That School Is VERY Haunted : A The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

I'm a huge fan of horror movies and I distinctly recall hearing of the release of The Bridge Curse back in 2020. For reasons I don't think I need to get into here, 2020 was a really strange year and I didn't watch the movie at the time. I probably would've forgotten all about it, but I was surprised to learn that it was receiving a video game adaptation titled The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation (Hereafter simply referred to as "The Bridge Curse".) by Taiwanese developer SoftStar (The same company behind the Xuan-Yuan Sword and Sword and Fairy series.), and it was being published on consoles by EastAsiaSoft. Said game came out last year, and there was even a sequel released just a few weeks ago, but this is a review for that first game of course. It ultimately tells a tale far different than the movie, but I guess we'll get more in that later on. It's currently available on every major platform, and we're going to be taking a look at the Nintendo Switch version today. There's a lot of ground to cover in this one, so let's dive right in!

There's actually some pretty dark scenes here...

So it begins...

The Bridge Curse tells the story of six students in various classes of Tung Hu University. It's that time for their school to hold a festival, and they're planning a spooky event that centers on one of their school's ghostly legends. It's said that if you perform a specific ritual at the bridge at midnight, then climb the thirteen steps from the bridge, that a fourteenth step will then appear. From there you must make sure to not turn around or you may attract the ghost to you, or then again you can do just that if you're not scared. The six students plan to hold a dry run of the event, and even have all sorts of staged surprises to add to the overall suspense. Things suddenly take a strange turn as those surprises turn out to be far more real than they hoped they would be, but by then it's too late. Perhaps through accidentally performing the ritual correctly, or simply upsetting the ghosts with their unbelief, they've awakened something within the school. Our group of friends include HsinChiao Chao, the event livestreamer and first character we play as, DeCyuan Ji, the hottest guy at school and sort of the main male character, BoRu Meng, the calm law student, WenYao Li, the "victim" in their dry run of the event, TienMing Li, the superstitious one who always wears a GuanYu talisman, and LinEn Cheng, the girl who was supposed to dress up as the ghost before things got a bit too real. From there the story takes plenty of turns as we learn more about the Bridge Ghost herself, the relationships between the characters, and lots more. Tung Hu University is quite the spooky campus too as there are actually six ghosts that haunt it. Some of these ghosts are more dangerous than others, but rest assured there will be more encounters than simply those involving the Bridge Ghost. Even though I want to go a bit more into the story, I think I'll leave most of it for players to discover for themselves. While a bit on the complicated side, I found that the story was by far the best aspect of the game. It's what kept me playing to the end, and it far outpaces anything the movie version has to offer. I'm getting ahead of myself though, so let's move on and discuss gameplay next.

Lots of urban legends.

Go!

Though The Bridge Curse has a lot of horror gameplay elements that I'll get to in a bit, it plays more like a third-person adventure game at times, sort of in the style of a TellTale Game like The Walking Dead. You'll mostly be walking through a pre-determined set of areas, interacting with people and objects, and trying to find the next clickable thing that will move the game along. Character interactions will occur of course, but a lot of the gameplay comes by way of interacting with the environment. There are puzzles to solve too, and a small bit of inventory management to deal with as well. There are optional areas and items to pick up, but you're often very limited in where you can go. This means that you don't have to worry too much if you're told to go to a place where you have no idea where it's located, as the game will always tell you that you're going the wrong way if you wander too far off the selected path. Even interacting with characters and certain objects can be limited, as you'll often only be able to do so from a specific side or angle. This is usually due to the fact that said interaction kicks off a cinematic cutscene that requires specific positioning, but it's still a bit weird. All of this together gives the game far more of an interactive movie vibe than anything else, but I'm not exactly saying that I think of that as a negative. There's a lot to like here, and part of that is the way the game splits up the journey.

While you start the game as HsinChiao, you actually will eventually take on the POV of all the main characters. Don't get too excited though, as they all play essentially the same. Each do have their own cell phones though, and you can actually read messages there that are specific to them. The game is separated into several chapters, and you'll jump between each of the characters as needed. There's some overlap in the time frame each chapter takes place in, making things a bit hard to keep track of, but overall I found it to be a very neat way to tell a story. Besides the adventure-style stuff I mentioned earlier, most chapters involve your current character coming into contact with at least one of the campus' ghosts. These ghostly encounters will result in a game over if they're not played correctly, and they're honestly my least favorite aspect of the game. Each time a ghost appears, there are usually two ways to get it to leave. The first involves finding a series of items that essentially banish it, and the second is simply running away to a safe location. You'll of course have far more direct encounters with the ghosts by the end of the game, but that's going a bit into spoiler territory. Finding items to banish a ghost is a matter of trial and error, and at the very least can be pulled off rather quickly if you're lucky. Escaping a ghost through that second method is a bit more complicated though, and I think it deserves a far more specific examination. So let's do exactly that next.

The Curse of Five.

Get used to these screens.

Getting chased by a ghost in The Bridge Curse is probably the most direct form of "actual" gameplay you'll encounter, but it's also the clunkiest. Most ghost encounters occur in open areas like the titular bridge, or the school's rooftop. Your goal is usually to escape to somewhere safe on the campus, usually marked by a scene transition, though there are some occasions where the ghost will chase you for far longer. Notably, each ghost encounter usually takes place in an area that has a conveniently-placed maze attached to it, and there will usually be hiding places scattered about that you can use. Hiding works similar to games like Haunting Ground, where you step into tight spaces like closets or portable toilets, and you can often trick ghosts who definitely should've seen you go into them. Speaking of which, the real goal is to actually stay out of a ghost's line of sight, so simply crouching behind things in a very Clock Tower way is the other main tactic to use. Moving slowly will also attract less attention if you're trying to sneak by them, and you can combine that with the crouch to crawl. All of that sounds good on paper, but it's also all stuff I rarely bothered with. My favorite tactic in these situations was to run, and run fast, and barring a couple very specific scenarios, it always worked. I get what the game was going for adding in all the extra elements, but the gameplay is simply not tight enough to allow them to work effectively. Most ghost encounters don't happen slowly, the ghost already sees you and it's moving at you at full speed, so I'm not even sure when it is that I'm supposed to duck and hide. I know for sure that I never really found an opportunity to do so safely. This entire chase mechanic also has a very Scooby Doo feel to it, especially if you actually play through them the way the game wants you to. They're by the far the weakest part of the game in my opinion, and they're unfortunately several of these sequences scattered throughout each chapter.

Hiding from the ghosts.

This makes sense.

Despite the fact that I'm not a fan of the ghost encounters in The Bridge Curse, I will say that I think it's a great game overall. Watching the movie it’s based on is not necessary to enjoy the experience here, but doing so showed me how SoftStar was able to take a rather simple premise and make it something that was interesting and unique. Yes, the beginning chapters felt a bit drawn out the way everyone is constantly trying to meet up again, but it takes similar story beats from the movie and delivers them in a far better way. The addition of other campus ghosts was a nice touch too, and the characters have far more depth in the game than in the movie. I mentioned the Telltale game thing earlier, and I can't help but wish that the game had gone all in on that gameplay style. While I understand that it's fallen out of favor in recent years, it would've suited it perfectly. I guess that's asking for a completely different game, but I can't help but think that The Bridge Curse falls just a bit short of being an amazing game. It's still great, but it falters a bit at being both a well-paced adventure game, and in being a spooky survival horror game.

I think I have a tough job when it comes to discussing visuals, as I played The Bridge Curse on what has to be the least optimized platform possible. Overlooking the fact that the graphics were probably very turned down to have it run on the Switch, I can at least say that the game ran perfectly fine without any hiccups. Load times were a bit on the long side, but I'm not sure that wasn't the case across the board. Outside of that, the explorable sections of Tung Hu University are all very finely detailed. There's lots to see throughout each location, and more than a few Easter eggs for observant players. Some locations are even one-to-one recreations of what can be found in the movie, although most locations are utilized in completely different ways in-game. I found that in particular to be a very neat addition to the game, even if it doesn't really affect anything. The character designs aren't exactly spectacular, and that goes for the ghosts too, but they're more than serviceable as well. While some of the characters differ from their movie versions, I'm willing to assume that it had more to do with legal reasons than a lack of being faithful to the source material. I guess it's a situation of the devil being in the details, and in that sense the game definitely delivers in more ways than one.

Too close!

That's a very timely reference.

Even though I had misgivings about how I was going to discuss The Bridge Curse's graphics, I'm at an even bigger loss when it comes to discussing its sound design. The Bridge Curse is clearly going for a high tension set-up that is meant to make the use of jump scares very easy. The problem is that it sort of fails on both of those fronts. Instead of the silence before the scare, the game is pretty much just silent 80% of the time, with no payoff at the end. There will be some music here and there to accentuate a scene or two, but much of the game's exploration is done with no accompanying soundtrack at all. There isn't even much in the way of atmospheric noises to pull back on the silence a bit. I probably wouldn't mind this as much if at least it added to the jump scare, but those lack any real sting as well. It's funny because I'm no fan of cheap jump scares, but even I'll admit that they're not at all hard to pull off. The movie had several that worked exactly as intended, but the game just sort of throws things at you, gives you the lightest of music stings to go along with it, and expects you to jump out of your seat. Needless to say, it never succeeded on that front. Though the game does have its share of creepy and unsettling moments, they did not come by way of the atmospheric take on sound design, nor its attempted use of jump scares.

I went into The Bridge Curse expecting to experience the game entirely in Chinese, but was surprised to learn that it had an English language option. It's not a very good dub by any stretch of the imagination, but it honestly isn't bad either. I ended up ditching it not because of the quality of the acting, but because the POV character in each chapter seemed to be weirdly quieter than everyone else in their scenes, and this wasn't something shared with the Chinese language option. No matter which option you choose though, you'll be fine. The names are pronounced fairly well in the English language version, which leads me to believe that it was probably recorded in Taiwan using local talent. That's neither here nor there, but I thought it was worth at least mentioning. My only small gripe would have to be that I didn't realize that the game had a Chinese option at all since you don't get to choose at the start of the game, it simply defaults to English whenever a new game is selected. Also, you can't change the language within the game itself, you have to go back to the main menu for that. That slight annoyance aside, I applaud the game for its inclusion of both tracks.

What is this conversation?

Weird door is weird.

Beating The Bridge Curse will take most players about 3-4 hours, depending on how well they do the ghost chase sections, and how often they get lost. There is a special ending you get if you find every item within the game, but you're able to simply revisit each chapter directly without having to restart the game if you missed anything. I think the game offers an excellent, if slightly unpolished, experience overall. With that in mind, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about its current $29.99 price tag on consoles. I actually got more than a bit of sticker shock after learning of its price, and couldn't help but feel that $19.99 would've suited it far better. I guess I'm not alone in that regard, as you can actually pick it up on Steam for exactly that price. Console "taxes" are nothing new, but it just feels off considering how small of a game this is. I know that it got a physical release on consoles, and that means it has to adjust the price for that retail price point, but it still feels a tad over-priced. My advice would be to only pick it up if you can find it on sale, or you could just go out and grab that physical copy that probably started all this in the first place.

Believe it or not a sword is involved.

Is it?

Considering that I had no big issues with The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation overall, except for maybe its gameplay focus, it shouldn't come as any surprise that I give it a full recommendation. It's a great adventure-style horror game, and it's done in a style not often seen. It tells its story far better than the movie it’s based on, though you can definitely give it a view too after you're finished with it for some additional supplementary material. Also, it isn't exactly a difficult game, and can serve as a neat entry point for those new to the genre. Pick it up on whatever platform you can, and thank me later. See you in the next one! Maybe that next one will be this game's sequel!

Check Out The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-bridge-curse-road-to-salvation-switch/

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Story: A
Gameplay: B
Graphics: A-
Music/Sound: C
Value: B

Overall: B+

Pros:
+ An interesting mix of adventure and survival horror gameplay.
+ Has an amazing story that's full of all sorts of twists, turns, and surprises.
+ Each of the characters is well-developed, and we learn all about them by the end of the game.
+ Though the graphics aren't the best on the Switch, the game has a fine level of detail, and even recreates many locations from the movie.
+ There's a lot of bonus content to find, with a special ending even given as a reward for completionists.
+ There are some genuinely spooky moments to be had, and its setting and themes are sure to be unique for Western players.
+ Has both Chinese and English language options, and both tracks are done well.

+/- Though the comparison isn't necessary, The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation tells a far better story than The Bridge Curse movie.

Cons:
- The ghost chase sequences are very clunky and were my least favorite aspect of the game.
- There are long stretches of the game where you'll be playing mostly in silence.
- Feels more like an interactive movie than a video game at times, and this may upset some players.
- It's current $29.99 price tag on consoles feels a bit high.
- Sadly, the game isn't truly as scary as it could be.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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This is me when I'm hungry.