The beauty of platform game “The Bridge”

Games can be used for lots of reasons. They can make you laugh, tell you a story, they can make you think differently about certain subjects, give you insights and even help your businesses in many ways. But besides all that, games can be visually appealing. In some cases I see games truly as a form of art. So every now and then a game comes by which totally takes me by suprise. The Bridge is such a game.   About the bridge In a nutshell “The bridge”  is a 2D puzzle game that forces the player to reevaluate their preconceptions of physics and perspective. The game starts with a funny reference to Newton:  an apple is falling on the player characters head while sleeping under an appletree.     Escher and  Gravity The players character wakes up and discovers that he can control the world’s  gravity, while controlling this he can manipulate the environment. With this gravity controlling mechanism the player needs to solve a lot of puzzles in order to make progress in the game. The thing I like so much about the artstyle is that it’s  totally in harmony with the game’s theme and puzzelgenre. While playing and controlling gravity you really get an unuasual puzzle experience. The levels feel strange and are often impossible constructions of reallity. Choosing to use Eschers artstyle as inspiration is very clever. Escher was known for his mathematically inspired lithographs. His work features a lot of impossible constuction and explorations of infiniy. The leveldesign and playmechanism really connects to Eschers style and really empowers the illusionary effect of the gravity control mechanism.   Example of Eschers work:   In game screenshots of The Bridge:   Conclusion The handdrawn pencil stlye gives the game this classical look, it’s really like you are back in 1700 – 1900. Exactly the timeframe when Newton released his “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”.  It’s a really nice ode to science, art and philosophy. The game elements and objects all fit the theme very well. The combination with surreal elements, like floathing rocks, black holes/ space warps and optical illusions are making this game a true surreal masterpeace. It’s a game with a lot of heart and character in it. I’m sure that everyone who likes art and design will enjoy it very much.     Check out the game at: http://thebridgeisblackandwhite.com/   By Berthjan...