiding obstacles. You also have the ability to temporarily slow down time, which is helpful especially as the movement through the wormhole becomes faster. A combination of atmospheric ambient music and classic arcade-style sound effects compliment the trippy visuals perfectly. The gameplay is simple, involving only movement of the mouse and left click to employ the time warp. So, instead of frantically looking down at your keyboard to find the right key to hit, you can focus on the intense theme of self transcendence that the game is strangling your subconscious with. That is perhaps the strange duality of the entire BrainPipe experience. On one side of the coin, it is seemingly a simple game of hand-eye coordination. But if you take the red pill…
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As you go through the levels, BrainPipe becomes challenging, both visually and in gameplay. Gaming vets will enjoy the increasing speed; for casual gamers, the possibility of sensory overload may be very real. There is an addiction potential here too, as you restart again and again to beat your last score. Do you need another sensation of reward from the dopamine being released in your brain? Are you truly trapped within the freeway of consciousness in your mind? Who knows? Maybe the fact that you keep restarting is just a result of the game’s replay value (obstacles do not always appear in the same spots) and lasting fun factor. Even the menu was entertaining; the icons are all eyeballs that follow your cursor as you move it around the screen.
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BrainPipe is a great experiment and well worth the $14.95 that Shrapnel Games is asking for it. You reach “Confusion” as an achievement in this game – that’s a testament to Digital Eel’s sense of pushing the envelope in game design and content.
