Announced just two short weeks ago, Bridge Constructor Portal is out today for PC, Mac, Android, and iOS. Helmed by developer ClockStone Software and publisher Headup Games, the brains behind the greater Bridge Constructor series, the game blends the chaotic and experimental core of its parents with the aesthetics and enduring humor of Portal, which surprised and delighted the gaming public ten years ago.
The tale of Bridge Constructor is a quaint one. ClockStone and Headup had no intention to market their game heavily for an international market, content with staying in the independent European market. However, the Internet had other plans when a GIF of a player barely stumbling through a level went viral on Reddit, stoking overseas interest in the title. In the three years that have followed, a steady stream of user-generated content and several expansions have seen Bridge Constructor downloaded 27 million times.
The goofy tone, physics-based gameplay, and focus on trying ridiculous stunts “for science” make Bridge Constructor and Portal logical bedfellows. The core objective remains the same in this crossover—take your vehicle from Point A to Point B by creating a bridge and letting physics do the work—but predictably adds a new setting and tools to the mix. Many core Portal elements and characters are here: the eponymous gateways (now color coded), the kind but deadly Sentry Turrets, the Companion Cube, and everyone’s favorite sociopathic computer overseer, GLaDOS. They affect the levels in different ways, chiefly through the portals, which open up the maps both vertically and horizontally. This allows for a potentially infinite amount of convoluted, ill-advised possibilities for getting your truck to the end of the test chamber—everything a Bridge Constructor fan could ask for.
Players on PC and mobile can get to engineering today, but those looking to pick up the game on PS4, Xbox One, or the Switch will have to wait until early 2018. Otherwise, get your thinking caps on and get to testing. Who knows—there may even be a piece of cake waiting for you.
