Overload Canyon

Route 66 washed out. Build it back.

• Build: drag pieces between joints on a 1 m grid, anchored to the cliffs. Road (the truck drives on it), wood (cheap, weak when crushed), steel (strong, pricey), cable (pulls only, long reach), spring (gives and pushes back). The budget plate counts what you spend, and GO is refused over budget or without a road deck.
• GO: a loaded 1950s flatbed drives across. Every member shows its load as it bends: cyan when stretched, orange-red when crushed. Overloaded members snap with splinters and sparks.
• First break: when a bridge fails, the first piece that snapped is marked with a pulsing ring, a red outline and a FIRST BREAK plate naming the piece. After the wreck the camera swings back to that spot and the result screen names it. RETRY keeps the marker on that piece in build mode until you replace it or press GO again.
• Win by reaching the checkered flag. One to three stars by how far under budget you came. Winning unlocks the next crossing, and your best stars and cost are saved.

Levels: Bridge Out (12 m), Dry Gulch (18 m), Coyote Towers (22 m, concrete towers for cables), Red Wall Pier (28 m, a rock pier mid-canyon) and Overload Canyon (32 m, a loaded fuel tanker).

Controls: mouse to build (left-drag to place, right-click to remove), 1 to 5 to pick a piece, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y to undo and redo, wheel to zoom, right or middle drag to pan, Space for GO and STOP. Settings has volume sliders and a colour-blind stress look.

Build your own bridge game with these parts

Everything the game runs on is a published package from the Span & Strain world, free to install, change and build on:

• trussPhysics: 2D truss and bridge physics. Members bend, buckle, go slack and snap into dangling halves under load.
• gridBuilder: build mode for joint-and-member games: grid snapping, a validating ghost showing length and cost, remove, undo and redo, mouse, keyboard, gamepad and touch controls, and a build camera.
• stressView (1.2.2): draws the truss as a detailed 3D bridge with stretched and crushed colour families, glow halo, break sparks and snap sounds. The look you see here.
• trussVehicles: swappable vehicles (cargo truck, delivery van, three-axle fuel tanker) that drive across and load the deck, each with its own sounds.
• canyonMaker: a procedural desert canyon with layered sandstone cliffs, a river gorge, road approaches, anchor hardware, a finish flag, ambience and lighting looks.
• levelFlow: level progression: title, level select, budget checks, stars by cost, unlocks and saved progress.

To use one, search ZeroMind for its name from your own world (or open the ZeroMind panel) and install it; each package's README walks through a five-minute first use.