Spilled! - PC Review

The image is in a bright, colourful cartoon style. It depicts two small grassy island either side of a river with a red and white boat sailing down it. The left island has some logs, solar panels, a forest with a red leafed tree at the front. The right island has buildings with solar panels on them and wind turbines around them. In the middle, the boat is scooping trash, revealing clean water behind the boat’s trail. In the river are fish and turtles, and rocks with a pink starfish and a green little frog sat on it. The text at the top of the image reads Spilled! In black bubble writing with a white outline.

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Hitting your local docks is a cute, indie game about cleaning the environment. It’s called Spilled! and is soon to release on Steam. The first project from developer Lente, the project took 2 years to complete. All whilst living on their own boat. Yes, really.

Simple, cosy, and clean, what more could you want?

The game centres around cleaning up small lakes and upgrading your boat, so let’s see what’s in store for me.

A small red boat in a large lake. Below are a couple of humpback whales. To the right are three green boats each with a sign and boat part. The signs are in a faint red and have numbers as to show the price. More below is an island with two wind turbines and a statue of a penguin. — Having a whale of a time

Gameplay

The gameplay in Spilled! is really simple and doesn’t aim to be anything else which is part of its appeal. You start off by cleaning up oil spills via vacuum. As gameplay progresses the oil spills increase in size as well as having different kinds of waste appearing. For example oil drums and bottles scattered around in the lake. You’ll collect coins as you clean too. Which is a nice reward for recycling! These coins go towards upgrades for the boat. The more upgrades the more you can clean up aside oil as well as improving your speed. A needed skill when the world is on fire! Each upgrade does cost than its predecessor so remember to keep recycling.

The boat is pushing some bottles to a nearby recycling plant. There are large pools of oil in the water as well as more bottles. — Look at all this mess!

There’re some cute little animals with funny names to collect as well. 16 different ones to be exact. They don’t really add anything but I found them a fun little extra. After clearing up a certain amount, a new area will unlock. That’s it, rinse and repeat. Spilled! has 8 biomes to clean in all and you’re able to return to them from the main menu. But this will reset your save.

Graphics & Audio

Spilled! is quaint and cosy in every way. The pixel art style is charming while environmental textures still have some solid detailing. The animations are both smooth and add a little life to the serene environment, such as the gentle sway of grass and flowers in the breeze, or sea life swimming idly in the waters below. Speaking of, I loved seeing all the coral and sea life beneath clean water. Colours, while vivid, aren’t too in your face and maintain a soft cheerfulness to it.

The music is calm and soft, and even the sound effects all around are gentle. I even love the cute little animals you rescue and the varied mix of adorable, strangely sophisticated and funny pun names.

The boat sprays water up on a snowy hill top help remove oil. The oil then falls into the water to be collected. — Don’t forget to clean the hills.

Final Thoughts

At only thirty-minutes of gameplay, Spilled! was honestly a nice cosy game to wind-down with. There is no doubt this game is visually high quality. The calming music and soft, dare I say ASMR sound effects made the entire game really enjoyable.

I do however have two small quality of life suggestions. The first being to improve the scoopers so that they hold bottles a little better. The second would be to add a cute little horn for the boat. Honestly, even without these I would have given this game our highest award but it felt just that little bit too short. I wish it had a little more play-time!

For just being a charming and fun little game Spilled! gets the Thumb Culture Gold Award

Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.

About Author

Kyle McGrath

I’ve enjoyed video games for as long as I remember and I don’t think there isn’t a game I wouldn’t play. For reviews, I try my best to make them simple and easy to understand. With so many games released daily, I attempt to play them all.

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Spilled! – PC Review