Aqueduct Flow Review

Mixing up pipe building and tile sliding, Aqueduct Flow is quite the potent mix for the puzzle aficionado. It'll challenge and occasionally infuriate, but it will always entertain.

The game is a free, ad-supported version of the original title, Aqueduct so bear that in mind before downloading. While the ads are occasionally intrusive, there's always the option to pay to remove them.

Each level of Aqueduct Flow comes down to one very simple aim: to connect two water sources together with a series of pipe tiles. It sounds simple enough but it quickly proves quite challenging. Tiles are often in the completely wrong place, therefore needing to slide along to the correct position to move forward. Aqueduct Flow gets more complicated too, with conveyor belts, warp portals, and locked gates eventually playing a role in the puzzles. No pieces of pipe can be rotated, further adding to the difficulty. During early stages this feels like an advantage given it restricts what can be done with a selection of tiles, but when there's a plentiful supply of them, as well as blocks that can't be moved, things get much trickier.

Fortunately, Aqueduct Flow is an otherwise fairly laid back affair in that it doesn't require players to succeed within a certain number of moves, nor does it rate the player through a series of stars or anything like that. Instead, the focus is purely on beating each stage. It's a simple, yet compelling reason to keep playing.

Aqueduct Flow will test the gray matter well. While it might not be overly exciting to look at, or particularly competitive, for a cerebral challenge it's doing everything right.