Pipe Fever

Lay the pipe to the drain before the gloop gets there.

PIPE FEVER is a pipe-laying race, played on a tin toy plumbing set left on a plumber's workbench. Every board has a drain. The dispenser hands you one piece at a time and you can't turn it: lay it on your way to the drain, keep it in your pocket, or put it out of the way. When the countdown runs out, the tap opens and the gloop follows your pipes, one note per pipe, in the key of the record spinning in the corner. Get it into the drain before it spills out of an open end.

The rules come from a 1989 classic: pieces you can't turn, a dispenser that decides, a countdown, an end piece to reach. Pipe Fever keeps them and fixes what used to feel unfair: pieces dealt from a fair bag, a pocket for the one you can't use yet, the spot where the gloop will spill marked on the board, and a new try at once.

Join the Discord to post your best invoice, report a bug or share a workshop plan: discord.gg/QUu23Cwbgu

Every pipe counts

• The drain is the till. The shortest way there is the safe one; every pipe past it pays 100 instead of 50, and from level 13 a manhole farther away pays 2,000 instead of the drain's 1,000.
• Bring the gloop through both channels of a cross: that's a loop, +500.
• Pull the lever to rush the gloop, and every pipe after that pays double: a safe gain once the drain is connected, a bet before.
• Close the valve to hold the gloop for a few seconds while you finish the pipe ahead.
• When a level clears, the invoice prints line by line and shows where every point came from.
• Tison, the little boiler whose eyes are two pressure gauges, gets nervous in the countdown, cheers your loops and is horrified when you leak.

Four ways to play

• Arcade: level after level the drain lies farther and the gloop runs faster, and new things arrive: the pocket, the valve, one-way pipes, reservoirs, hatches, manholes and stars. From level 12, the last board of each stage has a metered drain: it stays locked until the way to it is long enough. Two spare gaskets to seal your leaks, one more every four levels, and an access code every four levels to start again there. Every four levels, a pipe rain: each piece falls down its column.
• Contract: nine boards on three sites, each with a quote. Reach each drain with a circuit that pays it: over the counter, what it would bill if you connected it now. Between boards, pick one of three tools out of more than twenty, from copper elbows to dynamite, level them up and fuse two into one. Three inspections stand in the way, from a hurried inspector to a power cut.
• Daily job: today's board, the same for every plumber. Three attempts, and the best one goes on today's leaderboard.
• The Workshop: no clock, no score. Lay any piece anywhere, open the valve and listen to your circuit. Every plan has a code you can share.

At your pace

• Four paces: Classic, Relaxed at 75%, Gentle at 50%, and Zen, where the gloop waits for you. Classic and Relaxed each have their own leaderboard.
• Text up to twice the size, four gloop colours, high contrast, reduced motion, strong sound cues and an undo for a misclick.
• Climb the Arcade, at any pace, to earn the toy's other prints and its printed tin pipes.
• 22 achievements, from your first loop to a board with every free cell full of gloop. The plumber's notebook keeps them.

Controls

Left click lays a piece, right click puts it in your pocket. F opens the tap or rushes the gloop, E closes the valve, Backspace takes back a piece laid less than a second ago, P pauses. The arrow keys and Space play without a mouse, and a gamepad works too.

English and French.

Instruments from the Versilian Community Sample Library (CC0). Sound effects from the Sonniss GDC Game Audio Bundles and 99Sounds. Wood, paper, props and wear from Poly Haven and ambientCG (CC0). Font: Barlow by Jeremy Tribby (SIL Open Font License). Achievement icons by Delapouite, Lorc, Skoll and Carl Olsen, game-icons.net (CC BY 3.0).