Game Review: King of the Bridge

In King of the Bridge, you are a traveler trying to cross a bridge - only to be challenged by the bridge troll to a contest. But this troll doesn't care for riddles. His poison of choice is chess. Troll chess to be specific.

You begin to play, only to quickly stumble across a realization: The rules of troll chess are quite unlike the ones you know, and breaking any of them - knowingly or now - counts as cheating. And when one player cheats, the other may also cheat once in turn as punishment. Promptly, the bridge troll moves one of his pieces all across the board and past all obstacles to take your king. You lost.

You try again and again, each short run revealing new rules. Sometimes because you cheat on accident, sometimes because the troll does something outrageous. If you cheat, you lose. But if you realize that the troll cheated, you can also accuse him of doing so. And if you're right, you get to cheat and perform whatever move you want. So you take his king and... ah. If the troll loses his king, another one of his pieces turns into the king. You need to take them all out.

And so the game takes shape: You need to act according to the rules (which are added to the rulebook as you discover them), while being on the lookout for the troll's cheating attempts to take advantage of the reprisal.

I found the game quite enjoyable. For about 3€ you can enjoy a unique experience that will last you 1-3 hours for the core content, more if you go achievement hunting.