Ladies and gentlemen, a new high-quality physics puzzle game has arrived on the App Store. With the same amount of polish and approachability as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, Where’s My Water delivers a series of physics puzzles that are easy to start playing, but hard to stop. Nearly everything about this game makes you want to keep going.
For one thing, the premise is appealingly ridiculous. Your role in Where’s My Water is to deliver water to a cartoon alligator who’s waiting for his shower to turn on. The alligator’s bathroom is underground, so your job is to clear away dirt so a sufficient amount of water can flow into a pipe connected to the shower. It’s an absurd premise, and it appeals to gamers of all ages.
To clear a path through the dirt, you draw on the screen. The water follows the rules of physics, so gravity makes it flow into any opening it would in the real world. If the waterfalls a long distance, it’ll pick up speed and splash around or shoot off ramps. Your iOS device’s touchscreen is ideal for a game like this, and with a few unremarkable exceptions, the controls work terrifically here.
The game comes with 80 levels that are divided into four-level packs (with more on the way). Each level has three rubber duckies you can collect by touching them with water. Some levels even contain hidden objects buried in the dirt. Finding these puts them in your trophy collection.
But of course, it’s not all simple splashing and digging. The levels are full of hazards you’ll have to deal with if you want to deliver the water to the gator’s shower pipe. There are algae that slurp up any water that touches it. There’s a purple liquid that poisons your water supply but also burns up algae. There’s green acid that eats through dirt, and bombs that blow open big holes.
You’ll also find less menacing items in the levels, like faucets that let you control the flow of water and switches that open up new areas in the levels. There’s a lot going on in this game, but the new elements are introduced gradually, so it never feels overwhelming. The difficulty ramps up at a steady pace, too, and the game rarely feels too easy or difficult. Really, if you like physics puzzle games, there’s not much to complain about here.
Where’s My Water is one of those wonderful casual games that’s perfectly suited for the iPhone and iPad. It appeals to gamers of all ages and offers plenty of content for very little money. We expect Where’s My Water to stick around the list of top-selling games for a while to come. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some duckies to collect.