Tricky Bridge: Learn & Play

This app has to have one of the best tutorials I’ve ever seen in any game. Bridge can be a fairly tricky (heh) game to learn, but the devs here have managed to teach this incredibly rewarding and strategic card game in an accessible and fun way. The theme is a nice touch and the UX is impeccable—down to the perfectly concise tutorial messages. Each minute or so long lesson breaks down every major concept and rule in the game into a digestible and playable form. You’re not just being dictated rules and strategies, you’re actually playing them out as part of the teach. It’s really an entertaining and productive way to learn. Absolutely impressive UX and design work y’all, seriously. MOh and thankfully you can play this in portrait mode. Tricky Bridge is my Roman Empire. It’s sad that Bridge seems to have become oddity that think you heard grandma mention or gets confused with Cribbage. But it’s apps like this that show how much more interesting and deep the classic games are than we younger peeps realize. This game is as deep (if not deeper) and worthwhile than your favorite TCG or deckbuilder. If you play chess or poker, I’d highly recommend you check this out, as Bridge has deductive strategy and tactics, juicy bidding verging on telepathy, and crunchy card play. Don’t worry too much that it’s a team game. Trickybot is an excellent partner.

There is a plethora of card games in the Apple Store from which to choose, many are efficient at killing time on your phone when you’re bored, but rarely do they move beyond the screen and into real life. Like many traditional card games of the last century (and beyond), Bridge has gone from niche to novelty to oddity. That’s where “Tricky Bridge” comes in. Players are introduced to the game of Bridge via the world of “Tricky Bot”, whose fellow characters embody the tension between the old and the new and yet help to bridge that gap in a very real way. By learning how to play the game virtually they are also learning how to play it in real life. All it takes is buying a deck of cards, gathering a group of friends together, and start bidding. And if those friends don’t know how to play Bridge, then it’s the perfect opportunity to share “Tricky Bridge” with them. The strength of this game is its well-developed narrative (storytelling sells, no matter what the curmudgeons say) and I would love to see where the story continues to go (albeit I just finished the Red Club competition). One request I do have is to compile a “Tricky Bridge Handbook” that has the definitions of key terms that are presented to us in the “Learn” mode. I would like to reference it while playing via the game as well as in real life. Thank you for composing such a lovely work of art which does such an effective job bridging the gap between teaching and entertaining.

Tricky Bridge succeeds on several levels: beautiful interface, great competitive feedback and tournament modes, and a sure-footed bridge bot AI that makes few errors or head-scratching bids. For beginners, the lesson mode is a nice intro to basic concepts, more than sufficient to get someone into the shallow end of the pool. On the whole, the app is a joy to use as a single-player bridge experience. I’ve played daily for several weeks and was almost immediately persuaded to sign up for the one-year package. A few quibbles that I hope will be ironed out over time: The “nice bid” signal, which I gather is supposed to signify a “correct” bid under SAYC, does not seem to trigger nearly often enough, which leads to extraordinarily slow progress in mastering the various bids on the cheat sheet. The Knockouts Tournament function, which I generally like, seems to auto-enroll me in first-round matches, leading to forfeit losses after 24 hours without my knowing that I am matched. And a profile badge exists for winning a Knockouts Tournament, but it hasn’t checked off even after a few four-win successes. I would also love to see more complex lessons, and implementation of a puzzle mode offering a challenging “deal of the day” that could be run through repeatedly. But none of these wish-list items detract from a much-deserved five-star review.