As a fan of echochrome and its sequels, as well as Divergent Shift, I was looking forward to playing The Bridge. The puzzles are single-screen and physics-based, and contained within MC Escher-like 2D drawings. These drawings are mesmerizing in themselves; you can stare at them, but with almost every blink, you’ll see something different, or notice another perspective you didn’t see before, or lose and regain that perspective. Players control the protagonist, an un-named, silent, yet somehow very likely character who is literally stuck inside of these puzzles. Meanwhile, not unlike the famous Isaac Newton story, his real self sleeps beneath an apple tree. The goal is to simply navigate the puzzles by using a full 360 degrees of gravitational freedom to get from the starting point to the exit door.
The idea of just having to get from point A to B is about as simple as it can get, but don’t expect a cake-walk from The Bridge. You can expect very accessible controls, however, which include only the following: Triggers & Bumpers are used for shifting gravity left or right, A is used to open a door or Invert, B is for rewinding (think echochrome or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), and the left stick is to move around. Even without any hazards, the puzzles’ captivating nature could be enough to create some intriguing difficulty, but you must also manage the threat of the Menace, or Menace Balls. Some puzzles only have one of these, others have more than one. Touching the Menace will end the game, but you can simply press and hold B to rewind and try again. The Menace are not to be touched, but you do often need them to act as a weight to push down a button. The buttons will unlock a door or disable a vortex, for example. The vortex, introduced in Chapter II, is literally like a black hole. It doesn’t move around the puzzle unlike how a Menace Ball does as you manipulate the direction of gravity, but falling into the vortex usually isn’t a good thing. At times, however, it is, because even while you are in a vortex, you can rotate the puzzle around, i.e., changing the direction of gravity, and cause a Menace Ball to reach one of those buttons to disable the vortex.
Players can also put themselves in a situation whereby they slide off of the puzzle, into oblivion. Additionally, many maps have keys, which are either attached to chains and sway about or are otherwise able to slide about with the changing of gravity. Should you move the puzzle in such a way as to cause the key to slide permanently out of reach, that’s a fail condition as well. There are multiple ways to fail, but, thanks to the rewind function and the enthralling design of the puzzles, I had no fear experimenting. On probably three or four of the twenty-four included puzzles (which do have to be unlocked in order), I managed to stumble into a solution (there are more ways than one to solve at least some of these puzzles). On three other occasions — the puzzles known as The Spiral, The Vortex, and the final puzzle in Chapter IV — I was going nuts for the better part of a half hour before finally breaking down and watching a solution video on Youtube. I hated to do that, but even then, especially in the case of the final puzzle, some work on your part is involved to get it right. My ultimate point being, if you take out the puzzles I “accidentally” solved and the ones that I used a guide on, that leaves the majority of the game that provided me with entertaining puzzles that I was able to logically work my way through. Solving the puzzles in this way is the most triumphant feeling. Interestingly, while the concept of getting to the escape door and the mechanics don’t really change, each puzzle presents a refreshing challenge from one to the next. Furthermore, upon completing the last one, you can go back and play all twenty-four puzzles in Mirrored mode. Even before that point, you can revisit any previously beaten puzzle at your leisure. Besides the distinctive name that each puzzle has, a small picture above the puzzle’s respective door shows you what the puzzle board itself is, so that you can go back to favorites easily without remembering the name.
Earlier I mentioned the vortex gameplay element from Chapter II, but Chapters III and IV also introduce a unique element that adds to the experience. In Chapter III, Inversion is introduced and in my opinion, these puzzles were the finest of the bunch, although they’re all excellent. With Inversion, players can flip the puzzle around and also morph into a sort of silhouette of themselves. This change can only be made at certain markers; once in place, a audio-visual cue is given and you just press A to activate the inversion (and A again if you want to flip right back). When inverted, your character’s color changes from gray to white. Some puzzles have gray or white keys and doors, meaning you have to be that color to be able to use either. So you might be able to only reach the key as gray, but have to invert back to reach the door as white. It’s a fun concept that adds more critical thinking to the mix.
The most confusing element comes in Chapter IV though — The Veil. With The Veil, when you take the protagonist to a specially marked area, and thus enter The Veil, you become impervious to gravity changes, so long as you don’t walk out the marked area. However, the object that is specially marked — usually a Menace Ball or a sliding board used as a bridge and a lid, basically — their gravity is controlled, or effected, by how you change it while in the Veil. This makes for some odd situations whereby as you, for example, are beginning to head “down,” as in the most traditional understanding of gravity, the Ball or the board might be sliding to the left, perpendicular to you. It’s hard to explain, and I have yet to get completely comfortable with the idea, but it does add another quality layer to the gameplay of The Bridge.
With that, let’s get to the summary…