DM – 8.5/10: At first glance, Droplitz looks incredibly simple. A limited amount of small, multicolored orbs (called “Droplitz”) are released over a period of time, and it is your job to rotate and rearrange sets of pipelines so that the Droplitz can reach the receivers at the bottom of the pipe-field, or connect up with a stray receiver mixed in the middle. PC Gamers, if you're getting flashbacks to the old game Pipe Mania (where you took some pipe pieces and connected them to create a path), it's perfectly normal. Droplitz looks incredibly simple because it is: It's just a re-direction game using pipes. Nothing drastically new.

That doesn't mean you should cast Droplitz aside as yet another forgettable XBLA (or PC/PSN) game. Atlus and Blitz have taken the effortless gameplay mechanic and added a pinch of the “Q Games” style, creating a uniquely soothing experience for players.

In Droplitz, once you've successfully fiddled with enough knobs and made the right connections, the completed path will light up and lock into place. If one of your pipes has a split path, the Droplit will split itself, sending not one but two pieces zooming down different pipes. Build a new path off of your existing one, and you'll get a multiplier. The more multipliers you get, the higher your score will be. Go too long without creating a new path, and all your current successfully-connected tubes will disappear, dropping new unconnected pipes in their places.

Pipes are only a small element in the overall game. In the beginning of Droplitz, you play on a “Disco” board, where everything has a bright blue tinge and groovy lights can be seen in the background while trance music plays. Once you hit a certain point, the board changes to a forest theme, and the trance track that had previously been playing becomes noticeably mellower. But it doesn't stop there: one minute everything is hot pink and “Romance” themed...and the next minute its transformed into a “Winter Wonderland”.

Music plays a large part in the overall experience of the game. No matter what board you play on, the background track starts off simple and soothing, but as you progress through the level, getting better while your multiplier builds, the beat picks up and intensifies. What starts off as talk-radio filler music becomes a pulsating techno-beat that would make Tetsuya Mizaguchi (Rez, Lumines) proud.

The pleasant audio and visuals mask the overall simplicity well, but not well enough. You'll find yourself trying to unlock all four of Droplitz's game modes, assuming that modes like “Zendurance” and “Infection” will introduce some new ideas that add to the game. Unfortunately, these modes do nothing more than alter the gameplay slightly. If there's one thing you can say about Droplitz, it’s that “What you see is what you get”.

Droplitz is one of those games that takes a simple mechanic, and refines it to create something special. For some reason, I've found that simple puzzle gameplay mixed with bright visuals and techno soundtrack can become one of the most soothing experiences you can have on your 360 (or for some, the PC or PS3). Such is the case with Droplitz.

A simple review for a simple game: It's quirky, addicting, and easy to get into.

SCORE: 8.5/10

Pros: Colorful decals and techno music “stimulate the senses”

Cons: There's pipes and....yeah, just pipes.