The Bridge (2013)

I was expecting such an artistic game to have something more compelling to move the player along than "complete this puzzle to unlock the next puzzle." The integration of MC Escher's art and concepts into playable puzzles is certainly interesting, fun to look at, and makes for intriguing puzzles.

Unfortunately the game - both the protagonist's movement and the level rotation mechanic - moves very slowly... this and the lack of any compelling mystery, plot, etc to uncover by completing the puzzles makes it feel more of a slog than a pleasure to play.

This was a super fun logic puzzle game I got on sale one day. You have to manipulate the environment to make the impossible possible. It reminds me a bit of Old Man's Journey, where you manipulate hills and pieces of land by raising them up and down to make path connections where before there were none, only this game is more like being stuck in an M.C. Escher painting.

You have to rotate and manipulate the world and gravity to create paths, avoid obstacles, and not get crushed by moving pieces of the world. It's not a terribly long game but it's definitely very fun if you're into puzzle games like this. I think we only ended up having to look up one solution after trying repeated and not being able to figure it out. I recommend it!

“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.” -Maurits Cornelis Escher

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Art fans rejoice.

The question of whether games are art or not remains either up in the air or an obvious affirmative but the concern of games depicting art is answered in The Bridge, a puzzle game by indie developer The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild. While artsy indie puzzle games are a dime a dozen, The Bridge is unique in utilizing famous art as more than just inspiration or aesthetic. Significantly, its relationship to established art is in adapting the surreal work of M.C. Escher to interactivity.

Maurits Cornelis Escher was Dutch artist who emphasized mathematics and optical illusion in his work, creating illustrations, woodcuts, and lithographs with physics that would be impossible to realize in reality. He created objects which could only exist in the mind. Escher regularly broke the fundamentals of symmetry and geometry to create artistic tessellations and architecture that are both beautiful to behold as well as strangely satisfying in their perfection. Other concepts he explored through his creations were intellectualism, mirrors, relative perspectives, levels of reality, and the infinite.

While Escher was not well-liked by critics for most of lifetime, his art has grounded itself in public consciousness. Though Escher had no measurable, personal interaction with Surrealism as a cultural movement and though he did not pioneer the unique qualities exemplified in his own work, his art has become a part of popular culture so many years later. The distinctiveness of his work has made him a legend, an influence to be recognized or not within many future creations. How could David Bowie try to entrap our heroine Sarah at the end of Labyrinth without Escher’s endless stairs? How could the Penrose Tribar, impossibility in its purest form, exist without Escher’s inspiration?

“The flat shape irritates me – I feel like telling my objects, you are too fictitious, lying there next to each other static and frozen: do something, come off the paper and show me what you are capable of!” -M.C. Escher

Fascinatingly, The Bridge draws from Escher’s body of work not merely to craft the peripheral imagery of backgrounds and settings. That, I suppose, would’ve been too easy. Rather the game allows you to interact with settings that resemble the illustrations themselves. Even if you aren’t an art fan, you’ve likely seen Escher’s iconic dreamscapes at some point or another, especially “Relativity” with its nonsensical stairways. Observing the illustration, your mind’s eye creates an imaginary protagonist to clamber over the steps at all angles. The Bridge lets you play out that bit of imagining.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/12/29/the-bridge/