Game: Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
Genre: Puzzle, Simulation, Strategy, Updates
System: Nintendo Switch (also on all formats)
Developers | Publishers: ClockStone Software | Headup Games
Age Rating: EU 16+ | USA Teen
Price: EU €14,99 | USD $14.99 | UK £11.99
Release Date: November 19th, 2020
Review code used, with many thanks to Press Engine & Headup Games.
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead is the third Bridge Constructor game released on the Switch. There is Bridge Constructor: Ultimate Edition, which I reviewed and liked, and Bridge Constructor Portal are the previous two games.
The Walking Dead Franchise
If you hadn’t guessed by the title of the game, this bridge constructor is a crossover with The Walking Dead franchise. At its core, it is still a physics puzzle game where you construct bridges and hope they don’t collapse. Now you have the added puzzle of the Walkers i.e. the Walking dead to contend with, and a few survivors who you have to protect.
This is a post-apocalyptic universe which adds familiar faces like Daryl, Eugene and Michonne from the Walking Dead and a few others. I am not a walking dead fan as I’ve never seen the TV series, though I have heard of it.
Not Much of a Story
There is a story in Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead but I didn’t find it that interesting nor did it keep me glued to the screen. The cutscenes are in text and the story is silly and lighthearted. Fans of the WD series might enjoy it but don’t expect to much from it.
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead starts out easy enough and as you progress through the 40 levels, split into five chapters, the difficulty increases greatly. There are a lot more components to take into account when bridge-building this time. There’s the usual bridge construction, where you’re allocated resources like beams, cables, and platforms to construct pretty much whatever you want. Now you also have survivors to direct away from the Walkers. There are crates to drop, and traps to set to kill the walkers too.
Give Commands to Survivors
Along with giving commands for the survivors to flick switches and climb ladders, to name but a few, some of the survivors can help in killing the Walkers by shooting them or blowing up explosive barrels. Such as having to drop crates using one of your survivors who will then shoot the explosive barrels you have flung into the air to break a wall. This can allow your stunt car to drive through and wreck another wall for you to progress the game.
Your Strategy Can Go Wrong
Some of the core gameplay of constructing structures to cross is fun and entertaining, especially the ingenious ways of killing the Walkers. But there are some components which are annoying, like giving commands to multiple survivors.
Some puzzles are so intricate that it’s impossible to predict what will happen beforehand. There is a rewind control and you can play and halt the level before disaster strikes. Unfortunately, if you don’t decide all of your team’s moves in advance all your playtime will be filled with constant pauses in the action. And you’re continuously nudged by the game to give commands to survivors.
On top of being nudged by the game, when you do realise your strategy isn’t going to be successful, you have to repeat the whole process again, changing character instructions to suit. It feels laboured and frustrating like all the fun has been sucked out of it. Thankfully, these scenarios don’t present themselves often but don’t expect an easy game as this isn’t it.
Anyone who is familiar with the Bridge Constructor series will feel right at home. While the added challenge of team management and timing is interesting and keeps the gameplay from being stale, it will induce some hair pulling from being overly frustrating at times.
Visuals and Controls
Since it’s set in a post-apocalyptic world you wouldn’t expect to see lots of bright and vibrant colours. But with its muted colour scheme and its cel-shaded look Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead looks fine for what it wants to achieve.
Sound effects and music are fine too with the appropriate booms during explosions and such added to the Walking Dead theme. The music can get repetitive but that’s easily solved by turning the volume of which I did in the end.
The controls, which are both joy-con and touchscreen, aren’t the best, to say the least, and the same can be said for the UI. I found the controls to be annoying and irritating and a step down from the controls in the first Bridge Constructor game I reviewed. In fact, I found the controls the most irritating thing about the game. Sometimes my instructions didn’t even register with the game and they don’t feel intuitive at all. The UI, when playing on the TV, it’s hard to see the cursor unless you’re sitting a foot away from the TV.
Conclusion
Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead has lots of new components added to the game, some of them are fun and work well. While I did enjoy the added feature of the Walkers to the game as they do add in a lot of extra strategies to think through.
However, not all of the components work as well as they should and it ends up being annoying. Especially the controls which I found to be downright irritating. If you can manage the irritating controls and have played the Bridge Constructor games before you may well like this instalment!
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure