The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation Review

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation bases its premise on a supposed real world Taiwanese legend, whereby ascending the 13 steps on the bridge at Tung Hu University at midnight will reveal an extra, hidden 14^th step. Turning around, the person will be faced with a ghost that will either curse or kill them. It’s typical fodder for the nearby university students to spread rumours and ‘sightings’, but also is just vague enough to make actually being there (I imagine) quite unnerving. A few jump scares from friends or pre-placed props could be enough to put the frights into someone who’s willing to believe.

This is the premise for the games set up; a group of kids at the university decide to try and create a film of the sightings, with a dose of props and movie magic. Naturally, things aren’t quite as pretend as they expect, and over roughly six hours we flit between each of the characters to experience their current perspective on things, from non-believers to those who may have been more directly affected by the ghost.

Sadly, the premise and idea is far more interesting than the execution. While it has its moments, there’s a lot of tedium involved in The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation. For the most part we’re slowly moving about the campus in search of a few key items to progress the story. While they’re not hard to find, they also can be put in locations that don’t make much sense; one example had us needing five documents that one of the characters told us she’d just printed out. However, these were nowhere near the printer, and instead were scattered about the room, obvious in its attempt to try and pad things out slightly, but coming off as more tedious than anything else.

Other times items will be in a drawer or closet just because, or we’ll need to go to a whole new room or building to fetch one thing before trapsing back. Obviously The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation is far from the only game to do this, but it feels even more forced here, and often doesn’t amount to much other than pad out some game time.

Occasionally we’re thrown into some danger, and somehow these segments come off even worse. Whether it be the ghost or some other apparition, we enter a sequence where we need to run and hide in order to survive. The thing is, these are seemingly designed for repetition, often throwing unavoidable changes in scenery or pathways to block us in. I very nearly gave up before it all began at the first of these sequences – it was unclear where I needed to head, and the ghost is able to phase through scenery that we can’t get past (such as small bushes or ledges) meaning if we stop for even a moment we get caught.

While I got there in the end, each one of these sequences we encounter throughout the game are more an exercise in (here it comes again) tedium than scares. A couple of times I got a little jump when something would pop out, but that usually meant death, at which point I’d have to repeat the whole section again before the next random death – and so on and so forth.

It would help if there were some clearly established rules around the stealth aspects, but despite being able to crouch and walk slowly, it was too hit and miss as to whether we’d get seen or not. The final stretch, where we’re avoiding a stalking predator through a series of corridors, fares better by being more transparent about its rules, and was actually enjoyably tense as a result. It’s just a shame that the prior encounters weren’t as well paced and thought out.

Conclusion

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation isn’t without some charm though, the retelling of this story goes some dark and strange places, and the acting is enjoyably cheesy for the most part. There are moments where it threatens to ramp things up in the gameplay department, but it’s not long before we’re into another boring chase sequence to slowly try and figure out. It’s short enough to power through if you really want to experience the story, but there are far better titles in the genre out there to play.