Digital Meccano
I actually had more access to Lego than Meccano, and Lego has the cooler stuff these days, but meccano was the route to real engineering achievement when I was a kid.
Computer games have often moved into the construction toy realm and having some form of user accessible editor or general content creation ability is now seen as a potential gold-mine considering the longevity it can give to a core product. Games like SimCity or Railroad Tycoon offer some elements of the construction as gameplay aesthetic, but pure expressions of build-to-win are surprisingly rare and often obscure gems. So I’m always pleased to find one, and this post is about just such a find.
The other day I picked up a link to “Golf?” from a game developer forum, which is an interesting take on the golf game, and worthy of praise, but not really something that would get me to pull out my credit card. However, someone made the comment that it was partly developed by Chronic Logic “who did that bridge building game”. Now that got me interested.
I’d heard of Chronic Logic before, but in relation to the release of Gish, a game that caused something of a stir in the indie game dev scene, but I hadn’t been drawn into checking out any more of their games. So, on Saturday morning, I went a googling and foud their site and indeed, some bridge-building games. I downloaded the demo of Bridge Construction Set and gave it a bit of a try out…
…I only managed to escape the zone of my laptop to get something to eat about 12 hours later. In the intervening period I must have bought the game, but I don’t really remember too well. I slept pretty badly, forced awake a couple of times to try out a new REM-induced truss design on Hard level 6 — which I still haven’t completed.
The game graphics are functional at best, the interface is almost vi-like in its demands on the user and it even has a separate configuration program that doesn’t support my laptop’s resolution at all. It’s clunky and amateur and it doesn’t even live up to accepted minimums of shareware user-friendliness, but it offers core game idea that ensures that most people who want to play it will push through these issues as minor annoyances and gladly hand over their 20 dollars U.S.. I would explain more about the game, but there really isn’t much more to be said — you build bridges and then see if they work. If that idea appeals at all, go and grab the trial — just don’t do it if you’re planning to get anything done soon afterwards.
