Bridge It

A year or so ago my workmates and I stumbled across an unlikely and highly addictive little bridge building game. For the next month at least Bridge Builder (122K) kept us struggling with girder angles and basic engineering concepts in attempts to span ever-increasing distances with a bunch of fickle green girders. Getting the bridges to hold up under their own weight was only half the battle. The next challenge was to get them to deal with a passing train without buckling and folding into screaming messes. Bridge Builder was one of those little gaming gems that you assumed not many people knew about.

Now the original game has been transformed into full 3D accelerated glory by its creators with the help of Auran’s Jet 3D engine. Chronic Logic have taken Bridge Builder and given it a ground up overhaul, added new dimensions to the gameplay with different girder types, draw bridges, hydraulics, and vehicles (including boats), and set it all in lushly rendered 3D environments. It’s a much bigger game now, and probably better, though I can’t help feeling some of the charm of the original has been lost in all the whistles and bells. A 177MB demo is available from Nvidia, or the game can purchased online from Auran.

Kangaroo Point circa 1850

posted by monty · at 12:52 pm · filed under Reviews

 

17 Comments (RSS)

I thought even Pontifex 2 had lost some of the charm of the original ‘Bridge Builder’… more is not always better. Still hanging to try this one though!

Actually, that was the one I meant! I’ve fixed up the story and links to reflect it.

Very very nice game.

Just finished the demo and this is a pretty good game! The tutorial voice over is a bit naff but apart from that the gameplay is really true to the original and great bridge-builder design.

I’m very dissapointed about their shop though… I would buy the full game right now if I could download it, but I’m not going to wait "1-3 weeks" for a box to hopefully arrive in the mail. What a shame they can’t provide online delivery.

I’ve just installed a Radeon in my machine at home and tried to boot up the program to give it a proper run, and discovered that unless you own an NVidia GeForce you *cannot* run the program, as it spits out a "you need a GeForce" rejection screen. Auran have done a deal with NVidia to restrict the program to owners of GeForces. It’s not that other cards can’t run it of course (and run it faster), they have actually put in code that aggressively blocks them. It’s a corporate decision to support one company over another for reasons of money.

Boo to Auran, and boo to NVidia. You may call it business, I call it a distasteful sell-out, and I’m sorry now I posted the story. I’ve uninstalled the demo, and won’t be promoting the game further. I sincerely hope this is not the road Auran are taking with future products.

nvidia gay

Can i buy this game in the Netherlands????

Please answwer: rufus@sa-jo.nl

I have Bridge Builder V4.5, but I cant figure out what the heck the mathematic equations at the bottom of the page have to do with the bridge. the demo bridge builder was a lot better, it was simple, if a green line started turning red, and then a bright red, re-inforce :)

 Bernd das Brot 5 years, 2 months ago

have one of you a full game of bridge builder 3d between i must buy them then

Very good game :P prefect!

 marc.pelletier 5 years, 1 month ago

cool game Ibeat the whole game email me marcopolo620@hotmail.com

 withheld 5 years ago

the game bridge builder runs very slow on my machine. its an old one with a 333 celeron processor.anything i can do to run it fast?

Errm.. get a decent gaming machine. You’re lucky to run anything at all on a 333 celeron these days.

what was the subject again?

o yeah, check this out! my game is one of the best out there,

http://www.toprankings.gobo…

(let it load)

you SUCK!

If u cant run the game dont play the game.
If you dont have an nVidea card what were you thinking?
Those of us that can play it, can enjoy it!

Justin

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