Paper Bridge Review

One reason for the popularity of 2D bridge building games is the fact that they're easy.

For the developer, the physics simulation involved is straightforward - no nasty 3D shearing or joint instability - and for you, the player, understanding what to do is obvious.

The challenge is how to make such an experience as interesting and intuitive as possible.

Super realism is one option, but a softer approach like RealNetwork's Tiki Towers (monkeys) and Gameloft's Bridge Odyssey (more animals) seems to work better.

Paper Bridge goes for a sketchy doodle take on construction simulation, with a hand-drawn style running through each of its 25 levels.

To some extent, it works. Using a black pencil, you draw the road elements of your bridge, then reinforce it with supports sketched in with a green pencil.

For each level, both elements contain a certain amount of "ink," which limits your overall options, as well as providing a scoring method based on how much ink you use. There's an eraser and an 'undo' button to deal with mistakes.

So when you're ready to go, hitting the 'Live' button in the top right corner sets the simulation in motion. At this point, gravity comes into play and influences the movement of whatever vehicle you have to get from one side of the level to the other.

So far, so bridge building.

Stress fracture

Where Paper Bridge falls down is its lack of flow. It's a problem shared by Bridge Odyssey in that the process of constructing the elements of a bridge lacks finesse. Placing one strut in the wrong position could mean that you can't complete your bridge design, something you might not discover until you're trying to fit together the final pieces.

What makes the situation worse is the ink system, which means you can draw out elements of different lengths (but only up to a maximum). Instead of proving more flexibility, though, it confuses the entire process.

You'll mistakenly draw out improperly sized struts that make your finished bridge a misaligned oddity in which nothing looks right. And misaligned bridges are rarely good at sustaining tensive and compressive loads.

The lack of finesse and polish also extends to the way the physics are applied to vehicles. In one level, for example, you have to get a train with two carriages over the gap. You build your bridge only to find that the obvious solution has too much of a gradient, at which point the train randomly pulls a wheelie and falls over backwards. As trains do.

In another example, you have to build a ramp for a motorbike to ape Evel Knievel, only to find he'll land and flip over. This isn't a bad thing in terms of forcing finesse into the bridge building process, but the lack of a ghost image or an easy way to modify the angle of your ramp means you have to start from scratch over and over, applying dumb trial and error until you get it right.

In such ways, Paper Bridge proves to be an overly frustrating experience. It's not a terrible game, but there are plenty of better examples of the genre to enjoy.