Pipe Animus is the name, Pipes is the Game

After a chance meeting on Twitter, in which myself and one-man developer FallDeaf, discussed many important, life-changing issues – such as our love for movie marathons and the Alien franchise – Pipe Animus showed up in IGM’s ‘Tell us about your game!’ forum. For a sole developer, it’s ambitious, and plenty nostalgic, too.

Pipe Animus, a PC game aiming for a Spring, 2015 release date, tells the story of Benny, the game’s protagonist and a would-be pipe repairman. Like a large majority of the public in recent days, it’s not exactly what he wanted to do, but passing up a job in a failing economy just isn’t possible. Despite this, he’s good at the job.

Based on this concept, a full-length, Japanese-style RPG bursts forth, appealing to nostalgic fans of old-school JRPGs everywhere. Pipe Animus is said to harbour a unique story and interesting characters, along with different locations to travel and/or battle through. That’s right – you may be a pipe repairman (or an apprentice, anyway), but there’s still going to be enemies, traps and bosses that need conquering. It is a JRPG, after all.

What Pipe Animus does differently to other JRPGs is that the combat is set around the premise of the protagonist’s line of work; pipes. Throughout the game, there will be many opportunities to complete ‘pipe puzzles’, and this same game mechanic is used to combat enemies in real-time. FallDeaf promises that this mechanic is deeply integrated into both the gameplay and the story, and so should be a logical method of fighting in the final game. Judging from the trailer alone, I can see how combat would work, along with the increasing challenge of combats and puzzles.

Benny can also collect items such as tools, ‘Wrenches’, and even ‘Stealth suits’, all of which affect his methods of defeating enemies. In addition, Pipe Animus also has entirely original art and music to coincide with the pipe-puzzling gameplay.

If you’d like to try Pipe Animus for yourself, there’s a demo, and also a Steam Greenlight campaign. FallDeaf suggests that a successful Steam campaign will see the inclusion of achievements in the future, and who doesn’t love those? For all things Pipe Animus, check out the IGM Forums now.