Family Enjoyment With Where’s My Water! (Swampy)

I recently made a rapid survey of the the latest games I had noticed on iPhone, and quoted Beat Sneak Bandit, Forget.Me.Not, Blocks of Pyramid Breaker, and I finished with:

But it is obviously Swampy (iOS, Android) which is the most popular at the moment, especially when played by several players, whatever their ages :-)

This led to a few exchanges from which I will extract the most essential elements here. First of all the title of the game:

It is in fact the name under the game icon which is called Where’s my water!  in English and Jetez-vous à l’eau ! in French. Swampy is the name of the main character, a crocodile...

Then the gameplay:

What you have to do to pass on to the next level is to make some water get to Swampy’s shower. At the beginning it is simple enough. You just have to dig a little through the earth so that water can flow to its destination. Then the gameplay becomes more complex, with hot water, doors, pressure control, movements, etc. It is rather progressive, clever, based on real world physics so that even young children can reach rather complex levels with great pleasure.

I have seen few video games of this type able to reach this quality of family enjoyment. You can play it on your own or with your family, with one other player or more. Previously, I had identified Kiko, a game that had this feature:

I enjoy some games meant to be played individually much more if played with one other player or more. It is the case of the excellent Kiko!

But Where’s My Water! has attracted my interest for another reason too: it contains another story which implies a reversal in the gameplay. Indeed, some levels introduce another character, Cranky, to whom hot water must be conveyed, which changes quite a few elements of the game.

As a matter of fact, I will soon come back to reversals in the gameplay or even reversals of the gameplay concerning other games like Smasheroids or some other topics that I discuss with my students.