The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation Review

The console horror market is a crowded one. There are narrative horror games, survival horror games, comedy horror games, and kid horror games. Scaring the life out of a gamer in their own living room is a big business in the gaming market, possibly so prolific because of the streaming of these games. People just love watching others get scared. 

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation first came to my attention through that streaming world, but there was something about the story and the premise that intrigued me. And now it’s here on console. Let’s take it to the bridge. 

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation is based on a famous Taiwanese urban legend. It’s about a ghost that haunts the bridge of Tunghu University. In the game, the developers put you in control of six university students who are planning to investigate, reconstructing a ritual to find the famous ghost. Of course, it doesn’t go well, and soon the students find themselves running from the ghost, trapped in a curse. They need to find a way out of this hell – as one by one, they get hunted by the vengeful spirit. 

I’ll be honest with you, the first half an hour of the story didn’t grab me. I thought I was going to be playing another survival horror game, running through mazes and hiding. But there is much more to The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation than first meets the eye and the story as a whole is brilliant. In the end it had me completely hooked into playing to its six hour conclusion. 

It’s helped by the fact that the characters are fun to get to know, all with varying personalities and traits. But it’s also the visual storytelling that does a fantastic job of telling the ghost story. There are tropes – of course – but there is also some original storytelling shining brightly throughout. 

The gameplay takes place in the first person, running you between the different characters throughout the journey. You can run of course and there is the ability to pick up items to use in your inventory. Yet the main survival horror technique is that of legging it from the ghost. You weave in and out of rooms, down corridors and into hiding spots like a toilet cubicle or locker. These are my least favourite moments of the game and in the end sequences, you will be doing a lot of stealthing, all before running from the spirit from hell. 

The best part of The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation is the exploration. That and the puzzle elements which are very clever and inventive. You might be stuck in one area of the university and have to match books to the right place by decoding a document and drawing on a blackboard. Or you may need to work out a code for a padlock, finding the right elements from a periodic chemistry table. The rest of the game has really good quest dynamics and the areas that you explore are tight and feel very atmospheric, ripe with jump scares. 

The map and surrounding area of the university you explore is a massive one, but what has been done with the visuals is surprising. It looks very believable in reality terms, but when things head into the supernatural at full power it’s very impressive, especially in terms of scare and strange goings on. Character animation is fantastic and I loved spending time exploring the attention to detail in the world. 

The soundtrack does a superb job amplifying that, working in scare scenes. This is especially true when you’re being chased; it really brings up the tension and fear stakes. The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation is fully voiced with an English dub which works well, however there are some issues with the voice-over; some sound balancing problems when characters can feel very softly spoken and then suddenly very loud. But overall, you should expect a great job in the sound department. 

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation delivers a chilling and superb bit of horror storytelling, complete with some fun jump scares. The tightness of the locations and settings work dazzlingly well across both the real world and the supernatural. Personally, the hiding away and stealth elements wouldn’t be missed and there are problems with the sound mix. But on the whole The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation should be well considered by any horror fan.