Puzzle games need to straddle a fine line between being challenging and being frustrating to the point of feeling unfair. Occasionally, titles can get away with landing on the more difficult side of the line if they present an interesting premise that encourages players to force their way through any tough spots, such as a strong narrative or the promise of rewards, be they aesthetic or gameplay related. Unfortunately for The Bridge, released as part of the Xbox Summer Spotlight lineup, it presents a largely frustrating few hours of puzzling, with little else to recommend spending your time slogging through it.
The one benefit that The Bridge does have is its art style, which looks almost as if it’s been pulled from someone’s sketchbook. The main character is quite literally drawn into each level from the frame up, and mistakes (and subsequent rewinds) are indicated by a smudged attempt to erase the character. Much of the game is spent in black and white, but the small portion of bright color further highlights how well the game is illustrated. It’s a shame that the developers chose not to use color on more of the game, as though the black and white scheme does a good job of conveying the sketchbook motif, a dash of color here and there would work well to liven up proceedings.
Most of the puzzles contained within The Bridge are based around forms of visual trickery (a la M.C. Escher) or give off the impressions of being mathematical, even if they’re not. You’ll face vortexes, veils, inverted landscapes and gravitational anomalies during the course of the game’s initial four chapters, before being given the opportunity to enter a mirrored version of the game’s world and work your way through the same environments again. Thankfully, it’s not a complete rehash of the first half of the game, as the mirrored puzzles use some of the later gameplay elements in the mirrored versions of some of the earlier puzzles. However, I often found that some of the gameplay elements weren’t explained very well, if at all, leaving me at a loss as to how to proceed until I’d figured out through a frustrating bout of trial and error just what a particular mechanic was supposed to do.
While early puzzles are often a case of finding your way to the exit door by navigating the environment and avoiding large, ominous looking spheres, later stages contain multiple puzzle segments requiring excellent spatial awareness and a strong command of both timing and controller inputs, as well as the occasional slice of luck. However, I often found that The Bridge almost became a puzzle version of Dark Souls or the like, with what was probably intended as a challenging section instead becoming increasingly frustrating.
With that lack of any real form of narrative encouraging me to work my way through a particularly tough puzzle, there were a number of times I was sorely tempted to put the controller down and walk away, were it not for this review. I often enjoy puzzle games and consider myself fairly adept at them, but The Bridge regularly brought the pain a little too often, and frankly I wouldn’t have had the patience to stick with it if I was playing it for leisure.
I was quite intrigued by The Bridge when I initially saw it among the lineup of Xbox’s Summer Spotlight, and its mixing of imagery and special trickery certainly piqued my interest. Unfortunately, I barely enjoyed my time with the game, and unless you find regular puzzle games too easy and are looking for a seriously advanced challenge, I’d recommend that you avoid The Bridge. In terms of basic gameplay, it works fine, but it felt to me like an experience designed to frustrate rather than challenge, and at the end of the day, they’re called video games, and we’re supposed to enjoy them, right?
