Bridge Constructor

Year: 2012
Genre: Puzzle
Website: http://www.bridgeconstructor.com/

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Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 8.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 7/10

Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 4.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 7/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Lee (4/29/2014): I have found that I enjoy physics-related puzzle games like this one. Bridge Constructor is a decently challenging game with a clever difficulty scaling mechanism. After you build a bridge for a given level, you can choose which vehicle(s) to drive over it to test out the bridge’s structural integrity. The options are: a car (Easy difficulty), two small delivery trucks (Medium difficulty), or a bigass tanker truck (Hard difficulty). If your bridge isn't strong enough, then it will crumble and collapse, and the test vehicle will plunge into the river, canyon, or chasm and explode quite spectacularly.
  
  If you have read some of the other entries on this blog, you may have seen the term “Lee-mode,” which we use to refer to a game’s easiest setting. It might surprise you to know that I sent the two delivery trucks over every bridge that I built...and Shane played the game on “Lee-mode” with the car. That could explain part of why my playthrough took twice as long as his. I definitely blew up a shitload of delivery trucks on some of those levels.
  
  I enjoyed that the terrain in each level was different from the others (sometimes only in a subtle way), but those differences often had a large impact upon the approach I would have to take to build a bridge that would support the weight of the delivery trucks.
  
  After completing the game on the Medium difficulty with the delivery trucks, I then ran the tanker truck across each of my bridges to satisfy my curiosity. Some of them actually held, but most of them collapsed. I considered fixing up the remaining bridges enough to beat the game on the Hard difficulty, but I decided to move on to other games instead. I may come back to this one again someday though and see what I can do about making “tanker-ready” bridges.
  
  This game wasn't amazing, but it was entertaining and engaging enough to extract eight hours out of my life over the span of two days. So that's something. As a quick side note, one of my all-time favorite games in the physics puzzle game category is a browser game called Fantastic Contraption. You will likely be seeing a review of that one soon...

• Shane (5/6/2014): I have played several versions of this game; Elefunk, X Construction to name a couple.  I really did like all of them.  The premise is simple.  Build bridges across gaps.  Some version of real physics apply.
  
  A large part of me has the need to get this kind of thing right the first time through.  I get caught up never letting a bridge blow up, often thinking that there might be an achievement for being perfect. There never is though.  That is, so far, the best takeaway from this blogging project.  I can play some games without needing to be a world-class expert.  I am more willing to suck at it because just consuming the game isn't the only reason to play.  Probably the second best part is that I have more motivation to write stuff, but that is neither here or there.
  
  This is a fine entry into the bridge simulator world.  Clean lines, clear instructions, non-cartoony animations and some more granular controls if wanted.  If someone asked me which bridge building sim to play, it wouldn't be hard to recommend this one.  Unless they were on PS3 and hated elephants...because I murdered so many damn elephants in Elefunk...