Review: Spilled! is a game about cleaning up pollution, but it may have more to clean up than just that

Spilled! is a little game where you play as a boat equipped with items that will help clean up pollution from the waters. You’ll mostly clean up oil and litter, but you’ll later be able to hose down oil from land or stop fires as well as use a magnet to bring up oil drums to recycle.

As you clean up oil and debris, you’ll deposit it all into a recycling facility and get coins. You can then use those coins to upgrade your boat. Along the way, you’ll encounter animals to save and missing items drifting in the water that you can return to their owners.

This is a game that has been on my radar for well over a year. I loved the story of the solo dev working on this game about a boat while living on her boat. Visually, it’s got beautiful, pixelated imagery and I loved the premise of getting to clean up pollutants from the water. 

Unfortunately, my enjoyment ends there and it breaks my heart. I was so sure that I was going to love this game that I waited to play it until I needed an easy pick-me-up.

Spilled!: There’s no use crying over spilled… controllers?

Everything about the game is lovely, it truly falls apart at the controls. And, since the entire way that you play the game is through this crucial aspect, it drags the score down considerably. And, honestly? I’m used to controls being inverted. So, when I started playing Spilled! I figured I’d just adjust the settings and everything would be yee-haw.

Well, unfortunately, everything was not yee-haw because there was no way to change directional settings aside from flipping how the boat backs up. Seeing as backing up the boat wasn’t my issue, this one minor setting change didn’t help me.

There are four ways to steer this boat and none of them seemed to work out fluidly. Let’s start with the controller because you can steer with both the left and the right thumbstick and the D-Pad. Personally, I bow to the throne of a thumbstick, but this was hands down, 10 out of 10, the worst way to steer. The D-Pad was better simply because I didn’t drift quite so much in one direction, but it still wasn’t great.

Ultimately, playing with the keyboard ended up being the best option and it was still a frustrating experience. I feel like there were two options that could have saved this and neither of them was employed.

Having said this, I will preface the rest of the article by saying that I have been in contact with the dev and we discussed the controls a bit. While she said she couldn’t make any promises, she seemed to be open to seeing what she could do with the suggestions I will detail below.

Lente is genuinely lovely and I dearly hope the controls can be fixed

Firstly – and the one I think that will fix my issues easiest – is why not guide the boat by mouse? This would have taken out all the guesswork. Secondly, adding options in the settings to be able to change which buttons move you in any direction and being able to invert those controls so that everyone can make it work the way they need to may fix things as well.

It’s just an unfortunate situation where controls are a very big part of how this game works. Some games can get away with dodgier controls because they don’t need finesse. But, Spilled! requires you to be able to turn exactly and use a paddle to scoop up debris. It requires exact movements. 

Honestly, because it was so annoying to work with, I focused on upgrading the paddle on the front of my boat the most so that I had a bigger surface area. In addition to being able to upgrade the paddle, you can upgrade the tank to hold more oil, and the motor to move faster. However, moving faster isn’t always great if you’re already having a hard time steering.

Spilled! has a lot of potential. It’s a very straightforward gameplay and I don’t mind simplistic games. I don’t need things to be epic adventures or filled to the brim with tasks. All in all, Spilled! is only about an hour of gameplay across 8 levels. But, each of those levels felt like I was trying to spin plates on a stick.

I had my husband play and he had the same issues as I did

Out of four ways to play this game: keyboard, right thumbstick, left thumbstick, and D-Pad, I felt like none of them worked well. I want to believe that a mouse would help fix the problem, but I’m not sure.
What it all comes down to is that the game is a triumph visually, but it drops the ball when it comes to controls. And it’s immensely unfortunate that that’s the case.

I sincerely hope that there’s something that can be added or changed to improve the fluidity of motion for Spilled!. And while we don’t change scores after our reviews have been published, if the controls get worked out in future updates or by launch on the 26th, you can consider the scores improved above.

If the controls are fixed, the cozy and main score both probably sit at around an 8 each for me. It’s really just the controls, unfortunately.

If you want to try out Spilled!, it will be released on March 26th, 2025, and will be $6.99 $5.99 on Steam. I normally don’t comment on price points, but in this case, I feel like it’s a bit steep for only an hour or so of gameplay – especially with the controls as they are.

If you want to check out a different review that we’ve done, then you can take a gander at Alchemist Shop Simulator.

*Editor’s Note: When we reached out to Lente on 3-18-25, we were informed the price would be $6.99, but upon launch today, 3-26-25, the permanent price has been reduced to $5.99.