‘Poly Bridge’ Early Access Review (PC)
Building a bridge should be easy; it should be just creating a road that goes from point A to B over a unpassable area. Play Poly Bridge though and you’ll find that there is a lot standing in the way of holding a bridge up in the air, and physics suck.
Poly Bridge tends to ease you into the action, you are told how to build a bridge then you see the nice little cute vehicle move over it and you move onto the next level. With each level there is a new added problem, until you find yourself having to handle hydraulics to lift areas of the bridge up to allow passing boats, and even creating ramps so that vehicles can jump instead of having to drive over the water beneath. A little innovation is required at times.
This is fine until the help you were provided with is taken away, then you start to feel stupid as your bridge collapses. The inevitable deaths of the people crossing the bridges can be amusing though, or at least they amused me.
Forming what you see as the perfect way to get over the water only to see the vehicle fail miserable and end up in the water is satisfying, but after the tenth attempt at getting it right, you can’t help but feel it’s time to move on from the level you are stuck on. The ability to create gif animations from your greatest fails is a nice touch, making it easy to share your most epic death scenes.
Poly Bridge is an Early Access Steam game at the moment, and one thing I would like to see added is a better help system for people too stupid enough to have taken in everything you need to be a success (yes, people like me). My bridges don’t have the impressive look that they should – they tend to look like a shambles… But when they do work, you can’t help but feel impressed with yourself!
When you do get it right, the feeling of achievement makes you want to move to the next level and continue playing, but plenty of patience is required. While it may not be the most action packed game, it is a good way to waste some time as you puzzle your way through exactly why your bridge collapses, sometimes even before a vehicle has even touched it.
Still in Early Access, the sandbox nature of Poly Bridge does give it a feeling of completeness, especially with the physics working so well to destroy your bridges. When they do collapse there are a few hints as to why this happened, you can see where they failed. It would be nice though to have a little help as to how to fix it. Maybe a help system that pops up to offer advice. This could come in a future update though I do get the feeling though that this would have to be well balanced… it can’t be made to be too easy now can it?
Poly Bridge is a sandbox physics puzzle game that you would expect to be simple. In the Early Access phase, it is too early to give it a review score, though if I were to I would rate it quite highly as a puzzle game though I’d rate it even higher if it helped me build my bridges better. Well worth a look for fans of these types of games, you may be pleasantly surprised with what it has to offer.
Poly Bridge is available on the PC through Steam Early Access now.
