Bridging the gap

I wonder if any of you actually get any revision done – by an almost unanimous vote, this week’s review selection is The Bridge Project. A quick introduction to the game’s genre would be as follows: you have a bridge you need to build, and you’ve limited resources. Your bridge will have to stand up to a variey of tests (buses, boats (use pistons) and earthquakes, to name a few). Savvy?

The game uses a simple physics engine and works out the stress and strain caused by all the traffic over your bridge. Uneven or lacklustre construction commonly leads to broken girders, snapped cables and drowned pedestrians. The only thing missing is a sad trombone. I really enjoy this type of game, so I thought it was good to have a new bunch of challenges to go through, yet I wonder why no advancements have been made since the olden days, apart from graphically. Why not spice up the gameplay by allowing you to build in more than two dimensions, to allow massive bridge networks with helter-skelter sections? Production team, I hope you’re reading. Verdict-wise, you’ll get lots of hours of fun out of it, if you’re into spending nights creating a bridge that only spans 100 metres, contains enough steel to make a few Titanics and still collapses when a single car drives over it.

If your interest has been piqued, pick up the demos for the predecessors and give them a go. If you take a break in the middle of a bridge-sesh (as we call them in the Felix Office) and find that 4 hours have passed since you started, I’d look into getting this game. And a therapist.

Next week’s options – Garbage Truck Simulator and Ski Region Simulator. Get your votes in to games.felix@imperial.ac.uk.