When I first heard of the Portal + Bridge Construction mashup I have to admit I was rather indifferent, but after having just been sucked into this brilliant game for the past five straight hours I cannot recommend Bridge Construction Portal highly enough. Whether you are a fan of either individual franchise or just love to solve a good physics-based set of puzzles, this is the game you didn’t know you wanted but cannot live without.
I admit to only dabbling with the original Bridge Constructor games, but my unabashed love for all things Portal sent me scrambling into this review with a fervor usually reserved for a AAA release. I was not disappointed. While I may have only spent an hour with this game had it lacked the Portal license, given the flawless execution, inclusion, and overall atmospheric infusion of Portal flavor I was totally consumed with Bridge Construction Portal from the moment I started to where I tore myself away to write this review. Rest assured; I’ll be back playing by the time you are reading this.
Bridge Construction Portal contains 60 challenging levels that start off simple enough, with basic building parts that don’t change much over the course of the game. What does change are the overall designs of the levels, entry and exit points, hazards, and other Portal trickery to test your creative abilities. Given the absence of time, cost, or material constraints, I found the game one of the more relaxing puzzle experiences of recent memory.
Ellen McLain, the original voice of GLaDOS, reprises her role as the taunting guide throughout the game, but the Portal flavor doesn’t stop there. Even before your first puzzle you’ll need to get hired for the job, which means passing an interview process. If you can avoid the Mr. Burns trapdoor fire pit of rejection prepare to reacquaint yourself with all your favorite Portal trappings including portals, propulsion gel, repulsion gel, companion cubes, sentry turrets, lasers, switches, acid pools, and more. You might want to zoom in and pan around the levels to see all sorts of embedded Portal symbols and imagery including a slice of cake.
In each level you have one simple task; to get your forklift and its driver from the entrance to the exit on each level. As you can imagine this gets pretty tough pretty fast. The first ten or so puzzles took me 5-15 minutes to solve; usually with a bit of testing and trial and error, but puzzles 19 and 20 took me 30+ minutes each to solve, and they only get tougher from there, which is why I took a mental break to write this review.
The game establishes some very basic rules. Levels have orange anchor points where you can either build your bridges and ramps using girder-like pieces or bungee support cables. Early on the levels and puzzles are simple enough that there are likely only one or two solutions, but in later levels you are limited only by your imagination and the rules of physics. Construction pieces have certain stress and load factors to consider, and pieces under stress will glow red. Girders have limited length while the purple support cables can stretch as long as you need, allowing you to create complex webs and suspension systems that would make a structural engineer sweat.
Later in the series of puzzles the game will start throwing other obstacles at you like switches that need to be tripped to open a door or raise a ramp, or you may need to destroy sentry bots so they don’t shoot you on sight, or you might need to enter a portal at a certain velocity in order to fly across a chamber of acid. There are so many variables that keep building on themselves to create these fiendish puzzles, I can only wonder if there is going to be future Steamworks support so we can create our own.
While there is obviously a bit of trial and error involved, the game provides a test system that activates all moving parts within the level and tests your bridge construction to see if it can support its own weight. Again, parts under stress will glow red indicating you need additional support or perhaps a redesign using the fundamental construction rules found in the Good Practices manual. Once your creation can support itself it’s time to send that first forklift across. If it makes it to the exit you are allowed to continue to the next puzzle, but you have not truly won the level until you can send a convoy safely across your design. This is where things get interesting because getting 3, 5, 7, or more forklifts across your bridge creates much greater stress on your design and will often require you to modify your creation.
Therein lies the beauty of Bridge Construction Portal. You have fixed pieces and firm rules in place, putting all the “gameplay” limitations in your own creative abilities. Being able to find that one stress point and attach an extra support cable or create a ramp versus a bridge to span a gap are just a few joys in this open-ended sandbox of creative fun and exploration of physics.
I only have a few minor complaints. The game scores you on each level by totaling your construction costs, but it doesn’t record that cost or create any leaderboard scenario to compete with others. Obviously, you want to solve each level with limited parts or within a certain budget, but the game has no such restrictions given you have unlimited funds and supplies. It would certainly provide a greater incentive to replay past puzzles if you had some sort of previous goal to beat. And in that same line of thinking, it would also be nice to be able to save your bridge design or at least a replay, so you can share your creative genius.
Then again, this is all stuff that could easily be added later, and for only $10 for what I estimate to be a 30-40 hour mind-melting game, Bridge Construction Portal is worth every last cent in its current state of existence. If you love solving puzzles, physics, engineering, or just want to get taunted by GLaDOS for a few days then look no further than Bridge Construction Portal; proof that Portal can make anything better. Now, my mind is racing as to what other games can be genetically spliced and improved with Aperture Science tech. I can’t wait to find out.
