Civil engineering has never been so awesome!
This is Bridge Constructor Stunts, a game about building bridges to complete Hollywood-esque stunts and tricks, whilst completing the objectives of each course. You have a budget for each level, and three different materials to help you complete the most epic of stunts!
This game is split into two gameplay categories – building, and driving. The building is completed through selecting grounded nodes and building branching structures off of them. When building, you have to worry about the length of each segment. The longer you make a piece, the more weight will be put on all lower parts that attach to that segment. This makes the need for a strong base and some creative structuring to ensure your bridges don’t collapse.
After you successfully design a structure that will stay standing, you have to drive your tow truck or dump truck at high speeds, trying to rack up the points and complete the level. You don’t have to worry about driving off your bridges, for this game plays like a Trials title; straight forward movement that doesn’t involve lateral movement. You do still have to worry about angling your landings and doing cool backflips, but that really is all there is to the driving portion. Throttle and pitch control are really the only things you have to worry about.
Now, Bridge Constructor Stunts is quite the short one, featuring around thirty levels for you to solve, each with a range of different objectives. These objectives reach from either points earned, flips done, or stars collected, all requiring you to meet the end of the level to count as completed. This sounds like it’ll be a breeze, but the levels become increasingly difficult as you progress through the five sets. They also become quite difficult when the vehicle is the dump truck, for it applies far more stress on materials, and can break those designs that might work for the tow truck.
Let’s talk about the weak links of this game, shall we? As I’ve already said, this game is short, and I mean ridiculously short. I completed Stunts within seven hours of starting it, and that included me collecting every single golden bolt. I could go back and try to get the highest score, but it would get ridiculously boring after the first two level sets. The game lacks longevity, and it lacks a large enough level selection to make it truly interesting. The levels will either be large jumps, jump through holes, or bridge the gap situations, and they get really boring after a time. The only thing that was pushing me to the end was the desire to collect all the golden bolts and see if it unlocks anything – and even that was met with the disappointment of discovering that the golden bolts were absolutely useless.
Which is another thing that bugs me about this game. There’s no progression after you unlock the third material, and there really is one style of solution that works for all, at least once you have the steel and cable materials. You can build towers off of your bridge that will support your further tracks, suspending them with cables that supply tension. Once you do that, you don’t have to build the sprawling pieces of supports to build your jumps. Aside from the occasional well placed no-build-zone, you really don’t have to diversify your designs, which lends to the feeling of intense repetition, something that really kills the fun that this game can bring.
All in all, Bridge Constructor Stunts is pretty decent. It has issues in lacking content and a one-solution-fits all feel, but overall is still pretty fun, if you can look past the issues of repetition that is. It is quite short, but it therefore doesn’t overstay its welcome. The difficulty is quite steep, but is a welcome challenge at the end of the game. In the end, the game isn’t mediocre, but it’s not anything truly spectacular.
