The Bridge

Genre: Strategy, Indie, Casual (I'd call it a puzzle game)

Developer: Ty Taylor and Mario Castañeda (Some guys in a basement)

Publisher: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild

System: PC via Steam

The Bridge is trying to redefine the genre of "redefining the genre" games. Like many indie titles, it attempts to blow your mind by getting you to think from a different perspective. In this case you play a character in a 2D, black and white, pencil-drawn world likened to the work of M. C. Escher. And like his work you seem to go in an endless circle of worlds that cannot possibly exist in the plane of reality as we know it. In The Bridge you use a magical, unexplained ability to tilt and twirl the world to solve various puzzles that involve keys and giant, scary, evil ball faces of death.

It is quite strange.

Upon starting the game you are immediately dropped into, well, the game*. There is no menu to speak of, just a quick downward pan to a man sitting under a tree.

This game is already attempting to tickle my fancy.

You are quickly taught the controls: right and left arrows tilt the world, A and D move your character back and forth, W walks through doors, Space rewinds time, and Enter forwards the plot or rather starts the next section. We'll talk more about the "plot" in a bit. Holy crap! Could this be any easier? Maybe. But pogo-stick champion and its constant single-button-mashing action has not been invented yet to my knowledge.

Let's talk a bit about the character. He is an older gentleman, an intellectual of sorts, probably a professor - his house does have a library and skewed dimensions, and he is wearing a nice wool vest and a stylish, most likely tweed, suit - and he is going off to do...something. Who knows? Who cares? The developers certainly don't or they would have told you that right from the beginning. They didn't even give him a name! I like to call him "Professor Cryptic" on account of him saying all sorts of mysterious things. Things such as, "Only everything. My fortitude to tread onward...My integrity of wit...and my home." ...What the fuck is that all about?! That doesn't tell me shit about what's going on. How did his world come to be so f-ed up? Why does he have the power to rotate the land to his will? Why does he get drawn into every new level when we all know he just walked through that door? At least some of these problems could have been addressed.

The puzzles are actually quite interesting. I mean, for the first four levels you really are just turning the world around over and over and over and over and over...you get the point. I took to it like rabies to a dog and found myself solving the puzzles rather quickly. They were not much of a challenge and the turning left my brain feeling like mush and wanting to avoid water. But puzzle number five got me stuck in a bit of a loop (forgive the pun). It didn't take me too long to figure out that it was the keys that were the key to this puzzle. They had to move around in spirals while Prof. Cryptic shuffled to keep up with the constantly shifting land. Key number one was a piece of cake, but key number two just sort of made me dizzy. I got it eventually.

Overall, I liked this game and would highly recommend buying it not just because I have a bias toward indie games and puzzlers, and not just because I happen to like M. C. Escher, but simply because it was fun and they don't make it for Macs. Lord it over those punks. The artsy games are for Windows!

Happy Thoughts: The game gets you moving right away. No fuss, no muss.

Sad Thoughts: The plot good do with a good sprucing up and the puzzles were simple (hence the "casual" genre, me thinks)

Bottom Line: If you like puzzlers, which I do, you should consider buying it, 'cuz it's super cheap.

*It should be noted that upon first starting the game, Steam had to make two updates that - after I began timing several minutes in - still took another minute and twelve seconds before it actually loaded the game. I didn't have time to actually play my ten minutes then so I quit the game. Upon trying to start the game for the second time, Steam began a "first time setup" that lasted for several minutes. I should have counted these against the game's full ten minutes, but I felt like being nice and had a little extra time to spare.