Game Reviews

Bridgy Jones

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iOS
| Bridgy Jones
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Bridgy Jones
|
iOS
| Bridgy Jones

Bridgy Jones is a game about iteration.

In each stage you must construct a bridge over gaps and gorges by snapping together railway tracks and wooden support beams like digital Lego bits. Then, you drive a train over it and hope your bridge holds.

Early designs will inevitably bend and bow beneath the weight of your locomotive, before finally giving in, collapsing in on themselves and spilling your cargo in a huge comedy prat fall.

But after some bug-fixing and problem-solving you'll have a sturdy construction that doesn't even flinch as you trundle over it. It's a wholly satisfying outcome, every single time.

Cross that bridge when we come to it

This process can highlight the fact that Bridgy Jones doesn't teach you much about support and structure, and leaves you to figure that stuff out by yourself.

So when a beam suddenly disintegrates and snaps, it can be hard to know how to stop that happening next time. And you'll only learn about trusses and cable-stayed structures through trial and error.

But it's easy to make changes - however small and seemingly insignificant - and then try them out, thanks to the game's immediate and intuitive editor.

The bridge builder lets you fit tracks, beams, and eventually ropes and concrete blocks, with a satisfying snap. And to lop off unwanted beams and rope, you hold one pinky on the 'saw' icon, and make Fruit Ninja-style slashes and incisions with the other.

You can move bits, bend bits, and fiddle around with structures. It's designed for the iPad, of course, but a handy magnifying glass stops it from becoming too fiddly on iPhone.

Bridge over troubled water

Getting your steam engine from one side of the screen to the other is only the start, of course. Each level has a handful of extracurricular objectives you can shoot for.

Alongside the standard three-star scoring system, each level has four missions. You might have to finish within a tight time limit, only use a few wooden beams, stick to a certain number of connection points, or drive your train past a bone that's dangling in some out-of-the-way place.

These change the whole dynamic of the level, and often require you to restart the stage from scratch. In one, a strict quota on the amount of track I could use meant I had to turn a perfect bridge into a daring jump.

These constantly keep you on your toes, and force you to experiment and play. Plus, it gives the game loads of content. 32 levels might not sound like much, but with each stage having four distinct side-missions, it's more like 128.

Under the bridge

The game also has a number of bonus levels. Some are fun (e.g. a challenge to make a huge jump off a cliff) while others are not (e.g. a crap Breakout clone).

Bridgy Jones is a gem. We've seen bridge-building games before, but they've never had such a good editor, they've never been this challenging and surprising, and they've never been this funny. It's the new gold standard.

Bridgy Jones

Bridgy Jones is terrific fun. It's challenging, surprising, and even quite funny. A perfect touchscreen game with loads of content
Score
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer