Bridgebuilder Game Review

I’m a game junkie and I love SIM games. There is a sense of power you get from controlling the fate of virtual people because it’s typically frowned upon to do it with real people. There is a measure of fun involved in playing god. There isn’t much in the game world that deals with construction. Sure – we have SimCity, but how realistic is that? We also have ThrillVille where we get to build roller coasters and amusement parks. Then again, it’s not all that realistic.

BridgeBuilder Game bridges the gap (forgive the pun) between the real and unreal by offering many levels of play where you have to build a bridge - under budget AND safe for travel. It looks simple, but since it’s incorporated with scientific principles, it makes it pretty difficult to pull off a build that won’t kill unwitting people.

The game doesn’t offer much by way of advanced graphics or heavy metal soundtracks. It offers a real approach to the very real science of building bridges. The graphics are gray with a lot of white segmenting lines. The bridge construction uses these same white lines. Once you are finished with your bridge, you click on “TEST”. The result would be your bridge rendered in 3D. It’s now time to see if your grand design holds up under the weight of a moving train. If it doesn’t, the train crashes thru your bridge.

However, the playability of the BridgeBuilder Game is quite complex and oddly fun. It can even teach you a thing or two about physics.

The game allows you to pretty much do anything you want. You can build economical bridges or expensive ones that look really cool and plausible. You can also build out-of-this-world bridges.

Your creativity is never stunted with this game. You can save your bridges and post them to the designers’ website in order to show off your work.

I don’t have too many complaints about the game as not all games are about sound and graphics but playability. Still, my biggest complaint is the background. It’s boring and gray. It could have been rendered with scenery to make the scenario look cooler. The other issue I have is there is no scrolling save for the mouse toward the screen edges so if you lose point it will take you time to get centered again.

Level 1 is easy enough (or so it seems). If it is your first time playing, then the layout can be a bit confusing. When I first began to fiddle around with it, I was building away from myself – this proved to be poor thinking on my part as you have to build across.

After the first try, I thought Level 1 would be easy – it wasn’t. Several tries later: SUCCESS! I’m looking forward to the more difficult levels.

If you like games that basically make your PC explode with its power, then this game may not be for you. But if you like problem and puzzle solving, then I highly recommend BridgeBuilder Game – it’s TETRIS with bridges.

By: Roberto Bell

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Robert D. Hawes writes articles on topics such as Computer Gme helps Scientists cure Diseases and Id Software talks about the Next Game in the Quake Series Visit BridgeBuilder Game Review.