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Game Info

Cover art of Pipe Dream

4.4 / 5

1 vote

Platform
NES
Genres
Puzzle · Strategy
Developers
The Assembly Line
Publishers
Bullet-Proof Software · Lucasfilm Games
Release date
September 1, 1990

Summary

Pipe Dream drops you into a frantic puzzle where you must stitch together a flowing green slime—called "flooz" or "goo"—by placing pipe pieces that appear in a five‑piece dispenser. Each click drops the bottommost piece onto an empty square, and you can’t rotate or flip them, so you’re constantly juggling orientation and timing as the slime starts moving after a short delay.

The challenge ramps up quickly: later levels demand longer pipelines, faster slime, and obstacles like pre‑placed sections, one‑way pipes, and reservoirs that need a few seconds to fill. You can replace a pipe before the slime reaches it, but it costs points and adds a brief pause, forcing you to weigh risk versus reward. Bonus rounds after every fourth level swap the gameplay for a sliding‑tile puzzle, rewarding you with passwords that let you jump straight to the next stage.

Scoring is a balance of efficiency and creativity—each pipe the slime traverses adds points, while unused pieces subtract them. Extra bonuses come from exceeding the minimum length, looping the slime through intersections, filling reservoirs, or routing it through special pre‑placed pipes, making every level feel like a fresh, high‑pressure engineering test.

Edited by Maya Carter

Game Screenshots

  • Screenshot 1 of Pipe Dream