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STRATEGY
Waterworks! Review: A Medieval Plumbing Sim That Made Me Care About Pipes
I've spent twenty years watching indie developers slap cards onto everything like it's innovation. Then scriptwelder made me genuinely invested in 14th century Polish water infrastructure. I'm as surprised as you are.
Paul
February 24, 2026
7.3
Overall Score
"Waterworks!"
The Moment I Realized This Wasn't Another Card Game
I was three turns in, staring at a district of medieval Grudziądz that desperately needed water, when I realized I'd accidentally positioned my well on the wrong side of the street. My entire pipe network was backwards. The buildings were parched. My Influence meter was dropping. And I was genuinely annoyed at myself for making a spatial planning error in what I'd assumed would be another throwaway deck-builder. That's when Waterworks! stopped being just another card game and became an actual puzzle about medieval infrastructure. The cards aren't the point—they're tools. The real game is optimizing your water distribution network while juggling the ruler's increasingly absurd demands. It's like if Reigns met a city builder and both of them read a historical dissertation on 14th century Polish plumbing. Which sounds terrible on paper but works alarmingly well in practice.
Cards That Actually Mean Something
Here's what Waterworks! understands that most card-based strategy games don't: the cards need to represent something tangible. You're not just playing abstract 'attack' or 'defense' cards. You're laying pipe segments. Positioning workers. Building wells. Each card represents a real component of your water network, and the spatial element matters. Play a pipe card in the wrong orientation and you've just wasted a turn. Position your workers inefficiently and you'll spend three turns fixing what should've taken one. The deck management layer adds genuine strategic depth—do you thin your deck to draw wells more consistently, or keep those fire-fighting cards because blazes are inevitable? I found myself actually planning three turns ahead, which is something I haven't done in a card game since Slay the Spire launched six years ago. The resource economy—collecting materials to develop new technologies—integrates seamlessly rather than feeling tacked on. Everything connects.
This Game Taught Me Medieval History And I Didn't Notice
I learned more about historical water supply operations in four hours with Waterworks! than I did in an entire semester of secondary school history. The genius move here is that scriptwelder doesn't lecture you—the mechanics ARE the history lesson. You build wooden pipe networks because that's what they used. You position wells strategically because water pressure was a real concern. You constantly fight fires because medieval cities burned constantly and water infrastructure was critical for firefighting. As you progress through the eras watching Grudziądz evolve, the technology tree unlocks things that actually existed. It's educational without being tedious, which is a vanishingly rare combination. The game respects your intelligence enough to let you learn through doing rather than reading wiki entries. I came for a card game and left with genuine appreciation for medieval civil engineering. That's worth something.
The Difficulty Curve That Actually Works
Four difficulty levels, and all of them feel properly tuned rather than just multiplying enemy health by 1.5 like lazy developers do. Easy mode lets you learn the systems without pressure. Normal provides genuine challenge. Hard requires optimal play. I haven't touched the fourth difficulty because I value my sanity. The achievement system encourages creative strategies—completing the game in fewer turns, maintaining perfect Influence, that sort of thing. It's the kind of design that makes you want to optimize, to find the perfect build order, to shave two turns off your personal best. I don't usually care about achievements. These ones actually measure meaningful mastery of the systems. The game also scales elegantly as you progress—early turns are simple resource gathering, but by mid-game you're juggling multiple districts, fire emergencies, ruler demands, and technology upgrades simultaneously. It gets genuinely tense without becoming overwhelming.
Why This Almost Hits Great Instead Of Just Good
Waterworks! sits frustratingly close to being an indie gem I'd recommend without qualification. The core concept is brilliant. The execution is solid. But it's missing that final layer of depth that would make it truly replayable beyond achievement hunting. Once you've optimized a strategy that works, subsequent playthroughs feel like executing a known solution rather than exploring new possibilities. The card pool could be twice as large with more situational options. The technology tree could branch more dramatically. The ruler's requests could be more varied and unpredictable. As it stands, you'll get eight to twelve excellent hours out of Waterworks! before you've seen everything it has to offer. Which is still more than most indie games deliver, but I wanted more. When a game is this well-designed, you notice the places where expansion would elevate it from 'very good' to 'essential.' That's almost a compliment.
The Part Where I Praise The Audio
Chris Carlone's soundtrack deserves specific mention because it doesn't try to be epic or memorable—it just creates a pleasant medieval atmosphere that lets you focus on the puzzle in front of you. The music is understated, period-appropriate, and never grating even after hours of play. Most indie developers either slap royalty-free music onto their games or compose something that actively detracts from the experience. This is neither. It's professional work that understands its role is supporting the gameplay, not dominating it. The sound effects are equally competent—satisfying little clinks when you connect pipes, urgent crackling when fires break out, nothing that pulls you out of the strategy layer. For a free itch.io game, the audio production quality is shockingly high. I've played £30 Steam releases with worse soundtracks.
Rating Breakdown
Quality
8
Shockingly polished for an itch.io game—no crashes, clean UI, and it actually teaches you medieval plumbing without feeling like homework.
Innovation
7
Card-based city builders exist, but coupling deck management with actual historical water supply networks is fresher than I've seen since Opus Magnum made me care about alchemy.
Value
9
It's free and consumed four hours of my life before I noticed—that's better value than most £20 Steam releases I've abandoned after thirty minutes.
Gameplay
7
The core loop of drawing cards, laying pipes, and desperately putting out fires kept me playing past midnight despite my better judgment.
Audio/Visual
6
Functional medieval aesthetic with pleasant music by Chris Carlone—won't win awards but doesn't assault your senses like most amateur indie soundtracks.
Replayability
7
Four difficulty modes and ten achievements mean I'll probably boot this up again, which is more than I can say for 90% of games I review.
What Didn't Annoy Me
Genuinely clever integration of deck-building and spatial city planning
Free, polished, and longer than most paid indie games I've reviewed this month
Actually teaches you medieval history through mechanics rather than text dumps
Four difficulty levels that all feel properly balanced instead of arbitrarily inflated
The satisfaction of completing an efficient pipe network rivals any puzzle game
Chris Carlone's soundtrack is better than it has any right to be
What Made Me Sigh
Replayability drops significantly once you've found optimal strategies
Card pool feels slightly too small for the depth the game promises
Technology tree could branch more dramatically to enable different playstyles
The ruler's requests become predictable after your second playthrough
Lacks the randomization that would make each game feel genuinely different
Final Verdict
Waterworks! is the rare itch.io game that plays like it should cost money. scriptwelder built something genuinely clever here—a card-based strategy game where the cards matter spatially, where deck-building serves city-building, where you learn history by osmosis. It's polished, substantial, and free. The fact that it's not quite replayable enough to be a masterpiece almost doesn't matter when the first playthrough is this satisfying. If you've ever enjoyed a city builder, a deck-builder, or just appreciate games that respect your intelligence, download this immediately. You'll spend four hours building medieval water networks and emerge strangely educated. That's more than most games accomplish in forty hours. Play it before scriptwelder realizes they could charge £15 for this and people would pay.
Waterworks!
Genre
Strategy
Developer
scriptwelder
Platform
Windows, Mac, Linux
Release Date
Jan 1, 2020
Rating
7.3
/10
Tags
strategy
card-game
city-builder
historical
resource-management
medieval
deck-building
puzzle
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