The Bridge Tolls For Me

Intro

"The Bridge Tolls For Me" was developed by philteredkhaos using RPG Maker MV for that was based on the Insanity Jam Game Idea Generator. A game jam where developers are tasked with making games based on ideas generated by a random theme generator. A task that can lead to ridiculous themes like the following: A rail shooter game where you reject hobbits above a cafeteria while the same hobbits add you. Suffice to say it means the games generated by this process are meant to be inherently comedic and rather wonky in terms of their mechanics. And in some cases the themes seem inherently contradictory. Though how well this game follows the generated idea isn't exactly clear since the developer never gives away what their exact theme was.

Story
Summary

You play as Samantha and Yo-Yo, a pair of foodies, that want to take part in the Grand Opening of a new restaurant called Chokey Chicken. Of course along the way shenanigans ensue when the pair discover the bridge you need to cross to get the restaurant is now a toll bridge. This results in them both ultimately getting out of the car and trying to investigate the matter by tracking down the new owner of the road whose decided to block off track while he's doing some work in a nearby building. Of course, this results in a chase as we try and catch up to the guy and give him a piece of our mind.

Strengths/Weaknesses

On the plus side this game's entire story is utterly absurd. As such it is mildly amusing to experience. Unfortunately this is undermined by a lot of baffling gameplay design decisions that manage to suck all of the fun out of this game.

Gameplay

At first glance this game is pretty straight-forward with some pretty basic block pushing puzzles and a mini-game where you need to dodge traffic. Unfortunately while the block pushing puzzles are basic. The developer also ensured that most of them resulted in game ending issues if you messed up.



A good example of this is the first block pushing puzzle you come across. If you accidentally push this block against the bottom wall it's game over. That's because there's no key for resetting the puzzle nor can you leave this room in order to reset the puzzle. Your only course of action if you push the block against the wall is to close the game and start over from the beginning. At least if you could save these sorts of issues would be less problematic, but as it stands there way more annoying then they have to be. Of course, the final block pushing puzzle manages to be the absolute worst.



At first glance it does look like it would be possible to reset this puzzle by leaving the room and reentering, but if you attempt to do this you'll find you can't actually reenter this room. You'll also stumble into a graphical glitch where you'll see a second copy of Yo-Yo just hanging out near the door whose stuck in an endless walk cycle but never actually moves.



You can also screw up this puzzle by accidentally pushing the puzzle to the left of the console against the wall. This is an issue since it means it can't slide over when you put the two angel statues in the right place and thus the game is also effectively over since you can't reset this puzzle.

On the plus side the car dodging mini-game doesn't contain any game breaking bugs, but it's still buggy in a lot of ways. For starters the rules on what forces you to restart isn't entirely clear since your sometimes forcefully reset after bumping a car's front end while other times you can drive through a car and continue you playing. The game's controls also become unresponsive if there are too many cars on screen in my experience and sometimes you'll see cars on top of each other which causes the game to become a bit laggy if there are enough of them piled on top of each other.

Thankfully that last few puzzles are a lot simpler and as far as I'm aware they won't result in a game ending bug, but I haven't tested them either since I really don't want to spend ten minutes playing through a game in order to test them for game breaking bugs either.

Graphics and Sound

As far as I'm aware the game relies entirely on the RTP as well as edits to the RTP for these aspects of the game. On the plus side these assets are decent enough, but at the same time they kind of get old after a while since you'll see them a lot if you've played a lot of games made with the RTP for RPG Maker MV.

Conclusion

If this game didn't contain so many game breaking bugs I'd have a lot more favorable opinion of it. After all, it would be a short comedy game that takes around 10 to 15 minutes to beat about a pair of people trying to go to a restaurant whose name alone would be enough to make me want to avoid it. After all, who would want to go to a restaurant with a name that implies they choke your chosen chicken before your very eyes?

I suppose I shouldn't be so sensitive about seeing my future meal die in front of me, but it's a lot easier to eat something when you didn't see it's face beforehand in my opinion. At any rate this game contains way too many game breaking bugs for me to recommend it even if it is short.