We have recently received a review copy of Poly Bridge. I like to play quick games in quiet moments. If you have to wait 30 minutes before the food is cooked or so, short quick games are ideal to play. So, I have had the pleasure to play this bridge builder with a twist. But will it be my next favorite quick game?
When you start Poly Bridge, you get dropped immediately in the tutorial. Here you learn the basics of building a bridge. Plan the road, place the wooden or steel support and hope your bridge is strong enough for the passing cars. A bit further in the tutorial, and you’ll learn how to make drawbridges and how to use the tracing tool. That is a useful tool to quickly make a shape (Line, parabola) according to a pre-drawn line. This definitely speeds up to the boring part of bridge building games. Normally you start with placing to road piece after piece, here you can use the tracing tool. Nice job Dry Cactus!
And then the real game begins. The first few levels are easy, building up your confidence that you can do this. Once you finish a level, you get a nice overview on how your budget, joints stress and material footprint (nice touch that last one). Then you notice the leaderboard, and with that comes my first remark of the game. I’ve noticed that I was in the 15 thousand-ish place. So thanks to my confidence that I could to better, I started tweaking my bridge, lowering the budget, doing whatever I can to get higher. But whatever I try, I could not reach a top 1000 place.
Ok, perhaps I’m not as good as I thought, so I went online to find a solution. Lucky for me, Dry Cactus has a gallery where you can see solutions for every level in the game. This is a nice feature, so I went and looked at my level to see how other people did it. And then it came back; the reason why I hate current leaderboards. The provided solutions were clearly cheated with 0$ budget and unbreakable bridges. I don’t get it, why are developers making leaderboards but don’t care if people cheat to get on number one? And this goes specially for Dry Cactus, because their website has a gallery where you see the cheated solutions!
Clearly, leaderboards don’t work, they didn’t work in Hitman, they don’t work in Poly Bridge. And that’s sad. Games such as Poly Bridge can be really fun if you find that unique tweak that places you in the top 1000. With a leaderboard that is dominated with cheated scores, the game really loses a lot of its potential value.
But ok, we’ll try to ignore the cheatboard, and focus on the fun part of the game. Building bridges. Gradually the game gets more challenging and suddenly you come across a level that is really challenging. It was at this point that I found the tutorial of the game a bit lacking. You can slow down time to see when a part is snapping, you can add a filter that shows you the stress level. That allows you to see which part snaps. But from time to time it is unclear to why a part is snapping. And what you can do to prevent that.
It can become frustrating when you fail a level over and over. Poly Bridge is a game that you play for short periods. You don’t want to spend that short period getting frustrated because the game lacks information. Unless the game is made for engineers, it can use a better tutorial. I really do not want to spend another 5 years in university for an engineer’s degree.
But don’t get me wrong. Poly Bridge might be frustrating at moments, it really is a fun game. The graphics are fun to look at, the animation is done splendidly, the sound is a bit repeating, but I like to listen to podcasts when I play this kind of game.
The levels, man. It’s with the levels that Poly Bridge really shines brighter than its counterparts. They are well thought out and very interesting. The first few levels might be dull, but the further you advance, the crazier they become. You have to build double bridges with a drawbridge. There are levels dedicated to stunt bridges (I loved the one where you have to jump over a balloon!). Sometimes you have to figure out how to get the right car to its location. There are passing boats that can be really challenging especially when it’s on a tight budget.
There are over 100 levels, but you’ll never be able to “finish” the game. You might finish the initial levels, but Poly Bridge has Steam Workshops! That means you have access to an endless amount of levels! And you can make your own levels in the sandbox mode. The sandbox mode is a bit try-and-error, also due to the lack of a tutorial but mostly because there are no limits. Want to make a level with 5 cars jumping over 10 boats with a bridge hanging on balloons? No problem! You are only limited by your creativity.
Even with the cheatboard and the lacking tutorial, I have to admit that Ploy Bridge has found its way to my top 5 quick games. I love the style, the level design and the challenges when building a bridge!
| The good | The Bad |
| – Art style | – Cheatboard |
| – Challenging bridge building | – Lacking tutorial |
| – Sandbox mode | |
| – Steam Workshop |
Final score: 4/5
