How to play
- Goal
- Build a bridge the ore caravan can cross, within the gorge's budget.
- How it ends
- A gorge is won when the whole caravan reaches the far bank. If the bridge breaks, nothing is lost: mend it and send the caravan again.
- Record
- The cheapest crossing and the crossing with the fewest pieces for each gorge.
- Choose a material and drag from a gold pin (or from a joint you have made) to where the member should end; or tap a joint, then tap where it ends. Members snap to a half-unit grid and come no longer than the material allows. Only the gold pins hold to the rock, and nothing may pass through rock or through a kept-clear barge channel. Take up removes a member, and any that it alone held; Undo and Redo step back and forth.
- Plank road is the only thing the caravan rolls on, so it must run unbroken from the near pin to the far one. A road on its own sags and snaps: brace it with triangles of timber above or below it, struts from low pins, or rope from high ones. Rope is cheap and strong in a pull but cannot push; iron is the strongest and the dearest. A member costs its length times its price, in silver marks.
- Send the caravan: the ox walks over and the cart rolls behind it, every member showing its strain. The gorge is won when the whole caravan passes the chalk mark on the far bank and the bridge cost no more than the budget. If it fails, stop, mend it and send the caravan again; there is no clock and no luck.
Controls
| Drag from a pin or joint | Lay a member of the chosen material |
|---|---|
| Tap a joint, then tap | Lay a member from it; the new end stays picked up |
| Take up · right-click | Remove a member (and any it alone held) |
| Send the caravan | Play the crossing; Stop returns to building |
| Zoom · drag the sky | On a small screen: look closer, and look around |
| Arrows · Enter | Move the cursor; pick up a joint, then lay to the cursor |
| 1 – 4 | Planks · timber · rope · iron |
| Tab · Delete | Mark a member at the cursor · take it up |
| Z · Y | Undo · redo |
| G · F | Send the caravan (or stop it) · faster |
| R · Escape | Clear the bridge (it asks) · let go, or pause |
The ox, the carts, the wheel, the waystone, the toll-post, the pines, the far mountains, the rock texture, the title backdrop and the sounds come from the Morass warehouse; the gorges, the river and the bridges are drawn by the game. A bridge is sent as its design alone, and the records worker plays the crossing again with the same core before it ranks it. Your progress and the bridge on each gorge stay in this browser under morass.caravan-bridge.v1. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
About Caravan Bridge
A bridge-building game on the Tin Descent, the old ore road down from the Korthen keeps. The spring floods have washed out the spans, and you are a bridgewright of the Drevhold Guild: across each gorge you lay planks, squared timber, tarred rope and black iron between the iron pins set in the granite, then send the caravan over. A blind shaft-ox walks at its one steady pace and hauls a cart heaped with tin ore behind it.
As the cart rolls, every member glows with its strain, from green to amber to red; one pulled or crushed past its strength snaps, and the caravan may follow it into the river. Nothing is lost when it does: the bridge is still there to mend. A crossing is the same to the last bit in every browser, so the same bridge always does the same thing and a failure can be studied and fixed.
There are 120 gorges in eight reaches: short first spans, pins low on the cliff faces, rope from high crags, a stone pier mid-river, the heavy tin carts and iron, a barge channel to keep clear, an overhang to hang from, and two-cart trains on the Tin Descent. Every gorge was crossed by the guild's own bridges within its budget before it shipped. Each keeps a Top 10 for the cheapest crossing and one for the fewest pieces, and the site plays a record bridge's crossing again before it keeps a place.
