Info about Poly Bridge 3: Official game description: Wishlist Poly Bricks Now! ========================= Scroll down to view our new game, **Poly Bricks**, and Wishlist now! About the Game ============== **Poly Bridge 3** is a puzzle game where building bridges is key. Get vehicles to their destination by testing your engineering and problem solving skills. Suspension bridges, draw-bridges, multi-level bridges, crazy almost-bridges, bridges, _bridges_, **_bridges_**! Campaign -------- Explore the new **Open World Campaign** with a dozen worlds and 100+ new levels. Jumps, Hydraulics, ‘Normal’ Bridges, and more giving you hours of gameplay to enjoy! Take a flying leap in _Vaulting Towers_ or flex those hydraulic muscles in _Bifrost Bend_! Sandbox ------- Let your engineering creativity flow with no restrictions in Sandbox mode, allowing you to push your bridge building skills to the limit. Challenge your friends and the community by designing intricate levels and publish them online for everyone to enjoy. Community --------- Explore virtually infinite content and challenges designed by the community in the Steam Workshop. See what bridge designs other players come up with and show off your own in the Gallery. Challenge yourself and others by competing for the top spots in the cut-throat leaderboards and histograms. Custom Physics -------------- Our custom physics engine gives total control, reliability, and accuracy to your bridges. Sleep easy at night knowing your bridges will perform consistently every time! Customization ------------- * **Mods** Mods allow you to customize your game to suit your tastes. Modify the game’s settings, include new options, change vehicle or material defaults, translate your game with player supported language packs, and more! * **Decorate** Add visual flair to your level with a whole range of decor objects. Alongside generic items (traffic cone, rocks, hot air balloons, etc.), each new biome comes with a set of themed decorations as well. Paint a happy little scene, there are no limits here. * **User Generated Content** Create your own vehicles, boats, planes, decorations, and textured custom shapes to add to workshop levels. Let your imagination soar! Share them with the community and download things made by other players. Loads of new features --------------------- * **Build Zones** It’s time to think _inside_ the box! You can only build within their borders, like a reverse boat or plane. Are you up to the challenge? * **Pre-Built Materials** Showing is much more effective than telling. Pre-Built materials can be included with a level on loading, giving you a helping hand or another obstacle to overcome. Work around them or incorporate them into your bridge designs. * **New Material: Foundation** Support long bridges with a strong foundation, or two! Expensive yet very effective at reducing stress in key positions. Release date: 30 May, 2023 Categories: Puzzle Solving, Physics Simulation, Engineering Simulation, Sandbox Creation, Map Editor, Mod Support, Single-player Story, Resource Management - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Engaging and Fun Gameplay (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game for being fun, relaxing, and highly engaging. Many find it to be an excellent puzzle and engineering simulation that offers both challenge and satisfaction, making it a standout in its genre and the best in the series. - Promotes Creativity and Engineering (weight 0.66): The game excels in promoting creative problem-solving and engineering skills. Players enjoy the freedom to experiment with diverse solutions, optimize designs for cost and stability, and feel a sense of accomplishment from their creations. - Improved Physics and Graphics (weight 0.53): The game features significantly improved physics and graphics compared to its predecessors. Players appreciate the more realistic and consistent physics engine, along with enhanced visual fidelity, contributing to a more refined experience. - Balanced Difficulty Curve (weight 0.37): The game strikes a good balance between challenge and accessibility. While levels can be demanding and require strategic thinking, the difficulty curve is smooth and fair, making it enjoyable for both casual players and those seeking a deeper challenge. - Extensive Content and Replayability (weight 0.23): The game offers substantial content, including a large number of diverse and creative levels in the campaign. The inclusion of a level editor and community content further enhances replayability and provides endless hours of entertainment. - Engaging Leaderboard System (weight 0.08): The leaderboard system is a popular feature, adding a competitive element to the game. Players enjoy optimizing their designs to achieve low scores and compare their performance with friends and the wider community. - Smoother Building Mechanics (weight 0.05): The building mechanics have been refined, leading to a smoother and quicker construction experience. This improvement encourages players to experiment more freely with different designs and techniques. Common complaints: - Lack of innovation (weight 0.29): A significant number of players feel the game lacks originality and innovation compared to its predecessors, particularly Poly Bridge 2. Many perceive it as an update rather than a new title, with similar mechanics and insufficient new features to justify its existence. - Frustrating difficulty spikes (weight 0.23): Many players found the game's difficulty curve problematic, especially in later stages. Levels become frustratingly hard, repetitive, and often require precise, trial-and-error solutions rather than creative engineering, leading to a less enjoyable experience. - Negative physics/feature changes (weight 0.12): Changes to the physics engine and the removal of certain features like reinforced roads, adjustable spring strength, and 'cheese' strategies have negatively impacted the gameplay experience for some long-time fans, breaking previous solutions and altering core mechanics. - Questionable level design (weight 0.09): Players expressed dissatisfaction with certain level designs, such as unremovable structures, an abundance of 'bridge-less' levels, and 'janky' gimmick designs. Some missions are considered unrealistic or frustrating, detracting from the core bridge-building experience. - Overpriced for content (weight 0.04): Several players felt that the game's price was too high, especially considering the perceived lack of new content and innovation compared to previous titles in the series. - Unforgiving solution constraints (weight 0.04): Some players reported that non-correct solutions are systematically blocked, even when attempting alternative methods. Additionally, bridges made of basic materials or even super-reinforced ones tend to collapse unexpectedly, indicating potential physics or stability issues. - Game freezing during simulation (weight 0.03): A technical issue was reported where the game begins to freeze after 10-15 simulations, with the frequency and duration of freezes increasing over time, severely impacting gameplay. - Limited new content/mods (weight 0.02): Players noted that the official new gameplay additions are limited, and the availability of mods is also restricted, which limits the game's longevity and replayability for some. - Redundant foundation mechanic (weight 0.02): The new addition of placeable foundations, while present in previous games, often felt redundant or skippable in Poly Bridge 3, failing to provide a fresh or impactful gameplay mechanic. Gameplay feedback: - Physics-based bridge building (weight 0.2): The game is fundamentally a physics-based puzzle game centered around building bridges. Players must apply principles of statics and engineering to construct stable structures using various materials and tools like hydraulics, springs, and cables. It functions as a 2D physics engine for creative engineering builds. - Challenging and thought-provoking (weight 0.11): The game requires significant critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While easy to learn, the difficulty ramps up considerably, making some levels quite challenging and demanding considerable mental effort from players. - Extensive level content (weight 0.11): The game offers a substantial amount of content, including a campaign with over 100 levels across multiple worlds. Levels progressively introduce new mechanics like hydraulics and jumps, increasing in complexity. There's also a level editor and community levels for endless content. - Cost optimization and leaderboards (weight 0.07): A core aspect of the game involves optimizing bridge designs, primarily for cost efficiency. Players aim to build the cheapest possible functional bridge, with leaderboards available to compare their optimized designs against others. - Helpful in-game assistance (weight 0.06): The game provides helpful features to assist players, such as clear tutorials and in-game hints. There's also an accessible 'help' mode that allows players to view solutions from other players, making difficult levels more manageable. - New building elements (weight 0.04): The game introduces new building elements and mechanics, such as user-placeable foundations (red anchors) and new elements like springs, building upon previous iterations of the series. - Complex hydraulic mechanics (weight 0.02): Hydraulics are a key game mechanic that, while simple in concept, offer complex applications in bridge design. They are introduced progressively as players advance through levels. - Creative sandbox mode (weight 0.02): The game includes a sandbox mode that allows players to experiment with building without the constraints of budget or material limitations, fostering creativity. - Achievements and challenges (weight 0.02): The game features achievements and weekly challenges, providing additional goals and replayability for players. Performance notes: - Determinism issues resolved by patch (weight 0.02): The recent Patch 1.0.16 has successfully addressed and resolved determinism issues within the game. This fix ensures consistent and predictable outcomes, which is crucial for puzzle-solving and competitive play. - Improved performance and less lag (weight 0.02): Players have noted a significant improvement in performance with Poly Bridge 3, experiencing less lag compared to its predecessor, Poly Bridge 2. This suggests better optimization and a smoother gameplay experience. Recommendations: - Good value, especially on sale (weight 0.19): Many players find the game to be a worthwhile purchase, especially when on sale. It's considered a good investment and offers enjoyable gameplay, though some suggest waiting for a discount. - Mixed recommendations for new players (weight 0.15): Players have mixed opinions on whether Poly Bridge 3 is the best entry point for new players or if Poly Bridge 2 is superior. Some recommend starting with PB3, while others suggest sticking with PB2, especially given the similarities and potential for future updates to PB3. - Great for puzzle and physics fans (weight 0.14): The game strongly appeals to players who enjoy puzzle-solving, engineering concepts, and physics-based challenges. It's recommended for those who like to tinker, build, and use their brain to solve problems. - Suggestions for gameplay improvements (weight 0.04): Players suggest specific quality-of-life improvements, such as immediate vehicle movement at the start of levels, re-adding reinforced road and adjustable springs, and better curation of workshop levels with leaderboards. - General positive sentiment (weight 0.02): These are very brief, non-specific recommendations or suggestions, lacking detailed feedback. They indicate a general positive sentiment but offer little actionable insight. - Help feature aids accessibility (weight 0.01): The in-game help feature is praised for making the game accessible to players of all skill levels, indicating good onboarding and support for new users. Other player notes: - Low PC requirements & size (weight 0.05): Players appreciate the game's optimized performance and small footprint, making it accessible on a wide range of PC specifications. This also means quick downloads and less storage consumption. - Educational & practical value (weight 0.04): The game is recognized for its educational value, being used in engineering firms and influencing players' real-world perception of bridge structures. It's seen as a practical tool for aspiring engineers. - Challenging difficulty curve (weight 0.04): The game's difficulty curve is noted, with an initial phase serving as an extended tutorial, followed by a significant increase in challenge. Some levels are particularly difficult, sometimes requiring external help. - Mixed feelings on modding (weight 0.03): Modding is a feature, but player opinions on its utility vary. Some find mods enhance the experience, while others are not interested or find them to alter the game's intended challenge or aesthetic. - Long game time (weight 0.03): Players find the game offers extensive playtime, suggesting a high level of replayability and content that keeps them engaged for long periods. This indicates good value for money in terms of hours played. - Desire for more content (weight 0.03): Players express a desire for more content, specifically additional 'normal' missions and new maps, suggesting that the current content, while good, could be expanded to maintain long-term engagement. - Broad age appeal (weight 0.03): The game's appeal spans across all age groups, from children to adults, indicating a broad and inclusive design that can be enjoyed by diverse audiences. This suggests a user-friendly interface and engaging mechanics for everyone. - Realistic building preference (weight 0.02): A segment of the player base enjoys constructing realistic and structurally sound bridges, indicating a desire for authenticity and engineering accuracy within the game's mechanics. - Concerns about abandonment (weight 0.01): There is a concern among players that the game might be abandoned by its developers, which could impact future updates, support, and community engagement. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.37): Players expressed satisfaction due to the game's high overall quality, including its improved physics system, engaging and challenging puzzle-solving, and the freedom it offers for creative bridge design. The game's educational value, replayability, and the sense of achievement from optimizing solutions also contributed significantly to player contentment. - Disappointment (weight 0.12): Disappointment stemmed primarily from the perceived lack of new features and content compared to previous iterations, as well as the removal of certain core gameplay mechanics. Players also expressed dissatisfaction with the game's price point, issues with controls, and a feeling that the fun wore off quickly due to repetitive or uninspired level design in later stages. - Joy (weight 0.11): Joy was frequently associated with the initial gameplay experience, the freedom to experiment with bridge designs, and the entertainment derived from the game's problem-solving aspects. The ability to create and share levels through the workshop, along with the general fun and relaxing nature of the game, also contributed to players' happiness. - Frustration (weight 0.1): Frustration arose from restrictive level design, particularly in later stages, which often led to repeated failures and a feeling of being forced into specific solutions. Technical issues like freezing during simulation, awkward controls, and significant difficulty spikes, especially in 'jump levels,' also contributed to player annoyance. - Enjoyment (weight 0.07): Players found enjoyment in the game's balanced challenge, well-designed levels, and the overall engaging puzzle gameplay. The trial-and-error process, often leading to humorous car crashes, and the enhanced experience through external content creators, also contributed to a fun pastime. - Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement was generated by the game's addictive and engaging puzzles, competitive leaderboard system, and significant improvements over previous titles. The promise of abundant new content through updates and community mods, along with the fun and realistic physics, also thrilled players. - Appreciation (weight 0.01): Appreciation was directed towards the game's community, its educational value, and its overall good value for money, including a lack of bugs. Players also valued the game's good performance on specific hardware and the perceived improvements in sequels over the first game. - Challenge (weight 0.01): The game's difficulty, particularly in mid-to-late game scenarios, was a primary cause of the feeling of challenge. Players found the need to overcome complex problems and the inherent stress of optimizing solutions to be a significant aspect of the gameplay. - Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement stemmed from the humorous application of real-world knowledge to in-game scenarios, the comical depiction of the learning process, and the inherent fun in the game's core concept. Specific elements like flying cars and crane cars also contributed to lighthearted enjoyment. - Relaxation (weight 0.01): Players experienced relaxation due to the game's initial calming gameplay experience and its soothing music. The overall atmosphere of the game contributed to a tranquil and stress-free environment. - Interest (weight 0.01): Interest was piqued by the game's relevance to structural engineering principles and bridge-building technology, making it particularly suitable for engineering enthusiasts. The inherently puzzling nature of the game also maintained player curiosity. - Humor (weight 0.01): Humor was derived from self-reflection on player mistakes, humorous comparisons within the game, and the inclusion of strange or amusing introductory paragraphs. These elements provided a lighthearted aspect to the game experience. - Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom was caused by the game's repetitiveness, particularly after completing levels. The lack of variety or new challenges once core content was finished led to a monotonous experience for some players. - Neutrality (weight 0.01): Neutrality arose from a perceived lack of significant new features, an 'okay' overall quality, and a clunky interface with uninspired aesthetics. Players also acknowledged the game's position in a crowded genre without offering much originality. - Calmness (weight 0.01): Calmness was a result of the game's relaxing gameplay, which provided a tranquil and peaceful experience for players. The overall design contributed to a serene atmosphere. - Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration was directed towards the game's excellent design, particularly the variety of solutions it allowed for, and the significant balance improvements made. Players appreciated the thoughtful construction of the game. - Anger (weight 0.01): Anger was caused by the systemic blocking of non-correct solutions, which limited player freedom, and a frustrating change to the physics engine that negatively impacted gameplay. - Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude was expressed towards the developers for their hard work and for providing players with the opportunity to contribute to the game's development, fostering a sense of community and involvement. - Realization (weight 0.01): Realization stemmed from the learning experience provided by the game, particularly the understanding of the inherent difficulty and complexities involved in real-world bridge building. - Engagement (weight 0.01): Engagement was driven by the game's absorbing nature and the cyclical pattern of play, which kept players consistently involved and invested in the gameplay experience.}