Bridge Constructor Review

Bridge Constructor is a bridge building game that follows a very old recipe and that tries to revive some of the old times. It does it wonderfully, albeit in a more silly manner.

It might seem odd, but these kind of games have been around for many years. In fact, the first game that focused on building bridges was released back in the year 2000 by a studio called Chronic Logic. The studio was founded after the first game in the series was made. Since then, there have been another four games in that series, but the genre has been ignored for some years now.

There is nothing wrong in using a proven recipe to build your game, and this is what the guys from Headup Games studio actually did. They initially released their Bridge Constructor game on iOS, which made a lot of sense. It became a success, so the developers decided to expand the support to other platforms.

Headup Games put their game in the Steam Greenlight program, the community voted on it, and it's now available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS users. Interestingly enough, the games from Chronic Logic are also available on Steam, but they are much more expensive. In their defense, they are also more complex and much more detailed.

Gameplay

The name of the game says it all. You get to build bridges, but you will be surprised at how difficult this task really is. Building a structure that's barely standing is one thing, but building a bridge that has to support the weight of the traffic is something completely different.

The forces that act on the structure of a bridge are calculated, and the players need to take into consideration a few basic physics rules in order to keep the bridges from collapsing. The tensile strength is displayed whenever the players are not in build mode, and it's easy to see where the bridge is weaker.

There are three types of materials available for construction, which are unlocked as you progress through the game: wood, concrete, and cables. The wood is the cheapest material, but it's also the weakest. Concrete is very powerful and it can't be damaged, but you can only place it in certain points and it costs a lot. Cables are very useful, can be stretched over long distances, but they aren't very strong.

The biggest problem, in every level, is the allocated sum of money. Players have to build their bridge in a certain budget, and this makes things much more difficult. Not only has the bridge to be strong enough to permit traffic in order to advance to a new level, but you have to make it work by using as little building materials as possible.

The game tends to become very difficult in the second half. Some of the anchor points are placed in very strange places, and the solutions are not always intuitive. In fact, some solutions seem to work in one level and not in the another.

Also, there is a matter of consistency. I found some levels to be very difficult, although the one after those seemed very easy. Players will also notice the lack of options and the fact that it looks and feels like a tablet game with better graphics. It's not bad, but it doesn't exactly shine on a high resolution monitor.

Bridge Constructor provides a very useful advice right at the beginning of the game, but it's possible that users will forget it. The advice is: the triangle is your friend. As long as you remember that you will be able to solve most of the puzzles.

The learning curve is very soft and players will not understand very fast what is asked of them. Editing the bridges is easy and it can be done with a click of the mouse, and you will be doing that quite a lot.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion