If we've learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: "I didn't mean what I just said," and she would say: "It's okay, I understand," and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience.
Braid is a time shifting platformer/puzzle game for the PC and Xbox 360 that is touted as doing for platformers to what Portal did for FPS'. It has it's own sense of style and requires you to think "outside of the box" to solve a few puzzles.
Puzzles are solved through manipulating time and space with rules that change from world to world. The puzzles will change and become harder the further you make it into the later levels.
Braid's gameplay is framed by it's amazing artwork and ambient soundtrack, and bookended by a bitter sweet story.
I found some interesting quotes from the developer at another forum I frequent.
While playing through the first few worlds of Braid, I can't help but notice the references to other 2d platformers, such as the huge "The Princess is in another castle," an homage to the first Super Mario Bros. What other things have influenced the development of Braid, along with your general philosophies on game development?
Too many to mention. Definitely Italo Calvino's book "Invisible Cities" was a core influence, as was Alan Lightman's follow-up book "Einstein's Dreams". Gameplay-wise, Braid came from just thinking about the nature of the laws of our universe (what time is and where it comes from, why the rules of quantum mechanics don't seem to mesh with the macroscopic workings of the universe). With regard to rewind, there was a definite influence from other games (seeing rewind used in games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Blinx: The Time Sweeper, but not really liking the way it was done, and wanting to do it very differently).
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What was your philosophy behind the gameplay itself? Time shifting and puzzle mechanics have been tried before, but very few seem to pull it off as well as Braid does.
Keep in mind that all these puzzles were made by the end of 2005 (and I was showing them at places like the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the GDC), so a lot of the smaller flash games that have been doing time puzzles did it later -- they just have much shorter development cycles!
But there is a core philosophy to Braid's gameplay, which is focus. That means two things. One, that the puzzles you encounter in various worlds are about the specific behavior of time in that world -- there is no puzzle in World 3 that could have been done in World 2, for example. They are in World 3 because that is where they had to be. Two, that there are a minimal number of extraneous objects in the levels. The levels are about presenting the puzzles to you in as simple and clear a manner as possible. It is easy to make any puzzle harder by making it more complicated; it is much more interesting to make a puzzle difficult (or just interesting) by stripping it down to its bare essentials, to distill it down into almost an abstract expression of what the player has to learn from its particular situation.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Eurogamer: 10/10
EDGE: 9/10. Text not online, but summary from a subscriber:Judged purely as a game, it's cunning, ingenious and endlessly surprising. The puzzles are varied, the level design is revelatory and the whole thing clicks together like clockwork. For those only interested in gameplay, it's simply an excellent puzzler-cum-platformer. But there's so much more here, a desire to create a game experience that is more than mere technical craft. That it succeeds in creating an abstract emotional experience, one where each player can find their own level of meaning and personal context, all within the confines of the 2D platformer, is perhaps the most astonishing achievement of all.
Braid is beautiful, entertaining and inspiring. It stretches both intellect and emotion, and these elements dovetail beautifully rather than chaffing against each other. Still wondering if games can be art? Here's your answer.
IGN: 8.8/10Plays upon conventions of Mario, but closer to Portal
Designed just as well as Portal (!!!)
Each level has a new mechanic: act 3's is brilliant - steps to the right advances time, steps to the left reverses it.
Fails somewhat with it's storytelling - "trite in it's self-conscious obscurity"
Story's themes aren't reflected well in-game until the final level.
One of the finest original titles on Xbox Live Arcade.
Quotes:Xbox Live Arcade needs more games like Braid. Heck, gaming on all platforms needs more titles like this. Imaginative, innovative, and engrossing, Braid is a spectacular achievement. If only the experience lasted a little longer and there weren't as many puzzles with singular solutions. Despite its short length and robust pricing ($15), Braid is definitely worth downloading.
"Braid is an ingenious and startlingly creative puzzle game, built with an understanding of good game design that even some of the industry's most revered figures could learn from."
-PC Gamer Magazine (UK)
"It's the most original and fresh platform game I've played in at least ten years, and almost every single puzzle in it will make you grin with happiness and clap with appreciation at the cleverness of it."
-Graham Goring, The Arsecast
"Braid has the potential to change the way you think about reality. It will certainly change the way you think about video games."
-Jason Roher, Arthouse Games
"Beyond Braid's enchanting hand-painted visual style, beyond its often haunting score, and beyond its musings on love and personal growth... Braid is one of the most progressive platform/puzzle games we've played in years."
-Cam Shea, IGN Australia
"Braid's artistic design is as imaginative as its puzzles. The whimsical world looks like a painting come to life."
-Hilary Goldstein, IGN
"Braid is a risky experiment climaxing in glorious success. Ask yourself when last you felt a sense of reward and achievement playing a game; not Achievement with a capital 'A' and ten Microsoft points, but an actual sense of pride... And when did a game really make you look at the world differently?"
-Xbox World 360 Magazine
"I love this game.... I feel like I'm using parts of my brain that have never been used before, like parts that haven't evolved yet."
-Frank Lantz
"One of the most interesting, satisfying, beautiful game experiences I've ever had."
-Reverend Anthony, Destructoid
"We're not used to being able to manipulate time in the ways that Braid allows you to... You can sit staring at it for hours, feeling entirely clueless as to how the next jigsaw piece could even be possible to reach. But with a bit of patience, everything just clicks, and you can't help but smile to yourself at how elegantly simple the whole thing is. It was never difficult at all - you just weren't thinking in the right way. That's videogaming Zen.
-Sean Bell, DarkZero
"Braid remains a beautiful and brilliantly demanding game that barely contains its dense population of ideas, taking its place alongside Geometry Wars and Pac-Man Championship Edition as one of the finest original titles available on Live Arcade."
-Edge
"The end level is ****ing ingenious."
-Gamer Hate
OFFICIAL WALKTHROUGH AND LIST OF CHEATS
Found here on the developer's website.
Here's a link to the music featured in Braid:
“Maenam”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Hidden Sky.
“Undercurrent” and “The Darkening Ground”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Lush Mechanique.
“Tell It By Heart” and “Long Past Gone”, by Jami Sieber, from the album Second Sight.
“Downstream”, by Shira Kammen, from the album Music of Waters.
“Lullaby Set”, by Shira Kammen and Swan, from the album Wild Wood.
“Romanesca”, by Cheryl Ann Fulton, from the album The Once and Future Harp.
