by Alex Prestia.
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead, out on Switch, Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, iOS, and Android November 19th is a very special kind of puzzle game for a very certain type of person.
For some people this game will remind them of halcyon days where they made balsa wood bridges under the watchful eyes of their favorite high-school teacher.
For other people this game is going to feel like homework given by an overzealous physics instructor.
Unluckily, I am one of the latter people. But for the sake of writing a fair review of BC: TWD that might be a good thing.
Lets talk about what Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead is.
BC: TWD is a game where you make bridges. Simple enough premise.
These bridges require cables, carefully arranged spans, and an understanding of weight distribution. Triangles are more important in this game than in anything else I’ve played except for the Zelda series.
Each level presents a new bridge related challenge set in the Walking Dead Universe. Some of those will require you to build a bridge strong enough for cars to pass over. Other challenges will ask you to build bridges that trigger traps that will wipe out a group of Walkers, often in creative or hilarious ways.
One of my favorite moments in the game was when I lured a group of walkers to the edge of a bridge I had made. Once they were there a car came hurtling off of a ramp I had built, and directly onto the diseased horde. It was good, clean physics-based fun.
Apart from building bridges, you are also tasked with commanding survivors to help trigger traps, throw grenades, and shoot the second most famous crossbow in television history.
(All-time TV Crossbow Power Rankings: #1- King Joffrey’s Game of Thrones Prostitute Killer. Followed closely by #2- Daryl from The Walking Dead’s “This Machine Kills Walkers”. Fight me in the comments if you disagree.)
Commanding the survivors around mixes things up, and adds a nice secondary layer of puzzles. Not only are you going to be building a bridge based off of real physics, but also commanding units to carry out simple orders and complete objectives. At its best, levels become Rube-goldbergesque mixes of complicated bridges and grenade explosions.
The game itself does a great job of its core building bridges gameplay. There’s a real feeling of satisfaction when you finally do design a sturdy enough bridge to get the job done.
Conversely, watching an RV fly off a cliff, and then catch on fire because of glaring design errors on my end (which I blame on my education and upbringing, rather than on my own shortcomings. Naturally.) is oddly delightful in and of itself.
It’s a good thing those failures are sort of fun though, because Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead does not hold your hand.
Tutorials are pretty sparse, and while there is a manual that sort of explains how bridges work, the game seems to expect you to already know the general gist of bridge-based physics.
While I respect that this game isn’t trying to be Bridges for Babies 2020, it did give me the feeling that I missed a very important physics class back when I was goofing my way through high school.
But I was determined to beat it. And this is where I recommend you buy the game on Switch or mobile device, because my solution to not knowing how to build bridges was to find guys who could. And where do the smartest people hang out? Bars.
I took Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead with me to my local watering hole and sought out the help of people who are smarter than me.
This is where I had the most fun with the game. We talked shit, discussed how to solve the puzzles, and made great progress until we were suddenly unable to grasp the problems due to liquid circumstance.
A friend of mine would even resort to drawing bridge spans on napkins when I was being particularly thickheaded.
One question kept getting asked though: Why the Walking Dead?
It’s a good question. Of all the media franchises for Bridge Constructor to partner with, The Walking Dead doesn’t immediately spring to mind as the most obvious.
While I’m not sure a Walking Dead fan will immediately like this game just because of the branding, I can say that bridge aficionados will enjoy the game more because of the Walking Dead elements.
The two are a surprisingly good mix. The Walking Dead is a franchise where creative solutions are much more important than mindlessly taking on horde after horde. On the Bridge Constructor end of the deal, having more uses for bridges than just carrying cars from one riverbank to another inspired all sorts of cool challenges.
So while it is odd at face value, The Walking Dead and Bridge Constructor make a really good pair. Like Pokemon and Tekken, or ranch dressing and pizza.
Overall it’s a very well constructed game. Which is a pretty obvious pun, but I do stand by it.
The puzzles are challenging, new elements are constantly added that ensure the gameplay doesn’t grow stale, and the development team has clearly refined and refined the bridge building mechanics to the point where they are nearly flawlessly executed.
So does this mean that I recommend Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead to everyone? Nah.
Although taking it with you to a bar will allow you to use charisma to beat it instead of intelligence, this game really is appealing just to people with a certain kind of mind.
If you’re one of those bright people and it sounds like something you’d like, I can assure you that it does what it sets out to do perfectly. And if you’re not, hey, let’s just be glad there are people out there who find this stuff fun.
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