FREE GAMES REVIEW: Aqueducts

Boring water. Boring, boring water.

2.5 stars. Available on Android and iPhone

There are some things in life that are objectively a bad idea but I have to accept, through gritted teeth, that people will carry on with them anyway: burning fossil fuels, factory farming and voting for the Conservative Party.

Then there are things that are less devastating but still seem fundamentally a waste of time. Playing Aqueducts is one of those things.

What cowboy did that, mate? You want to report him.

Aqueducts is like Tom Cruise: well presented, self-assured but very probably evil. Of course, you might like Tom Cruise. You might point out the fact that he’s been in some really good films and that he’s clearly a pretty good actor. It might not bother you at all that he’s a megalomaniac involved in a terrifying cult. It might not concern you at all that brainwashed devotees act as slave labour to him at a remote barbed-wire fenced compound.

If that’s how you feel, go ahead. Play Aqueducts.

Only the teachings of L Ron Hubbard can help you complete Aqueducts.

It’s clearly a well put-together, aesthetically-pleasing game. I could see how players might get a little tingle of joy as they complete another level while nestled on their heated toilet seats.

The artwork is attractive, the animation is seamless, the background music will get lodged in your head and if you’re a highly troubled individual on the edge, it may just stop you quitting your admin job and joining ISIS. Who knows?

This is why I can’t legitimately give it much under 2.5 stars. Nothing that publishing company uaJoyTech has done is particularly wrong, other than the initial idea.

uaJoyTech Meeting

BOSS:
Anybody got any new game ideas?

CREATIVE:
I have. It’s called Aqueducts. You have to flip around jigsaw pieces of an aqueduct until you get the water from one side of a map to the other.

BOSS:
Yes, let’s do that.

Did YOU see the problem with that meeting? Now, let’s run it again and see how it should have proceeded.

BOSS:
Anybody got any new game ideas?

CREATIVE:
It’s called Aqueducts. You have to flip around jigsaw pieces of an aqueduct until you get the water from one side of a map to the other.

BOSS:
WHAT? That’s a TERRIBLE idea. Guards, arrest him!

*Two legionaries run in and drag away CREATIVE to crucifixion. Also, his unlimited lattes card is confiscated*

It certainly didn’t feel epic.

What this review really boils down to is: do you want to help water get from one side of the screen to the other or don’t you?

If no, don’t play this game.

If yes, then you should have at least have the intellectual honesty to answer these questions:

1. Why would aqueduct engineers provide the pieces of aqueduct but no instruction on how to fit them together?
2. Why would they provide excess pieces that aren’t necessary to the job?
3. Why wouldn’t the water be turned off until after the job was completed?
4. Why would they only give you a set number of rotations in which to complete the puzzle?
5. If you’re working in the same company, why would they set you up for possible failure?

Perhaps this game is a secret libertarian satire on government or a talented Brexit-voting indie developers take down of the EU. Though I doubt if Brexit voters have much to do with indie software developers. I imagine most of them spend more time shouting at next door neighbour’s cat.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter to you about the premise. Perhaps you just like a puzzle and the little buzz of delight when you complete a challenge. If so, you might consider heroin and a 10,000-piece puzzle. Or perhaps you could sign up for human testing and give those lab rats a break? What do they get out of it, after all?

As the levels climb, so the challenge becomes greater. As the number of pieces gets larger, soon it’s like trying to organise a drawer full of wires whilst completing a Rubik’s cube between your feet. Does that sound fun? Well?

…………

But it’s all very well me sitting here and slagging off a perfectly good game that many will enjoy from an ostensibly talented bunch of people. So, now it’s my turn. Here are 5 ideas for games I’m going to come up with right here and right now which you can point and laugh at. I’m still confident that they’d be better ideas than Aqueducts. Ready? GO:

1. Cats play badminton
2. A former weather forecaster nursing a grudge manipulates lightning to strike at the bosses who fired him.
3. Pokemon Go Crack Dens Edition
4. Space Hedgehogs (NB: How will you incorporate their spiky backs into space suit designs?)
5. Earthquake Jenga

You see? It wasn’t that hard.

There may be something a little more personal in my seemingly irrational dislike of this game. Just before I was about to submit this “review” I discovered that this is supposed to be set in Ancient Rome. Yes, I know it’s called Aqueducts but they’ve made almost nothing of the Roman connection and I LOVE Ancient Rome. I will play any Ancient Rome game no matter how ill conceived it is, as witnessed here. Why choose the most incredibly boring aspect of Ancient Rome to pay homage?

I would rather play an olive pressing simulator.