Nintendo Okie

Written by: Shadoe42

Howdy:

• Fun gameplay

See ya:

• No basic instructions in game
• Sometimes not clear why game ended

Heron: Steam Machine is a pipe dream type of game. You rotate pieces of a pipe to make a flow path in order to keep the pressure in two tanks low so that they do not explode. Exploding is bad.

There are two control schemes for the game. One uses the motion control aspects of the Wii Remote and the other uses the D-pad and the 1 and 2 buttons.  The Wii Remote motion control scheme has you point at the piece of pipe you wish to rotate and click then tilt left or right to rotate then click again to lock it into place.  The other control method is to move the cursor around the screen with the D-pad and rotate with the 1 or 2 button; this was the control method I preferred as I found it faster.

The screen is set up in the standard square grid. There is a piece of pipe in each grid square. On each side of the screen are color coded exit pieces. The object is to connect the pipes from one exit to the other in matching colors. For example, connect yellow to yellow. There can be up to four colors that I saw, red, yellow, blue, and green. There is a water tank and pressure gauge on each side of the screen.  The pressure gauge rises the longer you do not connect the pipe streams. If the gauge reaches the top the tank will blow up and game will end.  As you connect each stream the pipe pieces in that stream explode and new pieces fall in like gems Bejeweled style. In addition you could gain or loose exit pieces and sometimes special pipe pieces with show up that do different things, like give you a score bonus, or  blow up sections to let new sections fall into place, etc.

All in all I found Steam Machine to be a fun little game once I figured out what was going on. The game has no in game instruction screen that could find other than one that shows the two control schemes. A basic instruction screen would help as would a screen showing what the various special blocks do, instead of just being available thru the shop channel

If you like Pipe Dream type games or puzzle games in general then you will most likely find Heron: Steam Machine an enjoyable game, and it is priced inexpensively on WiiWare so you really can’t miss.

Final Score: 4/5 Above Average  

A review copy of this game was provided byTriangle Studios.