1. This game is The Bridge, not to be confused w/ the game, bridge.
2. It is pretty obvious the folks who designed this played Braid and were like, "Yeah, let's make something like that." It's all good though. For what it's worth, I liked the puzzles in this better than in Braid.
3. So, yeah, 2D puzzling is the name of the game here. I'd call it a platformer but you can't jump. You can rotate the game world and walk and that's about it. There is a mechanic that reverses time (you know, like Braid) but it is not used to solve puzzles, just to let you back up and try something again w/o having to restart the whole level.
4. The Bridge has been released on every platform possible. I won't list them all but it's on the Wii U and Ouya in addition to things normal human beings own. This is a game that gets around. It seems like it may have been designed for mobile first as it constantly reminds you to give it a rating and to check out the developers' other game, Tumblestone--which I happen to already own, making it all the more annoying.
5. The hand drawn art here is truly gorgeous and as much of a selling point as the gameplay. The style alone would be enough if it was just straight forward scenes but it matches particularly well w/ the M.C. Esher-style perspective twists that are central to both story and gameplay.
6. As per puzzle game tradition, this starts out w/ just a couple mechanics and gradually expands the gameplay palate as you go. It is a good system and it works.
7. Some of the instructional early puzzles don't really do a good job of explaining what does what. There is one device that does some sort of gravity flipping thing that I never really understood how it worked until the last couple levels in the game--and even then my grip on its exact peculiarities was tenuous.
8. Puzzle design is frankly a bit patchy. Some were spot on, easy to see what your challenges were but tough to figure out the correct solution. After a while though, I noticed you could solve most of them fairly easy by sort of random trial-and-error. I solved at least one puzzle accidentally. Whoops!
9. After playing through all levels, you get the opportunity to play again through tougher alternative versions of the levels.
10. I suppose this is just personal preference but I have a bit of a pet peeve in puzzle games: I hate it when a solution is pretty obvious but then requires really tricky timing to actually execute. The Bridge commits this sin a few times and a lot of the difficulty later on is through having to get everything just so. It's just not my thing.
11. The score works wonderfully here. Somber chamber orchestra pieces add a palpable edge to the ethereal atmosphere.
12. I feel like they put effort into having a cool, quirky story but it just seemed to fall to they wayside beside the rest of the the presentation. Not to spoil everything but it's basically: Isaac Newton and M.C. Esher are friends. Weirdness ensues.
13. Unlike the game, bridge, The Bridge does not offer much in the way of replayability. Once you've solved the puzzles, you've solved them. The game offers some achievement for additional challenge but, really, this is just a pleasant enough of a way to wile away a half dozen hours over a couple days or a weekend and that is good enough for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment