Poly Bridge Review (Early Access PC)
Poly Bridge by Dry Cactus is a bridge building simulation Early Access PC game available on Steam in which the player’s objective is to build a bridge stable enough to support multiple types of vehicles while staying under budget and suiting the needs for different factors, such as ships that may need to pass under the bridge. Players can choose from a variety of different materials such as wood, steel, cable, and hydraulic pistons and must take into account the weight of the various vehicles, the max joint stress of different parts of your bridge and your budget for the level.
Gameplay in Poly Bridge is pretty simple and the game is fairly easy to navigate. There is a tutorial available to help get you through getting started, if needed, but I was able to figure things out rather quickly without needing the tutorial. There are also helpful tools, such as the ability to reveal the high and low stress points of your bridge. There is a campaign mode where players must solve puzzle-type levels by building bridges that have the capability of getting vehicles from point A to point B. The levels in campaign mode start off fairly easy and plain but get more difficult and interesting as you go along. I didn’t find any of the levels too difficult, but found myself going back and playing some of the levels multiple times to try out different designs and ideas. There is also a Sandbox mode in which you can create your own levels and have fun trying out any design or idea you can come up with. I found myself spending quite a bit of time in Sandbox mode just playing around and creating levels with anything from simple bridges to multiple suspended bridges. It is a lot of fun coming up with all kinds of crazy bridges and seeing what they are capable of doing.
The visuals in Poly Bridge look nice and are what you would expect in a bridge building simulation game. Building is done using a 2D dotted line map. This is where players select and place the materials they wish to build the bridge out of, along with any other features they would like to add. The rest of the game is in a 3D type environment which shows the cars, land and water features and of course, your bridge. The graphics in this environment work great for the type of game Poly Bridge is. Stunning, life-like visuals aren’t necessary for this type of game and the cartoony style graphics fit the game very well.
I have played a few bridge building games in the past and was pretty skeptical about Poly Bridge before playing it. Being an Early Access game, there are a few minor bugs that I ran into while playing, but they were nothing bad enough to really effect the gameplay and the developers at Dry Cactus have been doing a great job at working on and fixing bugs and responding to the Steam community. It is an addicting game that keeps improving and is well worth the $11.99 on Steam.
Score: 3 out of 5