Spilled! - ★★★✮☆
Image: Lente
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Developer: Lente
Publisher: Lente
Release: 26 March 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 5,89€/£4.99/$5.99
A short review today, for a short game: Spilled! is the debut title from Dutch solo-developer Lente, in which players control a small boat cleaning up various environmental hazards. It starts with oil spills, which remain the prevalent issue throughout the game, but expands to patches of plastic bottles, oil barrels at the bottom of the seabed, forest fires, and more.
Spilled! is a game with a fairly obvious social message, backed up by a 10¢ commitment to the incredibly worthy Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) for each Steam purchase. Not all games with something to say are quite so on-the-nose about it (you’ll see that if you take a look at the winners and nominees for GDCA’s Social Impact or BAFTA’s Game Beyond Entertainment awards) but sometimes it’s more impactful for a message to be tackled head-on rather than skirting around the issue.
It’s typically a calm and cosy experience, which allows players time to think about its implications over the course of their one-hour playthrough, while exploring the game’s eight different areas. Those areas all look wonderful: it’s clear a lot of work has gone into the game’s aesthetics during its development, which has resulted in a beautiful – if not occasionally depressing – setting.
If you’re a perfectionist you might struggle a tiny bit with the frustration of trying to clean every inch of the water’s surface, and even if you’re not, given the concept, it doesn’t feel great to leave bits of oil behind, or bottles floating around forevermore. Those bottles in particular have an annoying habit of slipping away from your boat: though perhaps that only goes to show that cleaning up our waters is not the most easy of tasks. The upgrades you collect along the way certainly help, and provide a small amount of progression in an otherwise straightforward game.
If you happen to have an environmentally conscious five-year-old at home (bonus points if it’s one whose current favourite song is a rather annoying piece about various items and which recycling bin they go in), they might also have a new favourite game.
Small hands for a small boat | Image: IndieLoupe.com
It can be easy to forget about things which don’t pop up in our day-to-day lives: you might not be wrong if you accused Spilled! of preaching to the converted – if someone’s not the slightest bit concerned about the environment, they’re probably not going to want to play a game about scooping up oil spills. Perhaps, though, that little reminder might inspire those who do care to take some action where they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Spilled! Is a thought-provoking and attractive debut from Lente, and is awarded ★★★✮☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided by the developer.
