Title: The Bridge
Developer: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Publisher: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Release Date: February 22nd, 2013
Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2,  PC via Steam, Linux, MacOS, Mobile (Android), Amazon Fire TV, Ouya
Price: $6.85 (USD)

Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?

The Bridge is a curious game to play in the modern era. In terms of gameplay, it feels distinctly like a puzzler from the early indie era, fitting right along the likes of 2008’s Braid, and feels significantly antiquated compared to a title like Fez, despite the latter being released a year prior. Yet in terms of aesthetics, it feels shockingly modern. The M. C. Escher stylings of The Bridge seem to represent the deceptive place The Bridge holds in the hierarchy of indie puzzle games, as much as they represent the out-of-the-box style of the puzzles we are meant to solve.

Review

The Bridge very much fits into the genre of puzzle games in which the “story” is simply a loose narrative to justify stringing a sequence of puzzle rooms together, though the thin narrative certainly looks to punch above its weight. We awake under an apple tree as did Isaac Newton in that most famous tale, and we explore our house, which is laden with doors which lead to mysterious impossible worlds, containing puzzles to solve. The plot is advanced via segments of text and portraits rewarded to the player after accomplishing puzzles, which tell the story of a prior occupant of the house, who with the help of a partner, seek to discover new mathematical truths of the universe. Things eventually take a turn for the worse, and we eventually get an idea of whom these collaborators may be…

Though brief, I found the narrative packed with flavour, finding that excellent overlap between the maddening complexity of mathematics, the bizarre unreality of M. C. Escher’s works, and the Lovecraftian idea of forbidden knowledge. The story thrives at the tricenter of these points, and certainly eats it up, a few sentences at a time.

Presentation

The game centers around the idea of unreality, and I do wish the music perhaps could have rose to the occasion. It certainly isn’t unpleasant to the ears, and the brief 22 minute soundtrack does hit notes of curiosity, apprehension, and notes of dread. However nothing quite stood out as memorable for me, and I would have liked music that felt a bit more mind-boggling to be paired with the visuals, which certainly hit the mark.

The game revolves around the work of M.C. Escher, and that leads to some truly striking visuals. Imitating one of humanity’s preeminent abstract artists dooms failure, and nothing in The Bridge ever captured my breath remotely the same way as the work of Escher, but the principals are certainly there, specifically a focus on impossible geometry. It leads to an art style that is certainly memorable, and never boring to look at, even if it never quite gets to the dramatic heights of many of Escher’s works, and at times I wished it would have. Nevertheless, this daring art style makes the game feel very modern, and ahead of the 2013 release date, perhaps fitting in close with today’s more avant garde indie direction.

Gameplay

The goal of each level is simple, one must simply navigate complex levels with impossible geometry, to reach the door. If the door is locked, you must collect the key first. The player can navigate by moving to the left or right, and when reaching the edge of most platforms, rather than fall off, the levels themselves will bend to the will of the player and rotate underneath them. Alternatively, the player can directly control the level itself independent of their character, rotating it and causing the player to fall about the world accordingly. This is the primary means by which you interact with the puzzles, although it is increasingly made difficult as each chapter introduces a new mechanical twist to keep track of, from deadly boulders that will roll about the stage as you manipulate them, to platforms that can invert the stage at will, things get complex rather quickly. 

Bearing in mind of course, these puzzles are taking place in levels designed after M. C. Escher paintings, full of impossible geometry. A loop may seem as though it will bring you to one level only to lead to another, and a wall may serve as a floor or roof at various points. It never gets too intense, and ultimately the game only has a handful of these sort of “impossible geometry tricks” that are simply repeated throughout the levels, and I can’t help but wish the game went a bit farther with this concept. Nevertheless it does add a delightful layer of abstraction to the puzzles, that often leads to needing to carefully observe things from an outside perspective in order to find the solution. 

The puzzle rooms come in clusters of six, and each set of six levels is a chapter. The game has four chapters, amounting to 24 puzzle rooms before “finishing.” At this point a plot twist will occur, opening up 24 new puzzle rooms, which must be fully complete before beating the game. Each of the first four puzzle rooms introduces a new concept, first the Menace (the insta-kill ball), then inversion portals, and lastly veil curtains which can be used to alter gravity. The following four chapters remix the prior four, offering new and unique takes on previous levels, as well as a handful of entirely new levels. I will say, I found the latter four chapters to be significantly easier than the first four, which I found to be odd.

The Bridge is built on a tremendously clever idea. Escher’s impossible worlds yearn to be explored, and setting a puzzle game inside one is a stroke of genius. Manipulating the impossible geometry to your benefit feels fantastic, and provides a satisfying sense of making sense of the senseless. The simple mechanics are pushed to their limits, which is also something I always greatly enjoy in a puzzle game, as you will have to become an absolute master at rotation, inversion, and gravity manipulation in order to truly solve the mystery of your house. 

The pacing is also masterful. The levels are broken into perfect chunks, and the way the game introduces new mechanics is masterful. Each chapter begins by introducing the new mechanic in isolation, before slowly integrating it with previous mechanics, and eventually taking the gloves off to allow something truly mind-bending. The game is also a perfect length, providing a few days of puzzle-solving action without overstaying the welcome. If you enjoy the gameplay, you are likely to roll the credits.

The Bridge’s greatest accomplishment however,is the absolute inversion of that most overused phrase, “ludonarrative dissonance.” In this example, all aspects of the game, the story, gameplay, art style, and game direction, are all united in their attempt to present the player with a sort of interactive M. C. Escher painting. It is rare to see a game in which every aspect of the medium is being tilted towards the same purpose, and it is impressive they pulled it off.

Unfortunately I also found The Bridge to be a stumbling experience in two primary ways. The first is in just how clunky the game feels. Everything feels tremendously slow and delayed, your character takes a while to get moving from a stopped position, and rotation is very dawdily. The slow speed of the game was often agonizing. A number of times, I identified the solution for the puzzle right away, but it took me forever to actually execute the solution because of how maddeningly slow it was to trod my character, rotate the level, trod over, rotate some more, etc. This game truly could have benefited from a fast forward button. 

I also found some of the level design to be rather grating. The Bridge is at its absolute best when it is playing up to the spirit of M.C. Escher’s art, and relying on the player making sense of impossible geometry to solve the day. It is deeply satisfying to have that moment of eureka, and realize that a floor can actually be treated as on a different layer and bypassed if approached from a certain angle. However far too often the game ends up relying on physics manipulation for the puzzles, which is awful. Not only does it go against the pathos of the experience, but the physics are simply not good enough to require fiddly mastery. Some levels require finding the perfect stage tilt to send some objects moving while others stay, while others have you navigating your character through perilous drops. One such stage has you rotating a sliding door to carefully drop at a certain point to stop a Menace ball from rolling back and forth. None of it feels good. The Bridge is not a competent platformer or physics puzzler, and every time it attempts to be one, the puzzles become torturous.

Final Score

Ultimately, I think The Bridge is a fine puzzle game, but it missed an opportunity to be looked upon in the same light as games like Braid and Fez, which it is so clearly inspired by. The focus on making the game feel like an interactable Escher painting is a major strength, and I have an unabiding respect for the committal to reaching that end, both in terms of eye-catching visuals and game design that embraces impossible geometry. Exploring those mechanics is a lot of fun, and the pacing of the game is immaculate. However it has some serious stumbles, including clunky, slow controls and level design that feels at odds with the game itself. The Bridge is no Braid. However, if you are looking for something short and unique, it is certainly worth checking out. 

Featured Image: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild