| 5 star: | | (1) | | 4 star: | | (7) | | 3 star: | | (9) | | 2 star: | | (0) | | 1 star: | | (0) |
| Average Rating: 
Number of Reviews: 7
Write a review |
1-7 of 7 A melancholic tale about otherness and survival, May 23, 2023~~ Updated Review from the 2022 IFComp bc I played the game again ~~
Under the Bridge is a fairly short and contained game, with 4+ endings, with a heavy themes of otherness, exclusion and survival. Playing as some sort of lonely eldritch abomination, forced to leave the comfort of the forest to end up hiding under a bridge, your main task is to survive. Peering above the bridge might bring sustenance or deadly confrontation.
Through the otherness of the main character, we get to see mundane aspects shown in a different light. The writing brings a strange uneasiness to the setting, from the large eyes of the frog to the stomping of the armed men. With how other characters react to you, you can't help but feel unwanted.
While the writing focuses on the senses and basic description of elements, there is something very unnerving about its simpleness. The use of 1st plural POV brings questions about who the player is supposed to be: are we but a lost monster or a collective? Is our loneliness turning us mad? It makes for a horror moody piece, enhanced by the darkness of the UI and the choice of animation and formatting of the text.
I really enjoy the addition of assets into this game. The different SFX added to the text, bringing the setting into life, with the wind rustling the branches in the forest, the sound of water flowing by the bridge, the threatening footsteps of the guards... Similarly the illustration, especially of the monster, helped to bring forth the horror-y aspect of the game.
Through the binary choices, you get to interact with the different characters approaching the bridge, with interesting variation for each. However, it is after you reach the end, that things got a bit... dull. You are prompted only with a Play Again? link, sending you right back at the start. If you are replaying the game as soon as you reached the end, you have to go through all the non-choice passages, and things get repetitive pretty fast (the variation only happens on the passages right after your choice or just before an ending).
I also had some little issues with the styling of the game, especially with the sizing of the page or the obtrusive sidebar.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
So, how much sympathy do you think you deserve?, January 16, 2023The description left me worried Under the Bridge might be an exercise in a monster finding different ways to maul people. Thankfully, I was wrong. You get to maul people if you want. You even have to, at the start. But there is real humanity in the decisions you make, with enough tension in your choices to make it feel like you're not just overturning rocks to see what all happens (Note: allowing undo was a VERY good choice in this work. The introduction that sets the mood is effective enough but takes nontrivial time.)
Yes, you're a deformed monster under the bridge. But you have excuses, even reasons, for being as you are. There's a new bridge, one which leaves your forest even more populated by humans. Being able to hide under it is scant relief. Humans pass back and forth, and in the first encounter at night, two of them meet on the bridge. One threatens another. You have a choice to kill one or both. Your moral sense is not fully developed beyond knowing your territory has been invaded, but you can smell fear regularly.
More humans pass in the day. A woman with her child and, if you are very aggressive, an army of humans. But there are also ways out. Two good endings may not feel totally satisfactory, as they leave the door open for people impinging on your territory later, but they're very different in how you wind up, what you fear, and whom you trust.
The sound effects and graphics (black with white lines) are effective, and there's even a bit of upside-down text signifying you looking into the river and thinking of things. This isn't the first work to use upside-down text, and it's more serious than Elizabeth Smyth's LIDO, written for EctoComp. I'm reminded how Twitter had upside-down text that was a fad for a while. Here perhaps the text is overused a bit, but it adds to the story overall.
UTB is in a tricky spot. There can only be so many choices, because the main character doesn't and can't think deeply. It doesn't recognize that humans may fear predators beyond it, too, and it's genuinely surprised at the alliance ending. There's some fear in the other good ending, too, as you find an entity you can't quite trust, and you're also surprised a bit by humans in the worst ending. UTB branches economically, which seems right, because too much would belie that you are, well, a simple beast. I think it had more emotional impact that Grue from a few IFComps back. I liked Grue, which sort of relied on the Zork canon, and one suspects a Grue doesn't really have the intelligence for parser-style commands. There your goal was to escape, and that was it. Here the main character here has more dimensions that go beyond "animals have feelings too," so UTB is great value for the time spent to reach all the endings. It's not intended to be cheery, of course, but it never dumps angst and violence and gore on you, and I appreciated the restraint along with the possibility of not-fully-happy endings.
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Spooky art enlivens a dark fairy tale, December 21, 2022(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2022's IFComp).
I always feel a bit like a fraud when I play work of IF and my strongest reaction is to look at the art and go “oooh, pretty” – like I’m getting distracted by superficial fripperies instead of engaging with the words and mechanics that are the bread and butter of the genre. But hopefully that’s a forgivable response to something as lovely as Under the Bridge, a short you-are-the-monster Twine game whose creepily evocative animated drawings instantly communicate, and deepen, the vibe.
That isn’t to say that the premise or writing are bad – far from it! I actually really like the setup, which has an elemental, fairy-tale power to it. You play a man-eating beast who’s been driven from their usual abode by perfidious humans, and find shelter under a bridge. Three times passers-by tromp across the bridge, and three times, you can choose how and whether to reveal yourself, when to speak and when to feast. There aren’t a lot of words wasted communicating this minimalist setup, but those that are there are used to good effect. Here’s the aftermath of my first attack, spare prose detailing the wildlife around the bridge:
Frogs with too large eyes, flies that congregate at the left-over pieces of flesh, birds that caw a little too loudly through the quiet forest.
The gameplay is grabby too. You almost always just have two choices of just two or three words each, but the author does a good job of conveying the stakes for your decisions while providing all the information the monster should have – sometimes you need to act under conditions of ambiguity, but it feels fair because the uncertainty feels baked into the situation, rather than being introduced by the author to make you sweat over your options. And the choices feel like they matter; I only played once, but I get the sense that there are a number of different potential endings (I got an accommodationist one where I made a deal with the villagers only to eat the bad people, because even when play-acting as a cannibalistic abomination I can’t stop being a boring liberal).
But as I said, all this pales next to the art. The first image you see when starting the game is an antlered skull rendered in a black-on-black scrawl, with stark white eyes and a queasily animated halo flickering behind its horns – if I saw that coming at me from under a bridge, you’d better believe I’d run. There are similar images interspersed through the story, all working from the same limited palette and establishing a richly threatening energy that nicely accentuates the text (the flip side of this emphasis on aesthetics is that there are blurred-text animations that fire off between passages – this technique is a near cousin go the hated timed-text mechanic, but thankfully the transitions run sufficiently quickly that they don’t get annoying).
This year had some great EctoComp games, so those in the market for something spooky are spoiled for choice, but regardless Under the Bridge has you covered for getting into the Halloween spirit – it’s a moody little slice of horror that’s as assured a debut as you’re likely to see from a first-time author.
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Billy Goat Gruff Reboot, November 25, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
A very short mood piece with some sharp if narrow observations to convey. As a web-driven experience I appreciated the integrated mood audio and the restrained but clever use of font (especially dug the protagonists’ ‘voice’) and layout. The art was hit or miss, with the notable exception of the various renderings of the monster protagonist, which I found compelling and evocative.
Taken together with the prose, the whole package effectively conveyed an underlying melancholy behind a handful of setpiece encounters. The experience was brief - in a half hour I completed 7 or 8 circuits and got 5 different endings, with little left unexplored (I think). This tight scope and short duration achieved a slightly different effect than many “Play Again?” prompt games. Rather than a time loop or full narrative reset effect, this rather felt like exploring a multiverse where we are granted a god’s eye view of all possible outcomes of this combination of character and situations. While simultaneously building some larger understandings.
What sparked my joy was how these runs, most especially the endings, played off not only each other, but more significantly off the protagonist and NPC expectations and biases that are revealed across the runs. A single run showcased a moody cause and effect chain. Across all runs, a full and consistent picture of the protagonist, the world, and human society is assembled and contrasted to intrinsic biases. Because this feels like the ace in the piece’s sleeve, I am reluctant to write more clearly about it. Thematic spoilers are real things too! Suffice to say there is more subtlety here than its form and scope would suggest.
I don’t want to oversell it - this is a very brief piece, with limited meaningful choices. It is not a puzzle to solve, or maybe is at its best when it doesn’t have to be. I appreciate that it builds some sharp commentary and effective mood with relatively few moving parts. It is a melancholy short story I was glad to spend time with, but probably won’t need to revisit.
Played: 10/4/22
Playtime: 30 min, 5 endings
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Seamless
Would Play Again? No, experience seems complete
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Survival of the Creepiest, November 5, 2022In Under the Bridge you’re a (small) eldritch abomination, one of the last of your kind, and you’ve taken shelter under a bridge in a forest. But bridges bring humans, and if sufficiently frightened humans will bring other humans with swords. (Humans are also delicious. Choices, choices.)
What I Liked
This is a very stylish Twine game! I normally get cranky about white-on-black color schemes (it’s not my fault it gives me eye strain!) but in this case it feels like a deliberate design choice instead of an author forgetting to change the default Sugarcube settings. This is backed up by a number of white-on-black illustrations of our monster and the situations it winds up in, which are simultaneously very creepy and absolutely adorable. The background sounds are also 1) togglable and 2) change per node depending on the mood the author wants to set, which is fantastic. Text colors and effects are also used well.
The writing is also a delight here – the plot is fairly thin (as expected for a game of this length) so it focuses more on showing events from our monster’s point of view. Writing inhuman protagonists that feel properly inhuman is always a challenge, and I think it’s done well here.
What I Didn’t
Replayability is hampered by the fact that the early game doesn’t change much regardless of your choices. You play through a series of events and your only choices are how to react. The first two events happen roughly the same way each playthrough and significant branching only happens after you’ve completed them, which starts to drag after going through the game 2-3 times. Having the undo button present helps, but I would have liked to see more cosmetic variation in the second event or at least a way to skip the intro on subsequent playthroughs.
A pleasantly creepy multimedia experience, October 29, 2022I'd first like to say that the art, animation, and audio for this game are very well done. I loved the style, and would be happy to see it again; it's unique, I haven't seen other games with the scribbly dark figures.
You play as a dangerous and large being that is hunting for food by a bridge. Humans pass by, and you can decide how to act towards them.
I played through to one positive ending (villager ending 1), but the way the game reacted to my choices made me feel like there were many very different endings. That's pretty cool!
There were some typos here and there (like "One of the small humans'", with an extra apostrophe). Overall, it was fairly brief. But what is here is excellent.
the monster under the bridge finds a home, October 19, 2022CW: gore, violence
You, the narrator, are the monster under the bridge. Prowling in the night to catch unwary travellers.
There is gore; the narrator is a man-eating monster, after all, but the prose reads almost a nature documentary - not revelling in the gore, but framing it as a necessity.
Little bells and whistles: simple text effects which some might find distracting; hand-drawn illustrations which I quite enjoyed.
This story had clear branching and multiple endings which encourages replay, some endings more unexpected than others.
1-7 of 7 | Return to game's main page