BECAUSE YOU LOVE FEELING STUPID
The Bridge is dark and mysterious — a loosely physics-based 2D puzzle-platformer with astonishing level design and deliberate visual disorientation, inspired by the impossible works of Dutch artist M. C. Escher.
Much like Escher’s art, the game distorts perspective, seamlessly bridging the gap between the straight (2D) and the twisted (3D), often in ways that make it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. You might run along what appears to be an ordinary platform, only for it to loop in on itself; after a full 360-degree traversal, you find yourself somewhere entirely different. Playing The Bridge feels less like solving puzzles and more like witnessing the performance of a master illusionist.
The game was created by The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild Inc. — essentially two people: designer/programmer Ty Taylor and artist Mario Castañeda — individuals of clearly formidable (and possibly unhinged) mental faculties. Anyone with a PlayStation Plus subscription back in October 2018 likely already owns it, and it’s well worth the time.
It resembles very little else I’ve played. On a superficial level, Braid comes to mind, with its sketch-like aesthetics and time-reversal mechanics, but the comparison ends there. The Bridge is unique, ingenious, and deeply aggravating. Its brilliance and its frustration are inseparable — you can’t have one without the other. Whether you’ll enjoy it depends entirely on your tolerance for, or even appreciation of, prolonged frustration.
A GAME OF GRAVITY
You control a small, solitary figure — likely meant to be Escher himself — who can walk left or right. Your defining ability is the power to rotate the entire screen a full 360 degrees, using gravity itself to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. It sounds simple enough. It isn’t.
The logic of an Escher drawing governs everything here, and simplicity evaporates quickly. Each level begins with you at a fixed position, tasked with reaching a door. Sometimes the door must be unlocked by collecting keys or pulling switches. Other objects share the same gravitational rules — some helpful, others lethal.
The game is divided into four chapters, each containing six single-screen levels. As you progress, every other level introduces a new mechanic that forces you to radically reconsider what you think is possible with the game’s minimal control scheme. I won’t spoil these additions; discovery is essential. Suffice it to say that in The Bridge, physics are not constant. Every curve, every bend in a platform multiplies the number of possible interactions. Eventually, the very concept of “up” and “down” loses all meaning. You might stand inches from the exit and still need minutes of careful maneuvering to reach it.
Attempting to mentally map out a full solution in advance is futile. Instead, progress comes through experimentation — cautious, incremental steps that often take far longer than expected. Death is possible, but the time-reversal mechanic exists primarily to undo fatal mistakes quickly. Sometimes, though, you’ll realize you’re so deeply trapped in a logical dead end that restarting the level is faster.
The slow pacing doesn’t help. The protagonist moves at a glacial pace, and more than once I found myself forgetting my intended plan before I even reached the spot where it was meant to unfold.
STORY AND SUMMARY
The Bridge does contain a story, though it’s abstract and dreamlike. Rendered entirely in black and white, it mirrors Escher’s visual language. Each chapter concludes with fragments of text, but they’re insufficient to fully explain what’s happening. Meaning lies buried beneath layers of symbolism and dream logic.
The game appears to attempt a conceptual bridge between Isaac Newton — referenced in both the intro and certain paintings — and Escher himself, uniting opposing worldviews of absolute order and perceptual ambiguity. To what end remains unclear. A better world? A more honest one?
On a first playthrough, you’ll hardly care. Your mental energy will be entirely consumed by problem-solving — and rightly so.
I initially considered calling The Bridge a good “in-between” game, something to play over a relaxed weekend. That would be misleading. It demands full concentration and a great deal of patience. It’s not short on playtime if you get stuck — and you likely will. I finished it in a weekend, but still resorted to a walkthrough twice.
The frustration stems from sheer cognitive overload. In later levels, there are simply too many variables at play. Solutions become multi-step mental marathons, while the game’s deliberate slowness gives you ample time to second-guess yourself. More than once, I reached the exit only to realize — minutes too late — that I had already been there and simply failed to open the unlocked door, assuming it was still sealed.
The Bridge is devious. It has a talent for making you feel far more foolish than you deserve. But perhaps that’s inevitable in a world where familiar rules no longer apply. Just as you adapt, the rules shift again, and you’re forced to recalibrate your understanding.
Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps life, according to truly subversive minds, works the same way. And the rest of us are left to stumble through their constructions, doing our best to keep up.
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