Here s an odd fusion. Portal is being mixed with the Bridge Constructor series to create a spin-off game about making fragile bridges that transport forklifts from one side of the Aperture Science facility to the other. In Bridge Constructor Portal we’ll see GLaDOS, the robot marm of the passive aggressive puzzler, return to torment the player with what I presume will be a characteristically snide voiceover, provided by Ellen McLain. Here s a brief teaser. (more…)

So I’ve been having fun playing Poly Bridge [official site] this morning. I feel like it’s the sort of game you can sink into and tinker with while binge watching something on another screen or maybe listening to a podcast. But I’ve started to see the parts where I’ve not quite got the hang of how the physics works and where the game is better and worse at helping me figure out why that might be.

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Bridge-building puzzler Poly Bridge [official site] has managed to cross the chasm of early access and is now in full release territory. There’s a bunch of new bits and bobs as part of the 1.0 build but the one which caught my eye was the collaborative play options for Twitch streamers and viewers.

The idea is that streamers can accept viewer suggestions for a bridge design – either an altered version of what they were already working on or an entirely new design of your own concoction. It feels like a pretty cool back and forth as well as a good fit for the kind of game Poly Bridge actually is.

Here’s the info:

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Every week, Rob Zacny crosses the chasm of Early Access to find a treat on the other side. Sometimes the path across is perilous, sometimes it is as sturdy as a horizontal oak.>

As something rolls across a painstakingly-constructed series of spans and supports in Dry Cactus’ Poly Bridge [official site], you can see the structural elements changing color as load is added or subtracted and they draw closer to their failure point. A car followed by a heavy bus turns a set of struts and arches from a cheerful green to a neutral yellow to a wary orange to a bloody red, and it’s right at that moment the excitement of civil engineering comes to life.

If that piece can just hold, and the car rolls onto the other half of the span with its added supports and pillars, then you’ve done your job and built a useful bridge. Alternately, the piece will wobble, collapse, and dump your passengers and a good part of your bridge into a canyon or a river.

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Building bridges is hard. Both in the physical and metaphorical sense. Dry Cactus new game Poly Bridge [official site] tasks you with helping vehicles of various shapes and sizes across watery chasms using World Of Goo style physics systems. It’s out in Early Access now.

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