Year: 2013
Rating: E
Time Played: 164 minutes / 2.73 hours
Having been a fan of M. C. Escher’s works for some time, I thought a game like The Bridge would be an interesting take on his mind-bending illustrations. Presented in a black-and-white monochrome to match Escher’s illustrations, The Bridge uses rotation and platforming to solve physics-based puzzles. Unfortunately, because of these two gameplay mechanics, this game was a bit more frustrating than I expected. When solutions to puzzles aren’t based on logic as much as they are based on being able to control the physics, it just isn’t fun to play.
I picked up and played The Bridge several times over a few years. Every once in a while, I’d get some distance from it and think that I should try to tackle the next puzzle that stumped me weeks or months ago. And after completing this puzzle and a few more after it, I’d get stuck again and the entire process would repeat. The distance between play sessions is probably what led me to enduring this game as long as I did. I got far enough into the game to realize that the difficulty curve at the end was more about fine control of rotation than figuring out how to solve the puzzle.
Of course, there have been several puzzle games that I “gave up” on and just opened tutorials on how to get to the end. Baba is You and Q.U.B.E. come to mind here.These were tutorials that gave me the “a-ha moment” I needed to get past the puzzles that were stumping me. However, the precision I needed to complete The Bridge led me to give up on it altogether. Watching a video of someone playing through one solution and realizing this took them a solid 10 minutes meant I would not have fun doing it myself.
A visual homage to Escher with some frustrating physics puzzles, I give The Bridge 3.0 stars out of 5.
