🏗️ They made a game where you build a MONSTER HOUSE!?

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Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where bridges dangle over valleys, houses eat their guests, and ghosts still can’t meet building code.

This week we’re soaring over China’s engineering marvels, dunking on some over-designed footbridges, and even building a haunted house (because apparently my degree didn’t cover ghost-proofing). From kilometre-long suspension spans to cursed Möbius loops, it’s a full load test of both structure and sanity.

Grab your hard hat, your sense of humour, and maybe a spirit level, you’re going to need all three.

👉 Read on for monster houses, mega bridges, and mild chaos.

👻 This week’s giveaway: Deck of Haunts!

We’re giving away FOUR copies of Deck of Haunts… the spooky deck-building roguelike where you engineer a haunted house that feeds on its guests. Because sometimes, even buildings need a snack.

And now, the moment you’ve been dying for… 🥁

🏆 WINNER: ptoralsabate
🏆 WINNER: qubadah
🏆 WINNER: quinthenolgers
🏆 WINNER: raylan.poole

Check your inboxes for your keys and prepare to construct a monster mansion with the only blueprint that screams back.

Missed out? Don’t worry! More giveaways are creeping up soon!

Want to enter the next one? Vote for a bridge in this week’s poll! 🌉💀

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

Say hello to the Longjiang Bridge in Yunnan Province, China, a suspension bridge that opened in 2016, boasting a main span of 1,196 m and hanging roughly 280 m above the Long River below.

This isn’t just “pretty” for an architect’s Instagram, it’s the real civil-engineering deal: steel, tension, deep foundations, and enough structural efficiency to make your finite-element model weep with joy.

Before this bridge, drivers had to take a massive detour down into the valley. With the bridge, engineers simply said, “Nah, we’ll just hang a kilometre of road in the sky.”

🔩 Engineering Feats

• Main span: 1,196 m – that’s over a kilometre of tensioned steel defying topography.

• Vertical clearance: Around 280 m above the river, that’s higher than the Eiffel Tower.

• Construction: Started in 2011, opened in 2016, a five-year masterclass in suspension bridge design and logistics.

• Impact: Links Baoshan and Tengchong via the S10 Baoteng Expressway, cutting travel time dramatically and connecting communities once separated by brutal terrain. (Yunnan Exploration)

Essentially, the bridge didn’t just span a river, it spanned the patience of everyone who ever had to take the old route.

⚙️ The Takeaway

This project proves that function doesn’t need to apologize for being beautiful.
While some architects chase “form over function,” the Longjiang Bridge reminds us that when engineers lead, form follows function… and function looks awesome.

So next time an architect tells you that “a building must breathe,” just smile, nod, and remember:

Engineers made a mountain passable, and didn’t even need to pick curtain wall colours to do it.

Because when the math is beautiful, you don’t need marble cladding.

Truss me, we’re the reason it stands.

⚡ Cool Links

🏗️ Engineering & Infrastructure

🌉 Guyana opens the new Demerara River Bridge, At nearly 3 km long, this new span replaces a slow floating bridge and becomes Guyana’s biggest transport project yet.

🔥 Scientists forge “superalloy” that refuses to melt. Researchers at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie have created a chromium–molybdenum–silicon alloy that laughs in the face of heat. Unlike nickel-based alloys that tap out around 1,100°C, this one keeps its cool, literally. Turbines might soon run hotter, faster, and cleaner.

⚠️ Craziest Megaprojects of World War 2, a 700 km line of concrete forts that took a decade to build… and about a month to fall. The YouTube channel Megabuilds digs into the colossal logistics, bold design, and spectacular failure of the Maginot Line. Proof that even massive projects can miss the brief.

🎮 Gaming & Indie Update

🎮 Every indie game revealed at the ID@Xbox Fall 2025 Showcase, From cozy builders to surreal puzzle-sims, the showcase was basically “engineer brain candy.”

🧱 26 hidden indie gems launching on Steam this week, A fresh batch of simulation, crafting, and base-building games. Perfect for when you need to “design responsibly”.

🕹️ Cities: Skylines 2 gets major modding update, Mod tools are finally here, now you can fix the traffic your in-game architects ruined.

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

I regret everything...

…squeak!!

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

This week’s indie pick had me swapping blueprints for broomsticks in Deck of Haunts, a roguelike deck builder where you literally engineer a haunted house that feeds on its guests. It’s spooky, it’s weirdly satisfying, and yes… you can actually play as me by entering the code RCEngineer in the settings.

Watch me prove that even haunted architecture needs proper project management:

🎥 They made a game where you build a MONSTER HOUSE!?

Use my code, build your house, and show those ghosts what real structural integrity looks like. 👻

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

Behold: the Ruyi Bridge, a bright red, triple-loop pedestrian bridge dangling 140 metres above the Shenxianju Valley in Zhejiang, China.

Structurally? Fine. Spiritually? Having an identity crisis between sculpture and bridge.

It’s made of intertwining steel walkways that twist, turn, and overlap like an architect’s fever dream after too many espressos. It doesn’t break any span records, but it does break a few ankles from all those stairs. Still, we have to admit, the engineers pulled off some serious geometry gymnastics to make this thing stand without collapsing into modern art.

Final score: 4.1 / 10

Looks great on Instagram, questionable in your structural analysis software.