Android Quick App: X Construction

X Construction is a titular, physics-based game focused around building a safe enough bridge for a train to pass over it without plunging to its doom. It's entertaining, challenging, and definitely tongue-in-cheek, which makes it definitely worth your time.

The object is straightforward: build construct a bridge stable enough to ferry your train across the chasm beneath it without your passengers falling to their demise. You'd think that's unnecessarily simple until you remember there's physics in the game, so if your bridge isn't structurally sound, it'll creak, lean, turn red, and break.

You're limited by how many girders you have, which requires a bit of forward-thinking on your part, but you're always appropriated a couple of pieces more than you need, so if you find yourself running out, you're doing it wrong. Fortunately, the little wrench button lets you erase ill-placed girders and return them to your count, so you've got as many tries as you need.

Constructing bridges is easy enough. Make sure you've got the girder icon selected, tap a point to place your girder, and drag to either make it longer or change it's angle. You'll want to keep them touching one another (indicated by a green circle where two points touch) as well as make sure you've got endpoints anchored to the white dots that speckle the levels. With that in mind, you now know how to play.

The folks who made this game obviously have a bit of a dark side, you'll notice, as whenever your train doesn't make it from Point A to Point B, the passengers all scream as they plummet to their doom, with not-so-realistic metallic, crunching noises accompanying them. It's kind of funny the first time, but totally caught me off guard. To add insult to injury, you get a nice big "Fail" message when you've done just that, to really drive the point home.

Completing a level isn't nearly as dramatic, but you do get points for how many pieces of girder you didn't use as well as how much stress your bridge was under over the course of the train ride. Plus, you unlock the next level, so that's always good.

A scant $1.43 nets you the full version, which is ad-free, has a "free build" mode, and is guaranteed "more levels and materials in future updates," says CrossConstruct. Perhaps a better motivation is the fact that save states between the free version and the paid version aren't compatible, so once you rock through the free one, you'll have to start all over again once you pony up the dough.

At any rate, this game is very fun, especially if you're into mind-benders and physics-based games. It's pretty cheap, so there's no real reason to not go for it, in my opinion. Twenty-one levels await your completion, so hop to it. The train's a-waiting.

Pictures and download links are after the break.