The Indie Minute: Poly Bridge
Introducing The Indie Minute, a new short-form blog series about our favorite independent video games. Every few weeks, a member of our staff will write a 300 word-long blog post (a roughly minute-long read) about their current indie game obsession. Each post will highlight a different independent video game, its premise and what about it makes it so excellent. Our goal with this series is simple: to provide insight into the largely unexplored world of independent video games to you, our readers, and to grow as gamers in the process.
This week on The Indie Minute, I’d like to turn your attention to an often overlooked genre in the world of video games: puzzlers. With the Steam Summer Sale come and gone, I’ve found my library chock full of these sleeper hits, including one that continues to satisfy my yearning for engineering and design.
Poly Bridge is a physics-based puzzle game with a simple premise: build a bridge to get your vehicle from one side of a river to the other. The task seems rather unassuming at first. I mean how hard can it be to build a bridge? The game’s tutorial babies you through the concepts of load, triangulation and material…but that’s about as simple as this game gets. Poly Bridge’s sandbox quickly deepens with the introduction of asphalt, wood, rope, steel, and hydraulic materials as well as the addition of different vehicle types, scenarios and budgets…all within one simple 5-minute tutorial.
Source: Dry Cactus
Then, the game turns you loose…and you immediately forget everything you just learned. But you know what? That’s the best part. Poly Bridge is all about discovery; about chance, about failure, and, surprisingly soon after, about sound logic. I’m hours into this game and I still find myself uncovering new and interesting ways to build, both extravagantly and with a budget in mind, all made better by the fact that I’m mostly clueless every step of the way. There is nothing preventing you from building how you want, when you want, and it’s precisely why I keep coming back for more.
Source: Gamespot
Believe me, I didn’t think a game about building bridges would be any fun either, but 5 hours and $11.99 later, I stand, on my budget-friendly suspension bridge, corrected.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more from The Indie Minute!
