Reviewed on Steam
Price: P165.95 ($4.99 in the US)

If you’ve heard of the Super Mario Brothers, then you likely have some idea of what a platforming game is. In platformers, your character is tasked with getting past obstacles and enemies using his acrobatic abilities to reach the pre-defined end goal of a given level.

Created by Bari Silvestre of Pretentious Game fame, Kill the Plumber subverts the platformer trope by presenting the player with another world where the plumber is the bad guy who has to be stopped at every turn.

While taking a parodic cue from the Super Mario Bros platformers, Kill the Plumber is a skill-based puzzle game that calls itself an anti-platformer to distinguish itself from its inspiration.

Your task is simple: you have to defeat the plumber terrorizing the kingdom by any means necessary.

Kill the Plumber presents prospective players with a number of worlds filled with short scenarios. You have to figure out the capabilities and limitations of the henchman character (or characters) of a given level, then maneuver your henchman to stop the plumber from completing his pre-determined route by killing him, either by a direct touch, or through an attack made by the henchman.

The plumber can defeat the player by reaching the other side of the screen, or killing your henchman – either by stomping on that henchman’s head or hitting the henchman with an attack.

The graphics are colorful and vibrant, evoking its obvious inspirations without entirely infringing upon the original ideas of the Super Mario Bros platforming games. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the sounds and music, as you may want to turn the music of eventually when the repetition of the same tune becomes off-putting.

As for the control scheme, players can take advantage of the keyboard and mouse, or a controller, to play the game. That said, some of the controls don’t feel very tight, probably because the movement options themselves are limited. This can become an issue in certain stages where you need to be moving as soon as the stage loads.

Perhaps the best thing about Kill the Plumber is that because of its inspiration, it provides itself with plenty of room for different types of puzzles, from simple movement and distance measuring puzzles, to avoidance tests where you have to dodge the plumber that is trying to kill you, to stomping puzzles where you maneuver a giant floating block through obstacles to crush the plumber beneath it. The variety of brain teasers is what makes things interesting.

Despite the faults, for a game priced at P165.95 ($4.99 in the US), kids will find themselves with a good couple of hours of challenges, perhaps more if they want to grab all the skills-based achievements. – Rappler.com