Q&A

What inspired Pipe Mania’s theme? Did you or any of the Assembly Line team have any real life plumbing experience?

[Laughs] No, not that I’m aware of. I don’t think there was any particular starting point where we said, “Let’s do something plumbing-focused.” No, I think we came at things from a different angle there.

Do you remember what the response from players was like at the time?

It was one of those things where we knew fairly early on that we had something that was better than average, because everyone we showed it to got into it quickly and was enthusiastic about it. It came together really quickly, and whereas some games have you sweating blood and putting a lot of effort into making changes and refinements and so on, Pipe Mania was a pretty quick and easy thing.

Is it a surprise to see the game continue to pop up in each generation, especially now so much time has passed since you conceived it?

I suppose it is. Every now and then someone gets in touch and says, “I would like to do a version of [ Pipe Mania] – is that OK?” I always say yes. In fact, 99 per cent of people don’t actually get in touch. Again, it comes back to the same thing about its simplicity. If I was trying to do a simple and easy-functioning game, or a minigame that slotted inside a bigger game, then I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on it, I wouldn’t want to do anything overcomplicated. Pipe Mania is a good candidate for that sort of thing.