Poly Bridge is bridge building simulator with a lot of charm. Your goal is to get vehicles from one side of an area to another by using the materials provided to you. The game gets you up to speed quickly by providing a tutorial that explains the different types of bridges you can build and how they are useful to you. While it has a smooth transitional difficulty curve, it would have been more useful to provide an explanation of certain elements just as you are getting to them. Often you’ll find yourself going back to the tutorial to remind yourself how to construct a hydraulic bridge or how ropes work because your experimentation is in vain.
It isn’t just building simple structures to watch cars go by since everything feels like a cog in a larger puzzle. Each vehicle has a different body build and weight, meaning longer cars may not be able to drive up steep slopes or the integrity of your structure might need to be reinforced with girders. You may have to consider things such as accounting for large ships passing underneath or contending with a sheer lack of materials, forcing you to get creative with your designs. For what looks like a mere time waster actually has a surprising amount of depth, the type that will have you scratching your head while beaming all the while.
While each puzzle could conceivably be solved rather quickly, you’ll more often than not find yourself tinkering with your blueprints to try and maximize your building materials to undercut the budget the game wants you to meet in order to get a better score. A lot of trial and error is involved, so be wary of that going in, however those who aren’t deterred by constant failure will find it supremely satisfying when they overcome a challenge and watch everything flow like it should.
This being Switch, you can play in both tabletop and handheld mode, although the ease of use with the touch controls makes it preferable on a small screen. The point-and-drag design is intuitive and there’s a wealth of options such as undoing your last move or copy-and-pasting your blueprints. It’s grid-based for precision, so you can use simple geometry to get your bridge just right. On the big screen, Poly Bridge requires you use a Joy-Con as a pointer, but it often needs to be recalibrated and even when it is on, it still feels a little imprecise.
The game has over a hundred stages on offer, spanning many different areas and design philosophies. As its name would indicate, there’s a neat and simple polygonal aesthetic that’s punctuated by a mellow, folkish soundtrack that fits the pace of the game. The game offers a wonderful difficulty curve, often building upon itself in complexity but never surprising the player with something too over the top. If you aren’t able to surmount a stage, you can merely skip to the next one with no penalty, a nice touch for those looking see everything the game has on offer without being penalized for being unable to solve a certain puzzle. To top it off there’s a sandbox mode that gives you free reign on everything, letting you build whatever you want within the confines of the game without the need to futz with completing levels.
Conclusion
Poly Bridge is a great game because it can both be played in small chunks in between longer gaming sessions or for a quick pick-up-and-play experience but can also be the type of experience you can sink a lot of time and effort into and not get bored with. With an easy to use control scheme (so long as you stick to the touch screen), an appealing presentation and open-ended solutions, Poly Bridge is a game worth coming back to again and again.
Comments 36
I actually kinda like the look, not my kind if game though.
Kind of reminds me of Armadillo Run.
Hey, publishers looking for any half-decent old game to shovel onto the Switch: I would definitely fscking buy Armadillo Run.
This looks awesome, what a nice surprise gonna give this a go.
Looking forward to this one. When I have a bit more cash I'll be picking it up. I love physics games. Human: Fall Flat was a blast with my girlfriend.
Here's another game to take off of my Steam wishlist and add to my eShop wishlist.
This looks like the perfect game for my kids for $15. Knowing it has touchscreen will be perfect for our 24 hours of car ride next week. Both my kids do a lot of robotics and tech stuff at school, so it's edutainment. 😆
"Poly Bridge is bridge building simulator with a lot of charm"
Four words into the first sentence and it's already clear this guy doesn't proofread his article.
Also, this is $15?! It appears to do absolutely nothing to differentiate itself from dozens of games that had the exact same premise and structure and still gets an 8, which translates to "very good"? Holy moly.
Yeah, $15 sounds a bit steep for this game. This would be low on my list of games that are available for that much. Knock it down to $10, then maybe I'd consider it.
@rjejr I buying this for the same reason you are. Both my sons have done bridge building in school and have enjoyed it.
I feel like I’d get bored with this pretty quickly. Can’t you get a mobile version for free anyway?
Should I just wait for the portal based bridge builder?
That's all I can think since it was announced.
Saying this is kind of becoming a Switch meme, but I am truly starting to feel overwhelmed with new Switch games. I mean, I really want to play this game, but I have so many other games to play (including Splatoon which keeps getting better), and I'm afraid I'll forget about it. My eShop wishlist is kinda becoming just a big subset of the eShop.
@dkxcalibur Have your sons played World of Goo? It's 1 of the very few games I've purchased more than once.
@SimplyCinnamon53 the app store version is $8 and there's no android version. The game has 100+ levels and from what i've seen the later levels are quite challenging
It sounds like the docked controls are poorly implemented? I would have liked more than one sentence on this (albeit a run-on sentence)...
@rjejr Yes we have played it, but only for a short amount of time.
Alternate headline sub-heading: "A Bridge On The River Kawaii."
Good concept but it's horribly overpriced for what it is. $15 for a mobile game that is practically free on phones.
People shouldn't be harping on about the price, it's $11.99 on Steam, and this conversion has some added touches that easily warrant the extra 3 bucks.
And it wasn't even a mobile game in the first place, so that's also nonsense: I already had it on PC well over a year ago, and it has a LOT of content. If this version is more or less exactly like its PC counterpart, then you'll get well over 100 levels to play with, and besides that, there's also a sandbox which allows you to make and share your own creations. On the Switch that might only be local, but could still provide for a lot of family fun time.
@rjejr If you and your kids liked World of Goo, then I'd almost dare to take a bet that you're gonna LOVE this one.
And it's SO much more diverse than World of Goo, so the only similarity is the building part, and of course gravity, but other than that, there's much more to it, what with all the different materials and tech you need to use to build all the different types of bridges. And there's also more than enough replay value, if you like revisiting levels to optimize builds to up your high score.
I do agree with the review in respect to the complexity of some of the builds, though, which might indeed prompt you or even necessitate you to go back to the tutorial for a quick reminder of "how that part was supposed to be used again", unless you have a photographic memory...
Other than that, I can easily recommend this title to anyone that likes to build or likes gravity puzzles.
EDIT:
Forgot to mention that in the PC version, there's also hundreds of extra levels available for download. Here's hoping that this option is going to be included in the Switch version.
I had been looking forward to this game since it was first announced and purchased it as soon as it was available. Within the first few minutes however I found the game all but unplayable using the motion sensors.
It is baffling that the game does not support the pro control for moving the curser around. I hope that the developers may release a future patch so I can fully enjoy the game. However as it is right now the game is basically broken.
@ThanosReXXX unless you have a photographic memory...
I think my son is pretty close, he'll enjoy this for sure. And in today's eShop market $15 is pretty good. 5 years ago I would have said anything digital over $5 was a non-starter, but nearly everything that would have been $10 5 years ago is $20 now. And the $20 games are $40. (My kid keeps wanting Kerbal Space Program, which should be releasing on Wii U any minute now, but $40 is too much for him. He may want it on sale for $20 today) I'm willing to pay the extra $3 for touch screen controls for my kids to play off the tv in the back seat of the car.
I've seen several people mention the sharing of levels but have yet to see an official statement yeah or nay.
This looked really neat when I watched someone streaming the PC version. I might give it a go.
I really like this game but am having a major issue! I'm on 1-14 and can't get the split joint to work. When I do it in the tutorial, no problem it works fine. When I make literally the same structure on the level and double tap the joint that needs to be pulled apart, nothing happens. Idk what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone help?
@rjejr The developers of Kerbal Space Program, Squad, have been bought up by Sony a few months ago. I believe all Nintendo versions of Kerbal Space Program are cancelled now. I mean, there is a low chance to still get Kerbal Space Program on Switch (as Sony is likely going to publish Tiny Metal on Switch) but I wouldn't count on it.
@SKTTR I didn't know about Sony buying them, but I wasn't really holding out hope for the game on Wii U. It just bothers me when companies make a big official announcement about a game coming out on a system then just never bother to mention they are canceling it, just hoping people forget. If you are going to cancel a game, tell people.
I could see Sony putting Kerbal on Switch, MS put Minecraft on everything. Sony isn't selling PS4 or PS5 on the back of Kerbal Space Program.
@bboy2970 The same thing happened to me. The double-tap function doesn't seem to work that well. I got past it by switching to the Joy-Con and double-clicking on it, which worked on the first try.
@holygeez03 Yeah, in retrospect I kind of wish I had bought this for PC instead. I prefer playing games on the big TV, but the controls are pretty bad. It's definitely meant to be a touchscreen game. When docked, you control the on-screen mouse pointer via the Joy Con's motion controls.
This would've worked OK with a Wiimote since it had the sensor for pointing at the screen, but it's really awkward with just motion controls. It'd actually be way better if they must made it so you could move the mouse with the control stick. It also doesn't support the Pro Controller, just touch or a single detached Joy Con.
@DanElectrode Thanks for the additional info... I will be skipping this on Switch for sure.
@DanElectrode: thanks a lot man! It worked fine with the pointer (I mean to do the split joint. Trying to controller the whole thing that way is aggregating). I really hope the devs fix this but it will work in a pinch, at least enough to beat those levels. I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the review
@bboy2970 Yeah, I really hope they release an update so that you can just use the Pro Controller and move the mouse with the control stick, but I'm not holding my breath.
@rjejr Well, sharing levels is a staple of the original version on PC, so to take that out would be like ripping out a large part of the longevity of the game (the other part of the longevity being the replaying of levels to get that perfect score, but that'll only last so long, unless you're really bad at it).
That's why I think it will be in the Switch version as well, albeit with the disclaimer that (knowing the Switch and Nintendo) it will probably not be online, so only local level sharing. But even that semi-similar experience could be a heck of a lot of fun.
Just imagine sharing levels with your kids, and each of you coming up with insane constructions that'll keep you all busy for days on end...
@DanElectrode It was first and foremost a PC game, so it was actually always meant to be mouse controlled, not meant to be a touch screen game.
But in all seriousness, it is unfortunate to hear that the translation to the Switch hasn't been that successful in that regard. Here's hoping that they do indeed release some kind of patch to fix that, or at the very least add another control option.
Here's my update. I wish I would have skipped on this game. I can't believe it received an 8! I think a fairer score would have been a 5 or 6. The controls being terrible is a real thing. The motion controls don't work well. They are very frustrating to use. Using touch screen is the best way to play this game but one of the tools to add a working joint into hydraulic bridges is broken. It makes me question how much of each game the reviewers actually play before assigning a score. You encounter this feature being broken very early in the game! I too managed to work around this by docking it and double clicking with the joy con but the second hydraulic I built did not work with this method either! I read on another site that the developers are working on this specific problem now, but I would highly recommend skipping this game until it's fixed. It's sad because it seems to be fun.
Anyone know if it's been fixed or if the update has been made available?
I read on the developer's twitter feed that they submitted the fix.
Nintendo World Report gave this game 5 out of 10 because the controls are broken. I’m not sure how Nintendo Life failed to note the broken controls.
To Leon and several others... I am glad to see I am no longer the only one commenting on the broken controls for the Switch. At first it made me wonder if I just sucked that much using them, but now it does seem it’s others too.
On the reviews.. I also wonder how many are just copying reviews from the PC version, and if anyone actually PLAYED the switch version. I honestly cannot see anyone playing it and not having problems with the motion control
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