Have you ever dreamt of becoming a bridge builder? Perhaps wanting to design bridges that would physically be impossible, or at least ones that would never be approved? Then Poly Bridge is the perfect game for you!
Poly Bridge is a game all about defying the laws of bridge building to build bridges that would be considered completely unsafe. You’ll start off by building simple bridges, ones that you would expect to normally find. This will quickly ramp into crazier and crazier bridges – and I literally do mean ramp. Your vehicles will be driving, jumping, crashing, and doing all sorts of other things as you try and get them across your many bridge creations.
One of the biggest things I should note about Poly Bridge is that it gets difficult very quickly. You will need to have a somewhat decent creative design sense in order to make the designs you need to get through these levels. When you start a level, you’ll be given a set of available materials, a budget, and the order in which the level will play out. Some of these levels will require you to go over specific spots before you make it to the end flag. Overall, these levels will leave you questioning how much of this is even actually possible.
For building materials, what all you have access to will vary from level to level. While you will pretty much always have access to using roads, the other items available to you are what vary and are what will be vital in your bridge being able to stay standing. Wood and steel will be your two primary bridge supports. Wood costs a fair bit less than steel, but you will need to use more of it to cover the same amount of area steel does. There’s also ropes and cables, but through the levels I managed to make it through, I never found a way to effectively use this.
Then there’s pistons. Pistons will quickly become absolutely vital for helping boats, planes, and other types of vehicles through your bridges. Pistons can be set to either expand or contract, and you’ll also eventually be able to make it so certain pistons only work at certain “steps” of the level. Pistons can definitely take a fair bit of experimenting to try and figure out properly, and I’m sure that I never did figure out everything there was to know about them.
When building your bridge you’ll either be able to set everything along a grid, or you’ll be able to do everything in freeform movement. In order to best optimize your bridges you’ll want to be doing both. Another (very) useful optimization tool is holding shift to adjust where joints are placed. I didn’t actually know about doing this for quite some time but as soon as I found out about it, it completely changed how I approached some of the levels.
A cool feature of the game is the ability to share level replays through the various social media networks, or simply through the in-game gallery. One thing I do wish was easier to get to was the gallery to look up some solutions from the levels themselves. You’ll have to keep in mind that the replay only saves ~10 seconds or so of a solution, so if you have a long and complicated one you’ll need to speed it up. Another fairly nice feature is the ability to integrate the game with Twitch. While I never did this myself, you can get solution help from the people in your Twitch chat if you integrate it in.
Poly Bridge is a fun little time killer, though you may find yourself taking frequent breaks with how difficult the game starts to get. I only managed to make it part way through world 3, and having looked at replays of levels beyond that, I can’t even imagine how some of those levels are possible to figure out. With that said, I did enjoy my time playing Poly Bridge and would highly recommend it if you’re looking for something to challenge your brain. It turns out that making bridges that require crazy lifts, jumps, and who knows what else isn’t very easy!
Poly Bridge Review Score
4/5
Poly Bridge is available now on Steam.
I was provided with a copy for free by the PR company for Poly Bridge for review purposes.
