The Bridge is a puzzle game that will test your reflexes and fast thinking abilities. It’s a unique narrative concerning the fate of a scientist without students. His strolling about the bizarre mansion compels us to explore with gravity while deceiving our senses with visual illusions. I rapidly fell into the game’s creative trap, but I escaped with the reasonable notion that I was dealing with a prototype, not a finished product.
There was a word, or rather a snoring, at the beginning. The game of The Bridge begins with the main character grunting. As in classic platform games, we see the scientist lying under the apple tree from the side. Then we learn the foundations of the game, tilting the virtual environment sideways with the left and right arrow keys. Newton’s apple finally falls on the main character’s head after multiple attempts, waking him awake. The remaining keys are used to move the scientist left and right as well as left and right. Surprisingly, as befits a titled professor, his protégé is unable to leap. We eventually arrive at the main character’s house and enter via the first door we come across. It turns out that the scientist’s mansion is enormous, and each door leads to a different chamber where we must complete a logical assignment. The purpose of our traveling is always the same: we must reach the next door in the stage in order to go to the next chamber. However, it is not easy because certain escape ways are blocked and must be discovered first. Furthermore, we frequently find enormous stone balls smirking cruelly at us in rooms. We shall perish as soon as we come into contact with them. Fortunately, by pressing the spacebar, we may return to the land of the living.
The scientist’s path is not just obstructed by stone balls. There will also be unexplained vortexes in the chambers that resemble black holes, consuming everything in their path. Each step takes place in a distinct location somewhere between sleep, reality, and the expanse of mathematical eternity. If we are not careful, we may cause our hero or the door key to fly off the screen, rendering the stage impossible to complete. And, while everything sounds and looks wonderful, it is actually simply an incomplete original game. In some scenarios, the main character’s inability to leap or crouch might be frustrating. Even when we are not moving, stone balls can kill, and the hero just brushes them with the tip of his nose. Furthermore, puzzle-style stages, or rather logical obstacles, may often be solved by pure chance rather than a protracted train of cause-and-effect reasoning. This is due to the maps’ too abstract form. Despite its diminutive size, each board was designed to look like a fun fantasy of a psychiatrist. It’s full of optical illusions that make predicting where the ball will travel next, how the key will fall, and where our hero will eventually land impossible. To spice things up, the developers have the option of converting the scientist into his alter ego, a white, spiritual person. Some goods, like opening brilliant doors, can only be taken up when in ethereal form. As if that weren’t enough, we’ll soon come across items that behave in the opposite direction of gravity.
All of this made me assume that halfway through the game, my skull would burst. I finished some sections in a few seconds, while others took me up to half an hour to think about. Unfortunately, the instruction is fairly brief in terms of the words displayed on the screen. The difficulty is just unequal. I finished the game in a few hours and I’m still not sure if it was a fluke or the consequence of nicely folded brain architecture. The squandered potential is essentially the tale being told, which does not exist in the first place. We’re not sure why the scientist’s world is so abstract, why we wander through all the rooms in the house, or who the primary character is. Yes, we occasionally see a canvas on the wall representing our professor and Albert Einstein. We shall occasionally read a brief account of his scientific objectives or the sentiments that run through this brilliant intellect. These premises, however, provide no concrete results.
It would be a big loss if The Bridge’s potential was lost, its charm was lost, and players did not get to know the bizarre, pencil-drawn imagery from the game’s developers’ imaginations. This is enough to get me to play The Bridge, but not enough to suggest it to all players without reservation. I am confident that with a more fascinating narrative and clearer riddles, this tiny sketch may become a piece of art.