Brainpipe

By: Derek Yu

On: January 5th, 2009

Brainpipe is the latest offering from Digital Eel, best known for their Strange Adventures in Infinite Space series of games. It’s a simple, psychedelic tunnel flying game, where the goal is to collect glyphs and avoid obstacles. Every tenth glyph increases your level, and the game ends after level 10.

Using the mouse to control, you can click the left mouse button to slow down briefly. That’s all there is to it, really. The visuals of the game are good: the procedurally-generated walls and ambient music work well together and are quite pleasing to the senses. Unlike similarly trippy games like, say, Space Giraffe, Brainpipe is meant for ease of play, and not outright sensoral violation.

One thing that has to be mentioned here, because it’s (slightly irresponsibly) left out from the game, the game’s website, and the game’s readme: the demo of the game contains two fairly sedate levels (levels 1 and 3 in the full game), after which you are sent to “Coma,” an impossibly fast level with no glyphs in which you are expected to die. Without the warning, it’s pretty easy to assume that this is part of the game, as there’s no real indicator to the otherwise. I’m told the full version of Brainpipe ($15) has a much more reasonably-paced difficulty ramp. (Source: Shadowcat, via the RPS comments)

TIGdb: Entry for Brainpipe