Spilled! Review
Get rid of nasty oil spills and rescue cute animals in cozy, environmentally conscious game Spilled!
Spilled! Credit: Lente
Spilled! is a game about cleaning oil spills on an adorable little boat. Solo developer Lente, who lives on a small boat herself, started working on the game when she paused school in 2022 to turn her hobby into a full-time gig. After using her savings, Lente ran a successful Kickstarter campaign and Patreon to fund the rest of the game. A short experience, Spilled! charms with its relaxing gameplay, detailed pixel art, and environmental conservation message.
There’s no story in Spilled!, aside from your mission, which is made very clear visually. You start at a dock, arriving as other boats putter by, spewing smoke from their stacks. The water is brown and opaque. As you move your small solar-powered boat, you begin picking up oil floating on the surface, and the water slowly begins to turn blue and clear, revealing life beneath the surface. Depositing the oil you pick up in the recycling station earns you money that you can use to upgrade your boat’s speed, oil capacity, and the width of your front oil catcher.
Spilled! Credit: Lente
Gameplay is simple and intuitive. You mostly steer through the water sucking up oil, but soon you’ll also push floating garbage to the recycling station as well. Later, you gain the ability to spray water, which is useful for cleaning oil or extinguishing fires on the land by the waterside, and a crane to pick up sunken oil barrels. It’s easy to get lost in the game as you focus on leaving everything spotless, a phenomenon familiar to players of games like PowerWash Simulator.
There are some bonus objectives, such as rescuing an animal from the oil in each area, and quests to push items to other boats. Otherwise, you’re just puttering around, cleaning up the water and restoring the environment's natural beauty. The only thing you do that could be considered violent is that you must sink an oil tanker late in the game to stop it from going out of control. Aside from that, this beautiful experience helps instill the desire to be mindful of the environment we share with other creatures.
Plants and grass blowing in the wind and stationary boats bobbing in the water give the game warmth and the feeling that the world is alive. Undersea life swims around. Light refraction subtly distorts what you see under the surface as the water moves. There’s a lot of visual variety as you float through the game’s eight biomes. I’m impressed by how well this game makes its low-resolution 3D look like pixel-perfect sprite art. Perhaps some elements could be 2D sprites; if they are, the 2D and 3D elements combine seamlessly.
Spilled! Credit: Lente
Spilled! is a wonderful, calm experience you can finish in under two hours. Its message of environmental consciousness, its relaxing nature, and simple gameplay make it a game that’s easy to recommend to anyone looking for something cozy to play. Lente’s first commercial game is wonderful, and I’m eager to see what she makes next, especially if it looks as good as Spilled!
Spilled! is available now for PC on Steam.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
