By Kieron Gillen on April 15th, 2009 at 8:14 pm.
On its initial release on the 360, Braid was one of the most critically adored, controversial and successful indie games of the year. I’m going to do an impressions post more than a traditional review, because I still haven’t finished the bally thing, but there’s stuff worth saying with it coming to the PC. The inclusion of a level editor is great. Having to use JoyToKey to play with a non-360 controller less so. But really, what’s important is to sort of reset newcomers expectation. The debate has confused things.
You’ll have seen this:
What people people missed in the widespread giggles at groundbreaking New Games Journalist Soulja Boy’s take on Braid was he totally got Braid.
He got Braid far more than people who – say – got hung up on its plot, as interesting as it is. Braid is fundamentally about the absolute sheer joy in seeing reality re-made before your eyes. The ability to rewind time is the least of it, the first step on increasingly twisted roads. The first time you play is about the joy of discovery. While I’m told some people worked their way through the game, solving each puzzle, I can hardly believe it. I rushed past ones which I couldn’t master immediately, pressing on to see whatever Blow had worked out to happen on the next world. Clones of previous selves. Rings of time-distortion like an emo-fied Planetary character. Best of all, turning reality into a clockwork mechanism so heading left or right makes the universe flick along. And when you actually dig into the tunnels, there’s a staggering lack of fat in the endeavor. You beat a challenge, you really don’t see it again. You may think you do for a second, but Blow’s formalist leanings takes great joy in creating a situation that looks almost identical to a previous one – or an iconic one in another game – but how the changes of the rules render it fundamentally different. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Braid is how a game that reinvents it so constantly, with such a radically different play-set, manages to actually teach – and challenge – the gamer so much. It’s exquisitely designed.
It’s also – to stress the point – incredibly original. Comparisons to Prince of Persia are asinine. Comparisons to XBox-curio Blinx are like claiming Lamarckism should get the credit instead of Darwinism. If it doesn’t work, you’re just an amusing historical footnote.
My biggest problem with Braid aren’t really problems at all – they’re preferences. They’re the reason why I voted for World of Goo ahead of Braid in the Eurogamer end of year awards. It’s a clock-work perfect game, and that leaves the game feeling somewhat stiff. There’s really just one solution to a problem. You look and experiment with this intricate crystal structure until you find it. World of Goo is about physicality, about wrestling with this object and its slight unpredictableness the entire point. Braid is the opposite. Braid is a game about ideas. It is a platform game as pure thought. That leaves it feeling a trifle cold. It’s not a game which allows you to really play. Unless you follow the Soulja route and get stoned, which isn’t the worst of ideas. Better than dropping acid and playing through System Shock 2, anyway.
God, okay – let’s go nitpicks. The puzzles where a key shatters on a door for a reason I’ve never worked out. I’ve got past them without ever knowing why the key shattered, which is a hole in the game’s pure-puzzle remit. In World of Goo, accidents were part of its chaotic design. In the pure-thought Braid, accidental elements annoy. It’s a game about perfection. “Knowing why” is fundamental. And… oh, God, you’ll do it in the threads. I have no heart in this nitpicks. Really, this is lovely stuff. It’s a masterclass in design, in theory, in games, a clockwork tin-man with a heart of gold. Its time is now. Don’t turn back.
15/04/2009 at 20:21 RealHorrorshow says:
Forget JoyToKey and get Xpadder ASAP.
http://www.xpadder.com/
15/04/2009 at 20:26 Radu says:
You can actually use a non-360 controller without resorting to JoyToKey. The X360 controller emulator, developed by Racer_S works with many games, even Braid. It’s fairly difficult to configure at first, but then you just have to copy the files into another game’s .EXE folder when you want to reuse it.
Link:
http://www.tocaedit.com/IB/index.php?automodule=downloads&showfile=4
15/04/2009 at 20:28 RabidZombie says:
“The puzzles where a key shatters on a door for a reason I’ve never worked out. I’ve got past them without ever knowing why the key shattered, which is a hole in the game’s pure-puzzle remit.”
Don’t worry. Yahtzee had the same problem. :P
Basically, when trying to open these doors, your moving backwards right? In this particular world, time is reversing as you move backwards. You do open the door, and it would remain open, if only time was flowing in the right direction. Turns out, it isn’t, and the door remains closed.
15/04/2009 at 20:28 mpk says:
I’ve only briefly played this. It’s beautiful in so many ways. Can’t wait to delve a bit deeper.
15/04/2009 at 20:29 Evil Vitamin C says:
Having a weird issue with the Steam version today. Whenever I launch the game, it switches to ultra-low res. Extremely annoying as I can’t change it in-game. What to do?
15/04/2009 at 20:30 simonkaye says:
Well I’ve only been able to have a go at this since the PC demo came out. It’s… well, it’s really wow. People actually haven’t talked enough (this is saying something) about how painterly the game is, how lush it shows a 2D world can be. It’s also rare that a game’s plot should coincide with and illustrate its mechanics quite so beautifully.
Mind you, let’s not shoot down Sands of Time. Could Braid have existed without the Prince’s best adventure?
15/04/2009 at 20:36 Lorc says:
The shattering time immune key was so annoying and inexplicable that I’m sure there’s some well-thought out metaphorical significance to it.
The secret stars are insane. I am not waiting an hour to ride a cloud.
The game was very good though. Well worth the money. I have to give the nod to world of goo too, but it’s in the same league.
15/04/2009 at 20:38 Lorc says:
Ok, RabidZombie’s explanation makes sense. Thank you.
15/04/2009 at 20:39 ohnoabear says:
The amazing thing about Braid’s design is that, while there may seem to be only one solution to any given puzzle, there’s frequently more than one (especially in the later levels when the game opens up). My roommate beat the game before I did, then he watched me play it and I watched him play through a second time: every time there were puzzles solved differently. It’s not every puzzle (or even a majority), and the amazing thing is that when you see someone solve it differently, it seems no less the “correct” solution than what you did.
The game’s insane extra bonus game–collecting stars–further convinced me that Braid’s levels aren’t so much clockwork as the appearance of clockwork, because striving for perfection seems to me one of the game’s central themes. That Braid can accomplish that without actually requiring you to follow some pre-determined set of actions in order to solve the puzzles shows just what an amazing piece of design it really is.
15/04/2009 at 20:52 psyk says:
“Better than dropping acid and playing through System Shock 2, anyway.” Lol that must of been fun would make a good article.
15/04/2009 at 21:02 dhex says:
joy2key worked flawlessly with my ps2 via usb controller.
15/04/2009 at 21:02 The_B says:
I can’t wait for Soulja Boy’s next piece of gaming journalism, where he is unleashed on Portal and told there’s no shooting in it.
On a more serious note, it’s weird. I’m liking Braid and all the little touches, but like Gillen, I’m skipping puzzles that I can’t quite solve. It’s also making me feel incredibly stupid and frustrated, I occasionally have to play something like Saints Row 2 just to feel adequate at games again every so often.
15/04/2009 at 21:07 Steve says:
I really liked Braid, the puzzles were fantastic. And the art style was great. Still need to work out some of the puzzles, the world where reversing your actions causes a shadow to repeat what you reversed still confuses the hell out of me.
Can’t say I paid much attention to the story, seemed like self-absorbed “deep” musings.
15/04/2009 at 21:08 Heliocentric says:
Its pretty fun play it.
If you want some analysis? Braid subverts time in the same way portal did space, and its pretty fun.
Also I can recommend spelunky on caffeine and peggle on sleeping tablets.
15/04/2009 at 21:09 Taillefer says:
I didn’t know much about Braid, and I was just expecting a cutesy platform game with a quirky time-control element. But being a delightfully-clever, little puzzle game, which just happens to be presented as a platformer was much more to my liking. Even some of the earliest puzzles made me grin at the inventiveness. And working them all out is so satisfying.
I was wondering if a spoken narration would have worked, similar to Aquaria. Walking through this beautifully painted landscape as Stephen Fry (or somebody) tells you a little tale. Sounds good in my head, anyway. The books felt a little clumsy and forced. Also, you could have the narration reversed at some point, and then you hear it properly when you reverse time…. I don’t know why.
I had to skip about 5 puzzles, then came back later. In a way, that feels even better than solving it first time.
Recommended!
15/04/2009 at 21:13 egg says:
I tried the demo on the 360 of a friend. Found it too silly and emo. Maybe it’s just me. Doubt it though.
15/04/2009 at 21:18 Doctor Doc says:
I cant really find anything negative except for the doors that breaks keys but do not open, that happened what, one or two times? It could have been some more levels too. I don’t know about joysticks or controllers, I used my keyboard and the controls worked great. Nice game, I enjoyed it more that World of Goo.
15/04/2009 at 21:25 Lewis says:
Because I’m a horrible person, I see the opportunity for a cheeky plug. It is a relevant one, though: my Braid review has just gone up on Reso.
So, obviously, clearer thoughts there. But in a nutshell, the most remarkable thing about Braid is how perfectly it adapts itself to any gaming mindset I can think of. Played as a platformer, it’s a lot of fun; played as a puzzle game, it’s challenging but logical; played as an art-game, it’s abundantly meaningful. None of these elements really encroach on each other, either, and all are as good as optional: there’s not that much platforming, the puzzles are skippable, and you can ignore the narrative strands completely.
I’ve heard people say something along the lines of “the puzzles are really good, but the pretentious excuse for a story put me off.” I cannot understand this as a criticism. If you don’t connect with the plot, don’t bother getting worked up about it. You can quite literally run straight past it, and it has no real affect on the rest of the game.
…Which is kind of my only real criticism as well, an overarching one about the nature of Braid as a platform game. Of course, one of the clever things about it is that it subverts the usual expectations of that genre, specifically referencing Super Mario Bros repeatedly. But that kind of seems incongruous to its deeper messages, a lightweight pop culture nod for the sake of it. That strikes me as a bit showy, and actually leaves elements of Braid feeling slightly cold, as you said, Kieron. I found myself wishing for a game where the story could be told within the levels (beyond the theme of hindsight, of course), rather than inbetween them.
15/04/2009 at 21:25 RabidZombie says:
Doctor Doc, read my comment to see why that happened. The funny thing is, the keys aren’t even door specific (it’s the first thing I checked in the editor :P ). It’s pure logic at work as to why the doors don’t open.
Anyway, as for Braid, I found it extremely satisfying. It was challenging, but not difficult. I got stuck only once, but I still felt like it was exercising my brain enough. So much better than Portal in that respect (which was too easy :( )
Right, time to make my own levels…
15/04/2009 at 21:27 Lewis says:
egg: it starts particularly emo, but that’s kind of essential in what it’s trying to do.
15/04/2009 at 21:27 Valentin Galea says:
Are you people insane?
Trying to hook controllers on this game that requires arrow keys, space and shift?
Is this a PC related blog or what:P?
Other than that, once again Kieron is right on the money!
15/04/2009 at 21:42 Mark Ping says:
The key shatters in the door because you’re moving to the left, hence time in the world is going backward. The key unlocks the door, but then the door moves back in time to before it’s unlocked. So you have to open the door which unlocks while you’re moving to the right.
This is the same mechanic which allows you to bounce on enemies while you’re moving left and it doesn’t kill them (they ‘unkill’ when you move further left).
15/04/2009 at 21:44 Dr_demento says:
@RabidZombie: But isn’t the correct door the one on the left, rather than the right? So time would be flowing forwards as you walk towards it and through… or have I got it the wrong way around?
The other puzzle that annoyed me was the last one in the Shadow Self world, where the solution relies on your shadow being slightly to one side of you, which I had been convinced was just a graphical trick and was therefore pretty hacked off that it was the solution to a problem. Bah.
Still one of the best games of, um, whatever year it was released. I’d vote for it over World of Goo, if only because it’s more thought-based while WoG relies a little too much on luck and speed of mouse to be a 100% puzzle game, and it isn’t really built for that (consider: the difficulty of selecting an individual goo from a structure, when you will inevitably select a different one owing to the irritating sticky-select, and which can be irreversible; compare this to Braid, where the game is entirely designed around undoing mistakes without penalty, and even when you can’t rewind you can reset the level and it won’t be a big setback.)
15/04/2009 at 21:53 unclelou says:
The point has come where I don’t understand anymore what people mean when they say “emo”.
15/04/2009 at 21:55 Flappybat says:
I know it will make people grumpy but it really was a fancy tech demo. Art won out over game.
World Of Goo was a much better mix of art and game with equally valid points and *cough* less pretenious *cough*
15/04/2009 at 21:56 Eric says:
I loved Braid, but here’s my nitpick:
The shattering key got me the first time around too, but it’s not a big deal to just exit the world, re-enter it and start again. But there was one time when a puzzle expected me to have knowledge of a particular move that the game had never introduced:
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER
In the “clones of previous selves” level, there’s one high platform that you need to get a puzzle piece. Turns out the way you do it is to have your clone head-butt a goomba from below, knocking it up higher, and then you bounce off the goomba to reach the platform. However, at that point I had never learned that you could head-butt a goomba from below and survive, so the solution never occurred to me.
END SPOILER
I learned the solution from a walkthrough, which I know annoys Blow, but that balances out how annoyed I was at that point.
Still, a brilliant game.
15/04/2009 at 21:57 Fat says:
Wow, lots of comments. Can’t read ‘em all. :P
The key thing, well… anything that glows green on the edges isn’t affected by time reversal. That’s what i gathered anyway, as one of ‘those people’ who worked through the puzzles. The purple glowing stuff stuff has a ghosting affect, where you can rewing time, then a ghost will carry out actions parallel to whatever you did before hitting ‘rewind’.
As for my own thoughts, it was fun, but only something that will provide a couple of hours entertainment, to me anyway.
I definately agree on World of Goo > Braid. I got so much more enjoyment from WoG, even on the 3rd play through. This is probably more puzzley, but i value fighting the law of physics in a game more than i do than thinking about time travel.
15/04/2009 at 21:58 Lewis says:
If I had to sit them both down on a plate and analyse them carefully, I’d concede that World of Goo is a better game. I think I just about gelled with Braid a little more, though. That probably means I’m a moaning, Livejournaling, emo whinny.
I’ll more than happily procrastinate for hours playing, or thinking about, either, though.
15/04/2009 at 22:11 Wurzel says:
Okay, wth do people mean now when they say ‘emo’? Are things not even allowed to discuss emotions these days?
15/04/2009 at 22:12 Mark Ping says:
@Eric
Yeah, that trick was incredibly annoying. The drawbacks of the game included introducing new mechanics poorly, and then ramped up the difficulty of those mechanics very quickly.
Compare this to Portal where they talked about playtesting the levels, realizing that many people were thinking that Red portals were exit-only, etc. and thus creating levels that forced people to use the mechanic of bi-directional portals so they’d learn that behavior.
Braid would benefit from more levels with more training, and more explicit mechanic introduction.
15/04/2009 at 22:12 FoxwoodCasinoResort says:
pretty cool to play.
15/04/2009 at 22:13 Eamo says:
I have been playing Braid and as a game it is fantastic. The level design is fantastic, the art direction is fantastic and the music is fantastic. As far as the games quality I cannot fault it and I would thoroughly reccomend that anyone spend their money on it.
However, I must say I am sceptical of a lot of the deeper meaning that is ascribed to it, and incredibly sceptical when I read comments like how the game emerged from a deaper goal of satirising and celebrating the platform game and gaming in general.
The cynic in me says that Jonathan Blow’s real genius was pasting a half page of meaningless pseudo-philosophy into an otherwise fantistic game and reeling in a fan community of wannabe deep thinkers. I think the game can certainly be interpreted as being deep and meaningful but I don’t think it follows that a deliberate process was followed to achieve these ends. Yes, of course every game designer would love to create a game that elevates the genre to high levels of art but I don’t think that is something that you can set out to deliberately achive through mechanics. I think most of the meaning you find in Braid is allegory that is applied afterwards as opposed to the result of a conscious process of development.
Maybe it was genius to see this potential in the game and go back and alter it in such a way as to imply that this was the original design goal and maybe, in the same broad way that expressing deeper meaning is a goal every game designer would love to achieve it was but where I find a problem is in the implication that the meaning was achieved through intent rather than being something that it was possible to attach to the functioning set of game mechanics that was created.
15/04/2009 at 22:17 psyk says:
Look out for the quotes near the end of the game and whoever found the first star first is a nutter.
15/04/2009 at 22:21 Dracko says:
Soulja Boy owns.
P.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5D9OZfmOzk
15/04/2009 at 22:25 Ken says:
Speaking of incongruities, shall I assume tying a pretty determinedly wistful, melancholic soundtrack to the pretty amusing time-shifting mechanisms was done to kick me swiftly into Detached Pondering mode? How the music was supposed to be particularly affecting ‘straight’ under those conditions escapes me, so I’m guessing it really wasn’t.
That’s what irritated me about this whole game. I felt bamboozled into scrutinizing everything presented to then weave it all into Bigger Ideas for the mere sake of experiencing what that exercise feels like, as if Blow believes I’ve never tried to do any thinking at all. However good the puzzles were (very!), the complete package isn’t something I’m comfortable praising the man for.
And if there’s a thing worse than feeling like I’ve been hoodwinked, it’s feeling like a boorish conspiracy theorist to cope with that.
15/04/2009 at 22:30 Ph0X says:
Cmon man, the way you write make makes me respect you so much, and it makes you seem so.. smart and intelligent, how come you don’t get the key not working on the door when you are coming from the right?
Look, when you go right to left, time goes back, so as soon as you LOSE the key (you’re not holding it to bring it back in time with you), it will go in that other world and will go back in time, so the door recloses as soon as it’s opened and the key is lost because it doesn’t go back in time with you.
There are alot of little things like that through the game, which shows that alot of thinking has been put into it. I personally like it, since on the other side, in some games, there are some stuff that are so not normal which pisses you off even more than that.
15/04/2009 at 22:30 Vivian says:
Played system shock on the tail end of a large amount of shrooms once. I spent about an hour cowering behind the reception desk on the rec deck because the worms were wriggling wrong
15/04/2009 at 22:33 Klaus says:
Soulja boy’s simplicity works in this case because Braid is game, and the point of a game, is to have fun. To me anyway.
I take ‘emo’ to mean overly, nauseatingly, and/or needlessly emotional.
15/04/2009 at 22:53 Tim says:
Nice one. Fun video.
I think I did well, I barely read anything anyone said about the game. Not because I was trying to avoid it, just because I didn’t really care. I learned enough to know I’d probably like it, I’d probably have my own opinion, and that the whole thing will be totally subjective. Yay! Yay for games that embraces subjective notions of a great game.
I thought it was great. Definitely worth the $15 US.
15/04/2009 at 22:59 xiko says:
btw I love the way the inertia works while jumping on a cloud, you will keep moving with it.
15/04/2009 at 22:59 teo says:
@dr_demento which puzzle are you talking about?
I don’t remember using that
15/04/2009 at 23:02 S says:
Spoilers!
Eric: The “headbutt from below thing” isn’t a new mechanic, it’s just reciprocity–the goomba bounces on your head and jumps higher, like you do to it. Then you can reverse time and jump on the bouncing goomba to reach the platform. It was definitely sneaky, but makes sense once you think about it, like the shattering key. I had had enough goombas bounce off my head from high pipes that I had seen the move before, so that helped.
End Spoilers!
I liked Braid a lot, though I’ll never have the patience to get the stars or do a speedrun. Definitely one of my favorites from ’08.
15/04/2009 at 23:04 fulis says:
most people say that they feel super smart after figuring out the puzzles but eh? most of them are quite explicitly designed
I only felt good about solving one puzzle
15/04/2009 at 23:05 psyk says:
2 fecking hours :(
15/04/2009 at 23:06 psyk says:
that was to the last part of the comment by S about patience and stars
15/04/2009 at 23:10 bob arctor says:
I liked both probably equally.
Would have prefered if Braid kept the story simpler though, just on the level of princess being a woman not a ****.
I had problems with the jump down shadow level and the up strike as well. Walkthrough. Bollocks to Blow it’s my game.
I still didn’t know how the last shadow level was solved tbh, I thought the shadow didn’t carry on falling, but apparently he carried on past the point I started rewinding.
15/04/2009 at 23:21 c-Row says:
That’s something I already felt during the demo. It’s nice that you can skip puzzles you can’t solve at the moment, but if you are missing like six puzzle pieces from a single world, you wonder whether the game is too demanding or you are just plain stupid not to see the (sometimes not so) obvious.
15/04/2009 at 23:22 mister k says:
Huh… I guess I’m the only person who played the demo on the xbox, didn’t really understand the whole jigsaw puzzle thing, got annoyed and quit… childish I know.
Incidentally, there was an AMAZING time travel based game for the playstation one. It was fan made, on those Net Yaroze disks, called time slip. You were a snail who had to solve platforming puzzles by using clones in time- however, if you hit your clones, you ceased to exist- video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc_quc8BT0o
I also found that too hard….
15/04/2009 at 23:22 Skye says:
Yeah, I too was baffled at first by the key shattering. Then I thought about the fact that there were two doors in this situation on either side of the puzzle piece and wondered what the difference could be. When I realized that I had been moving left with the key into that door when it shattered and that nothing can happen moving to the left in this particular world, I grinned like a bastard. It’s a brilliant attention to detail.
I have the opposite preference, Kieron. I loved the goo out of 2D Boy’s game, but I seem to enjoy cleverness over physical play–at least when it comes to puzzles.
15/04/2009 at 23:52 Neut says:
Game of the year for me last year. I felt sad too that World of Goo was getting all the love on here and nobody noticed poor little Tim. For once I wished that RPS wasn’t PC centric which was odd as I found out about Braid through one of the previews here.
Sorry for turning this into a Braid vs World of Goo thing as they’re both excellent but it’s bizzare to see people complaining about Braid’s artistic pretensions and praising WoGs. I found WoGs art style to be an immediate turn off as it was so obviously deviantart burtonesque tripe going for the cliched cutesy and quirky look. At least the art in Braid was somewhat original.
Also why are people getting so personally offended at Blow for trying to be ‘smart’ with his game?
15/04/2009 at 23:57 Stupoider says:
The game’s pretty cool!
However, I’m going to have to go be in favour of World of Goo, which I still need to get. :>
16/04/2009 at 00:03 Neut says:
Skye: yeh I also found that I enjoyed figuring out how to solve puzzles more in Braid than I did actually solving them in WoG. The 2 doors 1 key thing though is still annoying as there’s no reason why it can’t just be one door on the left. The right door was simply not needed, even if how it broke the key made sense.
16/04/2009 at 00:07 lumpi says:
“Better than dropping acid and playing through System Shock 2, anyway.”
I would die.
16/04/2009 at 00:08 Caiman says:
Agreed, Braid has had a bigger impact on me that World of Goo, although saying which is better is like choosing between your children. Braid is re-defining, WoG is inspiring, both are excellent.
16/04/2009 at 00:14 S says:
Bah, choosing between children is easy, I choose the one who looks less like the mailman.
16/04/2009 at 00:19 Milton says:
16/04/2009 at 00:21 Neut says:
Oh while I’m bitching about stuff, the box stacking and epilogue section of WoG can fuck right off, espcially the one where you have to lift a truss with balloons across DEATHCHASMS onto spires that fecking deforms under weight! I know what I have to do but your spastic physics engine won’t let me do it!!1 /nerd rage
16/04/2009 at 00:21 Milton says:
“There’s really just one solution to a problem. You look and experiment with this intricate crystal structure until you find it. World of Goo is about physicality, about wrestling with this object and its slight unpredictableness the entire point. Braid is the opposite. Braid is a game about ideas. It is a platform game as pure thought. That leaves it feeling a trifle cold. It’s not a game which allows you to really play.”
Exactly my thoughts, but in my opinion this makes Braid FAR inferior to World of Goo.
16/04/2009 at 00:25 Skye Nathaniel says:
Neut: Well, I feel that the second door was placed as a red herring and a test of our understanding of the rules. Because it was much closer to the pickup location of the key, just about everyone probably failed that test!
If I recall correctly, it’s the first time in the left-right world that the player has the opportunity to interact with an object in the environment more significantly than stomping a goomba, so I really enjoyed it for demonstrating the implications of the “clockwork” mechanic, even if it might seem a little mean.
16/04/2009 at 00:43 Neut says:
Skye: true but the entire point of one of the worlds and probably the game as well was learning from a mistake without suffering the consequences, and all of a sudden you had to restart an entire section. Plus I never even realized why the second door didn’t open until I read the comments above, as the obvious next step was to try the other door, so I didn’t even learn from the mistake. And at no other point was this test or variation of it used later on so it served no long term purpose. All we’re left with is an annoying moment of walking into a brick wall and restarting and walking around it.
16/04/2009 at 00:49 Skye Nathaniel says:
I suppose that’s a fair perspective. It deepened my appreciation for the rules at work, but it simply didn’t work for you. Nothing to be done about that.
16/04/2009 at 00:55 radiof says:
Ahhh, but is playing it worth the abysmal writing?
16/04/2009 at 01:06 Neut says:
Hey at least someone got it, judging by the amount of complaints about it I thought it was just another dick move. Good to see there was a point to it.
Still a dick move though :p
16/04/2009 at 01:12 Alex says:
@Heliocentric, you are a genius for merely mentioning my four favourite gaming obsessions. And recommending a state to play two of them in.
@Eric: I did that exact puzzle today. It’s the only broken one in the game, I think (though I’m still trying to get my head around the ladders/sparkly platforms/slowing ring one)
16/04/2009 at 01:54 Newblade says:
@Eric: I didn’t have any trouble with that puzzle, but I really struggled with that puzzle in world 2 involving the jigsaw. It was my only missing piece, and the game never teachs you how to get it.
16/04/2009 at 01:59 baf says:
“However, at that point I had never learned that you could head-butt a goomba from below and survive, so the solution never occurred to me.”
Ah, but you can’t. Your former self doesn’t survive the collision. I think what you mean is that you hadn’t noticed that the goomba survives, as it would have to in order for your subsequent self to bounce off it. And, when you come to it, you don’t have much basis for observing this until the shadow levels: usually, when a goomba hits you from above, your immediate death limits your ability to observe what comes next. Only the shadow lets you observe a goomba’s behavior after it kills you.
16/04/2009 at 04:27 Max says:
Braid’s greatest success and downfalls is the key breaking on the door that you mentioned.
There were so many times in the game where I thought that the rules weren’t being communicated to me and that things weren’t operating in the ways logic would dictate. But in each case it turned out that I hadn’t fully realized the implications of the time mechanic. It’s so devilishly complicated that often once you figure out *how* it works, you still haven’t figured out *why*. And that feels like the game is cheating you even when it isn’t.
16/04/2009 at 04:37 SofS says:
I loved this game. It’ll be fun to buy it again and try for the stars this time.
“Emo” is a word that I would probably wish out of existence if I could. It meant something back in my high school days when it referred to a genre of music and accompanying aesthetic. You could play a band and say “this is emo”, and even though you would feel a trifle embarassed that you had to use one of the worst genre names ever, people would know what you were talking about. The way people use it now encompasses music, style, and aesthetic strains that often have more differences than similarities, and that’s when they’re using it as something other than a straight insult (the popularity of the latter usage being due, I suspect, to people wanting to call something “gay” without looking like a bigot). You could replace “emo” with “teal” in most sentences and it would hardly change the meaning. If you’re trying to say that something is overwrought or melodramatic or unsubtle, why not say it with words that have clearer meanings than repurposed genre names? It directs the reader to think about your point instead of inviting an argument of definitions.
One thing I’ve been trying to understand since Braid was released is this charge of it being “emo”. It seemed rather emotionally reserved to me. Consider: you get a story outlined in a relatively small amount of text about miscommunications and regrets and such that gets shaded in with the gameplay and aesthetics. The text is presented in magical books on podia sitting on pleasant fluffy clouds. The protagonist’s flaw that drives the story seems to have a lot to do with being too reserved and isolated. At what point is this supposed to remind one of a guy in glasses with thick plastic frames screeching at the very top of his lungs?
16/04/2009 at 04:52 Gaph says:
The key shatters in the door because you’re moving to the left, hence time in the world is going backward. The key unlocks the door, but then the door moves back in time to before it’s unlocked. So you have to open the door which unlocks while you’re moving to the right.
This is pretty funny.
Played the demo a couple times through. The first I mostly ignored the pieces I couldn’t easily get to thinking that I needed some different time power, then went back to it after peeking at a solution and hearing that you can get every piece in the demo. I didn’t think the puzzles or platforming was noteworthy. They’re clever but not especially rewarding to figure out. They were either easy to spot and required some trial and error, or so cryptic they end up frustrating.
It just felt like a compilation of a dozen different flash games about time manipulation with profession art, music and production values. The story seemed nice in a What Dreams May Come sort of way but nothing that will change my life or herald in a revolution in the way video game stories are told.
I’d buy it for $5, otherwise I don’t see what’s the big deal. But I’ve got this obsession with Serious Sam right now so I’m eschewing the greater ambitions of gaming left and right.
16/04/2009 at 05:08 Radiant says:
The thing about the goofy writing…
It’s not really about what it says it is.
Right at the end when Tim achieves his goal there’s a phrase “Now we are all sons of bitches”.
Which is a what Bainbridge said to Oppenheimer after the trinity test.
So the princess isn’t a literal princess with all the warnings against finding her.
But fuck all that it’s a nice game; bit short though.
16/04/2009 at 05:27 James F says:
Ah Braid, I’m still torn over whether the game is a heartbreaking work of genius, or the single most pretentious game every made.
Most of the problems I have with the game relate to its story, which admittedly I’ve already talked about on my personal blog, but I’ll summarize here.
You see, I heard in advance that the story was a little crazy, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out as I played the game.
I pored over the books in the lobby areas, trying to piece together Tim’s relationship with the Princess, and whether or not it was real. I studied the puzzle pictures and tried to figure out their context.
When I got to the last level of the game, I was completely blown away by the revelation of the Princess. I thought right then that Braid was going to make it to my short list of best story video game stories. Then I got to the epilogue and completely changed my mind.
I won’t go into spoiler territory, but I will say that the revelations in the epilogue completely divorced the story from the game. I couldn’t even come up with metaphorical reason to tie it all back together.
It was like getting to the end of a murder mystery and finding out that not only is the person you suspect a red herring, but the actual murderer was only introduced five pages ago, and the detective solves the case with previously unmentioned evidence.
It’s the sort of thing that might be funny once, but only once, and this feeling makes me hesitant in playing the game again.
16/04/2009 at 07:22 Alex says:
What I was able to play of Braid was fun, but the recent patch that Steam so helpfully downloaded did something that makes game to crash as soon as it starts up. :(
16/04/2009 at 08:34 FatMat says:
i’ve played the game in the french version. but the storyline text (from the books) is awful. you don’t really know if it is plain pretentious rhetorics or simply a bad translation. does the text seem odd too in english ?
16/04/2009 at 08:51 Kieron Gillen says:
(Thanks for those who pointed the key thing out, which does make sense – point being, you don’t need to figure it out. You just fail the first time you do it, and then never touch that door again. And since you can’t rewind time to get the key back, it’s turned a mistake into actual trial and error.)
KG
16/04/2009 at 08:52 Captain Awesome says:
This game is much too hyped for what the player gets. It’s incredibly boring and samey troughout. The only good part was the music, in my opinion.
Shoulda been a free game, this way it will just get pirated to death.
16/04/2009 at 09:01 unclelou says:
It will get pirated to death because it’s shit? Damn, pirates are more stupid than I thought.
16/04/2009 at 09:03 Radiant says:
@Captain Awesome [irony?] what’s a game worth to you?
The thing with Braid is that the imagery and techniques it uses reminds you of other games which at first seems bland but what it does with those conceits is entirely new and repeatedly very fresh.
16/04/2009 at 09:11 Meat Circus says:
Braid is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. It is better than you.
16/04/2009 at 09:19 Lewis says:
It’s not just the silly breaking keys, incidentally – there’s a section of really, moronically stupid design about half way through, when not being fast enough completely breaks the puzzles, forcing a restart. What was he thinking?!
16/04/2009 at 09:25 AndrewC says:
There’s a timed puzzle in Braid? How could they?
16/04/2009 at 09:26 Melf_Himself says:
Great art direction.
Silly story.
Some bits of neat gameplay, separated by some bits of meh trial and error gameplay.
I don’t know, maybe the gameplay was just ruined for me by playing this several months ago (I found the idea much more fun):
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Scarybug/chronotron
16/04/2009 at 10:11 Marar says:
Superb game, favorite game of ’08 for me, now that I know about it, thou I really don’t get the criticism it get’s, that one key for instance… really now? in a normal game I run over ten’s of stupid moments like that that make no sense, except in this on it makes sense, yes you have to restart the level, and no, it does not go against the theme of the game, it’s not a game about undoing mistakes, a fact witch becomes painfully obvious on the last level.
The one puzzle witch I think WAS ridiculous was the head-butting the goomba in the shadow self world, but other then that, superbly constructed puzzles, finished the entire game (except that one damn puzzle) without a walkthrough, even if I was stuck one or two times, if I came back to the game after a brake, the solution always became painfully obvious, also, maybe it was just me, but I never noticed the timed puzzles, even if the difficulty might have been steep for some, well, it was by no means impossible (no harder then most games even).
Now, the story, am I the only one who actually liked not having a boring (95% percent of game story’s are boring, fact :p) story shoved down my throat, it’s interpretable, sure, that’s the bloody point, nobody complains about a book or an artsy movie for being complex, but the moment a game has a story with a sub-text witch you can’t grasp in less then 10 seconds it’s ridiculed for being “pretencios”.
Not all the books can be interpreted using the same underlying idea, some of them are about the bomb, some of them are about a failed relashionship, some of them maybe are even about the gamer, as he explores and unfolds the mechanisms of the game (“he examined an apple as it fell”, etc.), the underlying theme I noticed in all of them is obsession, but maybe that’s just me, maybe some people will see… bunny rabbits.
Anyway, superb game, good story, with great music and superb artistic direction (better then the cliche that was world of goo anyway)
16/04/2009 at 10:11 Lewis says:
@AndrewC
The worst offender is a level called Irreversible. What irks me most is that the name suggests Blow thought this was a good idea. As soon as the level starts, a door begins to slide down to block an essential platform, and if you don’t get to the controls in time – which involves bouncing about four Goombas in difficult positions – it’s blocked for good. This then happens later in the level as well.
For me, Braid isn’t about its platforming stuff at all, and the focus on this precision in certain areas feels totally wrong. It’s ordinarily so slow-paced and thoughtful, and then suddenly throws a speed-run at you. A bit silly. And fortunately over quickly.
16/04/2009 at 10:13 dr_demento says:
@mister_k: Time Slip!!! That was amazing. Like the Shadow Self world from Braid, only with a lot more past-yous. Great.
@teo: It’s the very last one in the Shadow Self realm. Is there another solution to it that everyone else used that I’m not aware of, or something?
@everyone comp-laining about timed puzzles: I found all of the ones where you had to do something then run somewhere else in a time limit was actually pretty easy once you’d got the trick… and I’m not that good at 2D platformers….
16/04/2009 at 10:35 Netriak says:
@dr_demento:
The last puzzel in the shadow realm with the two green doors and the green key? How about this solution: Try to open the first door without the key, that is run into it. Then grab the key and rewind before trying to open the door without the key. Due to the green nature of the key, the shadow does have a key when he tries to open the door, so the first door is opened. You then open the second one.
16/04/2009 at 10:43 Meat Circus says:
@AndrewC
I have played Braid many times, and I don’t recall there having been a ‘timed puzzle’.
16/04/2009 at 10:48 Meat Circus says:
@Lewis:
I think you missed the point of that puzzle.
All you have to do to reach that piece of the puzzle is *not* rewind time. The moment you do, one sliding bar blocks another and you have to restart the level.
It’s a splendid bit of Jonathan Blow’s screwing with you: after having encouraged you to rewind time at every opportunity, he throws in a puzzle where it’s the one thing you mustn’t do.
It’s the old bait-and-switch. Braid does this sort of thing several times.
16/04/2009 at 10:49 Valentin Galea says:
How long took you guys to figure out the different rewinding speeds?
Why is hidden? Is it a good thing to make players guess the inputs?
16/04/2009 at 10:51 Lewis says:
@Meat Circus
Yeah, I didn’t explain it very well at all there. What I meant was that the minute you slip up in any way in terms of the platforming, you’re fucked. Calling it a “speed run” was misleading. I should probably go check my review to make sure I didn’t say the same thing there…
16/04/2009 at 10:52 Lewis says:
It would also seem I actually completely forgot what happened in that particular puzzle. Shit. My point still stands though – it was a bit of a stupid piece of design, for me.
16/04/2009 at 10:58 AndrewC says:
I should play it again. I think the game is really kind of amazing.
I’m afraid i’m finding the very real level of resistance to the game from a lot of people quite amusing. When the game is frustrating it is always being scrupulously, ruthlessly fair.
That said, I’m always slightly sympathetic to those reacting negatively to hype – as no thing can ever live up to being called the best thing ever. Isn’t that right, Meat.
16/04/2009 at 11:06 Meat Circus says:
@AndrewC:
It’s not the best thing ever. It was the best game of 2008 IMNSHO, but it’s still not as good as Planescape: Torment, which is, of course, objectively the Best Game Ever.
16/04/2009 at 11:06 MetalCircus says:
I tried the demo but everything was black and could only see text and the escape menu. What’s going on there? Shame really, I enjoyed the xbox trial. I’ve also heard you need a ludicrously high-end PC for this game. Anyone confirm that?
16/04/2009 at 11:07 Lewis says:
I went back to Planescape at the end of last year and found it morbidly irritating. I still love it, but it’s one for the history books methinks.
16/04/2009 at 11:09 Lewis says:
MetalCircus:
Not at all.
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP / Vista / 7
Processor: 1.4GHz or faster
Memory: 768 MB or more
Hard Disk Space: 200 MB or more
Video Card: tbd
DirectX® Version: DirectX® 9.0c
Controller Support: Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller for Windows
16/04/2009 at 11:09 Lewis says:
Oh, clearly ignore the video card bit, this is from before release. I doubt it’s that ferociously high, though.
16/04/2009 at 11:25 MetalCircus says:
Ah, fair enough. I doubt there’s any complex shaders either, my card doesnt support Shader Model 3.0, could be why im just seeing blackness when running the game but i’m not sure.
16/04/2009 at 11:48 Meat Circus says:
I think it’s time everybody had SM3.0 in their graphics cards.
Anything else is an affectation.
16/04/2009 at 11:55 Sam says:
You must finish the game now. The last level is truly the work of a genius.
16/04/2009 at 12:00 an ape says:
To state it in the parlance of Soulja Boy’s culture; Braid is the shit!
16/04/2009 at 12:10 Lews says:
MetalCircus: I would imagine that’s your problem, yes. Definitely time for an upgrade. You can pick up a GeForce 7900 dead cheap these days, or cough up a little bit more for something a bit swankier. My 8600 cost me about £100 last year, probably less now…
16/04/2009 at 12:38 teo says:
@dr_demento
—–SPOILERS—–
The last one is ‘fragile companion’. All you need to do is walk up to the door before you have the key, then get the key and reverse time which will make your shadow walk up to the door with the key in hand
16/04/2009 at 12:39 Helm says:
I have read the whole comment sections here and on tigsource and I wanted to mention that the level of discourse here doesn’t make me want to kill myself. So good job people that didn’t like Braid as much as I did, for conveying your points of view well.
I have my small problems with Braid but I don’t even feel they’re worth mentioning when I realized how highly designed this game is… and how the vast majority of what’s out there is not. It’s one of these times where I feel that nitpicks should have to wait for until when the video game design paradigm has climbed up a few levels closer to it.
16/04/2009 at 13:10 Skye Nathaniel says:
@Lewis, mostly:
Wow. Irreversible was my favorite in that World. As Meat Circus explained, all you have to do is not rewind time so that the rewind-immune wall does not slide in front of the rewind-affected wall. And this, like everything else, is both logical and communicated visually.
So what happens if you mess up? Rewind, press down three times, and you’ll be back at the door within half a second. Another attempt to jump and climb properly through the enemies takes less than fifteen seconds. If you are so impatient that acting out this puzzle frustrates you to the point where you cannot enjoy its clever play upon the game’s now-familiar featured mechanic, then I don’t know what the hell you’re doing playing games.
It sounds like you didn’t actually understand the puzzle. After Meat Circus corrected you, you changed your language, but prior you described the player’s needed performance as fast enough and called it necessary speed-running. That’s just blatantly inaccurate, as you can take your sweet time getting through those enemies. Even worse, you can just stand in one place and wait for the two walls to slide past one another before attempting to get through the enemies, at which point you can rewind (far enough to retry) without consequence.
The second half of the room contains a related idea in which the player must show restraint by not rewinding after the use of one key within a sequence. Again, all it takes is a careful thought about the time-immunity properties of objects. It’s elegant. This room is everything that I am loving about Braid (I am in World 5 right now, so I am still enjoying my first playthrough–and so far I have not found anything that needs to be done especially quickly). I’m just flabbergasted that the game is being faulted for the very thing that makes it great.
The same goes for the shattered key. When that happens to you, your reaction should be: “Shit! Wait… what? Oh! I was moving left! Causality moves backwards towards the left–I can’t open a door that way! Ha ha, that’s awesome. I have a deeper appreciation of the elegance in this left-right clockwork idea. Okay; rewind superfast to the start, out the door then in, and spend twenty seconds getting back to the key. This time, the other door, from left to right.”
It’s one thing if you don’t get it and never figure out why you had to use the other door, but if you do get it but feel frustrated that you need to spend another twenty seconds returning to that key, then I don’t know exactly what your problem is but I honestly hope you’re not going out there and spreading your opinions to people who don’t know better without first consulting a very good psychiatrist.
16/04/2009 at 13:27 Dan Lawrence says:
I think one of the problems Braid faces is that PC games have trained us to think that any seemingly unexplainable behaviour is ‘a bug’ and the fault of the game designers. In Braid seemingly inexplicable behaviour is 99% of the time just a failure between keyboard and chair to understand the consistent logic of the game. This combined that people consistently dislike feeling a bit dim is going to rub a lot of people up the wrong way.
Braid really is that smart and sometimes the player is not. If you are calling it pretentious there is a pretty good chance that it is your critical faculties that are at fault :)
16/04/2009 at 13:34 Dan Lawrence says:
Also Kieron, you really need to finish the bally game – your chief objection to the game is partly the point of it. If that makes any sense. The idea of the puzzles as pure thought – brains over soul if you will ties directly into the themes of the game. The mechanics are in tune with the meaning, its something very few games achieve.
16/04/2009 at 13:41 Kieron Gillen says:
Skye: The problem with the door puzzle is that you totally don’t need to understand it to beat it. Well done for getting it, but my puzzle count looks just the same as you. Why should I try to think about it when there’s no need for me to? The vast majority of its puzzles rely on *necessarily* understanding why you’ve won. That one doesn’t, which is why it’s a weaker puzzle than most of the rest.
KG
16/04/2009 at 13:50 Dan Lawrence says:
Thats not an especially good argument against a puzzle Kieron, ther are a lots of very good puzzles where I can just guess the answer but they are still good. The joy of a puzzle is in working it out; the knowing why.
A better way to look at that puzzle is to notice that there are two doors and only one key right off and think; ‘Why are there two doors?’.
16/04/2009 at 13:53 teo says:
Well, the headbutt one and the painting one are far worse in my opinion because they use mechanics that are never explained. The painting one in particular. The game gives you a set of tools and asks you to solve a problem, but you can’t solve it with those tools and you have to look for other tools. It breaks its own logic and it’s not good design regardless of how ‘clever’ people might think it is
16/04/2009 at 13:56 Kieron Gillen says:
I actually thought the painting puzzle was the first genuinely magical moment of the game. Of course, another example of a puzzle you have to get to solve.
EDIT: Puzzles that you have to get to solve are better than those you don’t because solving them is *necessarily* enjoyable. The click of pleasure from getting something is part of them.
KG
16/04/2009 at 14:02 BigRocks McHugenuts says:
Hmmm, I don’t think people are referring to the puzzles when claiming the game is pretentious, if only because that doesn’t make any sense. How can a puzzle be pretentious? “I can’t figure out 5 down, this crossword is so pretentious!”
Personally, I think all those who use the p word to describe this game are all secretly rapists.
16/04/2009 at 14:15 Dan Lawrence says:
@BigRocks
I wasn’t intending to refer to the puzzles with my jab at the pretention name callers. I think folks who are refering to the game as pretentious because of the game’s meaning are failing to grasp it or failing to grasp what pretentiousness is all about.
@Kieron
Maybe the presentation of the puzzle in a game is better for a wider audience if it forces everyone to ‘get it’ to proceed. I think though we can agree that if there is a math problem with an answer box underneath it and I happen to write in the correct answer that hasn’t suddenly made the math problem better or worse. Would forcing you to get the puzzle to proceed start to hamper people’s progress through the game? After all you can get to the end of Braid without grasping the games inner meaning and therby lose something. Is it necessary to force all players to get everything that is contained within a work of art or does the act of coercion begin to undermine the work?
16/04/2009 at 14:20 Skye Nathaniel says:
Why should you think about it when there’s no need to? Why should you play the game when there’s no need to? (Well, given your profession, that may not be a very good argument.) I dunno; it seems to me that if you try the right-side door and break your key, then the second time as you travel around to the other dooreverything moving in reverse as you goit ought to just intuitively occur to you. If it doesn’t, you should think about it because the satisfaction ought to lie for you in the understanding, not in the attainment of another puzzle piece.
I believe that the growth that comes from a game’s challengewhether that means learning its rules through the position of questions or mastering its mechanics and systems by developing skillis where play is meaningful. Progress through accident, however delightful, is unsatisfying when consistent; moving forward in this context without understanding strikes me as senseless busy-work.
In a puzzle game where each situation is a unique, carefully designed challenge, the player who accidentally stumbles through should feel compelled to try and duplicate the solution until s/he understands why it worked. The click of pleasure should come not from getting something but from earning something. However, Kieron, given what you said about Soulja Boy and just playing around, it seems like you enjoy Braid for different reasons than I do. While I certainly enjoy manipulating the game in the most immediate waysespecially thanks to the lovely aesthetic effects of reversed music, color dimming and over-saturation, and VHS-styled video squeak lineswhere I really appreciate the game is in the serious play of understanding its rules and becoming capable of solving its puzzles.
I concede regarding the painting puzzle, although I figured it out almost right away because of where the painting is located and because part of it looks exactly like a platformthat visual language makes it fair enough if you ask me. But it is a little outside the course of gameplay. I can understand that annoying some players.
16/04/2009 at 14:26 Skye Nathaniel says:
Wow. Sorry about that post; I was trying to use em dashes and misappropriated the html tags, I guess. At the risk of being obnoxious, here is it again without being illegible, hopefully:
Why should you think about it when there’s no need to? Why should you play the game when there’s no need to? (Well, given your profession, that may not be a very good argument.) I dunno; it seems to me that if you try the right-side door and break your key, then the second time as you travel around to the other door–everything moving in reverse as you go–it ought to just intuitively occur to you. If it doesn’t, you should think about it because the satisfaction ought to lie for you in the understanding, not in the attainment of another puzzle piece.
I believe that the growth that comes from a game’s challenge–whether that means learning its rules through the position of questions or mastering its mechanics and systems by developing skill–is where play is meaningful. Progress through accident, however delightful, is unsatisfying when consistent; moving forward in this context without understanding strikes me as senseless busy-work.
In a puzzle game where each situation is a unique, carefully designed challenge, the player who accidentally stumbles through should feel compelled to try and duplicate the solution until s/he understands why it worked. The click of pleasure should come not from getting something but from earning something. However, Kieron, given what you said about Soulja Boy and just playing around, it seems like you enjoy Braid for different reasons than I do. While I certainly enjoy manipulating the game in the most immediate ways–especially thanks to the lovely aesthetic effects of reversed music, color dimming and over-saturation, and VHS-styled video squeak lines–where I really appreciate the game is in the serious play of understanding its rules and becoming capable of solving its puzzles.
I concede regarding the painting puzzle, although I figured it out almost right away because of where the painting is located and because part of it looks exactly like a platform–that visual language makes it fair enough if you ask me. But it is a little outside the course of gameplay. I can understand that annoying some players.
16/04/2009 at 14:29 teo says:
@Dan if you study math after highschool you’ll find that the answer is totally uninteresting most of the time and just writing the answer wouldn’t give you any points at all
He’s not saying you should have to understand the puzzle to proceed, but that you should have to understand it to get the puzzle piece. That’s how the majority of the puzzles in the game are designed
16/04/2009 at 14:31 Skye Nathaniel says:
Also, after finishing World 4, I was writing up some impressions and found that, when I moved the cursor to the left to insert new text, I felt really, really weird about it. Like it’s not possible to go left. I kept aborting prematurely and just backspacing a whole line instead to redo it. I think that Portal is absolutely the right game to talk about in relation to Braid because they are the only two games to ever affect my perspective in this way. I suppose it’s similar to how some people talk about dreaming and seeing the world in terms of Tetris. It’s incredible and precious and rare for a game to fundamentally alter your way of seeing the world. I just cannot believe that people can complain that $15 is too much to ask for such an experience.
16/04/2009 at 14:31 teo says:
@Skye the puzzle piece you need isn’t there when you first get there though. You have to backtrack, which is another problem with it since that’s the only puzzle in the game that can’t be solved right away
16/04/2009 at 14:39 Dan Lawrence says:
Minor point but I believe thats the same thing in Braid, you have to get all the puzzle pieces to finish the game. I take what you are saying in the sense that Braid gives a reward in the form of the puzzle piece even if you didn’t understand how you got it. I agree that it does that, then again so does life, sometimes you get rewarded for being lucky.
16/04/2009 at 14:43 Skye Nathaniel says:
Teo: I’m sorry; which puzzle piece do you mean? I don’t remember any puzzle piece not being somewhere and then appearing when you come back. I find that hard to believe.
16/04/2009 at 14:48 Neut says:
Well like Kieran and I have said since that puzzle can be solved without any understanding of how and why there’s no incentive for the player to try to understand especially as no variation of it occurs again. You can literally forget completely about it and it won’t make a difference. Fair play to you for getting it but as all the other puzzles required an understanding before a solution was possible it just stands out like the maths problem where working out the answer through brute force is easier than figuring it out, particularly as the punishment for failure was so much harsher than the rest of the game.
16/04/2009 at 14:59 teo says:
@Skye you need to use a puzzle piece inside of the picture frame but that piece is found in a later level
16/04/2009 at 15:05 Brulleks says:
I hate to bring simplicity to all this high-minded debate, but the question of whether you will enjoy Braid or not seems to hinge on one single point – do you enjoy repeating the same actions over and over and over again until you get them pixel perfect?
I’m just not finding this game any fun. It might have a lot of interesting ideas and design elements but if you’re going to sell a game – particularly for this amount of money – it needs to have some gameplay as well. This is more like a pretty chore.
16/04/2009 at 15:13 Meat Circus says:
@Brulleks:
Braid doesn’t really need pixel-perfection. If you think it does, you probably just haven’t figured out the puzzle yet.
16/04/2009 at 15:41 jalf says:
Ah, the blind fanboy brigade is out again today.
Like I said in the last Braid thread, I thought it came across as pretentious to new players. I still have only played the demo, so I can’t speak for the full game, but upon reading about the game, it’s hard not to get the impression that it’s trying desperately to impress viewers with how amazingly innovative and artsy it is. Which is pretentious because it doesn’t really do much to support these claims.
And the demo unfortunately doesn’t improve matters. I’ve seen enough people rave about the amazing story to believe them. I believe that if and when I play the game, I will, at the end, agree that the story was good. But from what you see in the demo, it is *horrible*. Badly written and uninteresting, and presented stiffly as wallsoftext outside the actual gameplay. There may be a reason for this, or there may be enough pluses to outweigh these negatives, but the story becomes a liability in the demo.
The demo also does not do much to “expand my mind” as the game’s description promised. It really seems as a series of assorted and unconnected platformer/puzzle levels with a few time-related gimmicks thrown in. If a game’s website promises a “mind-expanding experience”, then a demo had better give at least the *hint* of said experience. Because if it simply gives me puzzles that look like something out of a mid-90′s PC platformer (Bitmap Brothers or similar), and throw in a new gameplay gimmick, then calling it pretentious comes naturally.
Again, because I know the fanboys are going to lynch me for writing this, remember that I am not talking about the actual full game. I am talking about how it presents itself to newcomers, through the description on the game’s website, and through what is visible in the demo. The full game may well be the best thing since sliced game, it’s just a shame that Blow hides it so well, that the game seemingly tries hard to turn away newcomers and only loosens up and shows the good bits once you buy it.
16/04/2009 at 15:52 Dodomaster says:
Getting the STARS is freaking difficult, however, it’s awesome.
Loved every minute of the game btw.
16/04/2009 at 16:02 Marar says:
@jalf well the problem with that is, the mind-expanding parts come around worlds 4,5, maybe even 3, but if they threw parts of those into the demo, I think the difficulty increase would be enough to put players off, just like a Portal demo with the 1st, then the 3rd, and then the 14th wouldn’t work
And the story isn’t separated from the gameplay, you forget about the dinosaur :p
16/04/2009 at 16:11 Neut says:
Jalf: Again a lot of bile for someone who’s spent nothing and has only played the demo. Out of curiousity, how much of the demo have you played and solved?
“Which is pretentious because it doesn’t really do much to support these claims.”
Ironically you’re not really doing much to support your claims either. ;)
16/04/2009 at 16:26 RabidZombie says:
Kieron: I see what you mean. I guess I was lucky I got the puzzle the instant I did it wrong the first time.
As to those of you complaining it’s used only once, it isn’t. Get your facts straight. The very same puzzle appears in a later level in that world (the one with the conveyor belt of clouds). Just you must learned your lesson and immediately ignored that second door.
jalf: You’re an idiot. You’re arguing over something as trivial as whether a game is pretentious or not. Shut up and enjoy the game. Hell, ignore the story if you want to.
Eric: Odd. I thought the game seemed to introduce the mechanic pretty well at numerous points. 1st was in the ladder in the last level of world 2 (don’t tell me you got up that withOUT getting hit on the head). Then again in world 4 on the Donkey Kong referencing level, when one of the monsters is places specially to land on you if you take a specific route. I suspect it appears elsewhere in the game as well. Hell, I mean, even Soljia Boy saw it in action in his “review” at the end.
Dr_demento: The left door is the correct one yes. When you open that, time is moving forwards. I was talking about when using the door on the right.
Also, Fragile Friend (two doors, one key) was a horrible puzzle. However, what you posted was not, in fact, the solution. It’s possible you solved it by accident and didn’t see what you really did. (I know I did)
*spoilers*
What you have to do is move Tim next to the door, as if you were opening it, THEN pick up the green key and then go back in time before you touched the door. Your shadow now has the key, opens the first door for you leaving the second door available to pry open giving you the puzzle piece.
This comment is WAY too long.
16/04/2009 at 17:08 Dr_demento says:
Thanks everyone for pointing out how to actually do that puzzle! The way me & all my friends did it was by exploiting the fact that Tim’s Shadow Self is about 3px to the right of Tim, so if you get the key and stand right next to the door but not quite touching it then rewind time, it will eventually glitch and unlock the door with him and leave you with the key and one door to open.
Your solution is much better. :D
I love Braid, it is a perfect game for other games to model themselves on! Three or four hours long, brilliantly clever, low-budget, and (relatively) cheap. Much like Portal – now we just need one of the big publishers to say “Hey, the Orange Box was a shockingly huge success, why don’t we try releasing a four-in-one pack like that?”. Or just keep putting them on XBLA/PSN etc.
16/04/2009 at 17:09 MeestaNob! says:
People claiming this game is pretentious almost certainly have some form of inferiority complex.
I mean christ, if you think this is bad you must have wanted to beat a group of arts students to death after playing Deus Ex.
16/04/2009 at 17:37 fulis says:
@RabidZombie when a gooba lands on your head you die and time stops, you never really see it bounce anywhere so you’re not going to notice it, and it’s hardly the thing you’re paying attention to anyway
16/04/2009 at 18:47 jalf says:
Why? Deus Ex didn’t promise a “mind expanding experience”, did it? I don’t really see the connection.
So you didn’t actually read my post, is what you’re saying? I did support my claims. I explained exactly what problems I had with the demo and with the way the game presents itself to potential buyers on its website. There was no “bile” involved
RabidZombie: No, I’m not arguing over whether the game is pretentious. Like I said, I haven’t played the entire game, I can’t speak for the whole thing. I simply explained why it *seems* that way to a newcomer whose only experience of it is what the website says, and what the demo shows. I’m sorry for trying to explain my reasoning. Apparently this thread is only for saying OMGOMGOMG, BRAID IS TEH AWESOMZ!
You are such great advocates for the game. I really can’t wait to become like you. If I play it, will I be tie my identity so closely to a game that the merest *hint* of, well, not even criticism, but *discussion* of the game threatens me to the extent it apparently does to you?
If so, I think I’ll pass IF you want to support this game, the best you can do is try to appear as if you’re still sane, even after you played it Is that such a great challenge?
I did not say the game sucked. I did not even say the game was pretentious. I simply said that it presents itself that way, that it could do more to draw in customers. That a game that only becomes awesome after you’ve played through half of it is doing itself a disservice.
Quite simply, to someone going “Hmm, I’ve heard about this Braid thing, I should check it out to see if it’s worth buying”, it really undersells itself. By all accounts, from people who’ve played the whole thing, it’s a great game. It just doesn’t *look* that way to the person who really matters, the one considering whether to pay for the game.
Get a grip.
16/04/2009 at 19:21 fulis says:
Well dude, it’s pretty pointless to hop in a comment thread about the game and start writing long posts of what you think the game seems like based on the demo. Put that in the comment thread to the post about the demo
I don’t think anyone would take issue with you personally thinking the game is pretentious but if you want to talk about things like that then just play the game. If you’re not interested then don’t play it, but don’t sit here and write comments about what you think the game is going to be like when you play it.
The demo just gives you a taste of the mechanics, it saves the interesting puzzles and the great finale.
16/04/2009 at 19:54 unclelou says:
Finished world 1 and 2 without a walkthrough now, and most of world 3, but I can’t figure out the “Hunt” level on that one. GAH.
Brilliant game so far.
16/04/2009 at 20:10 Lewis says:
unclelou: try some “creative bouncing.”
16/04/2009 at 20:16 El Stevo says:
I really, really like Braid. I think it’s excellent.
16/04/2009 at 20:26 RabidZombie says:
jalf: Feel free to talk about a game. Just don’t be an ass about it. I think you’ve crossed that line when you said “Ah, the blind fanboy brigade is out again today.” to be honest.
16/04/2009 at 20:32 John says:
I have been enjoying this game, and had hoped that perhaps the freshman creative writing class level of prose would somehow open to a larger plot. I guess not.
For a game that keeps it simple, but similarly uses inter-level text to weave a story (and does it way better than Braid), try Immortal Defense. It’s $5 now:
http://www.direct2drive.com/7807/product/Buy-Immortal-Defense-Download
Yes, it’s a defense game. Yes, production values are low. But man…what a game.
16/04/2009 at 20:38 psyk says:
Its a PUZZLE game of course its going to be a “mind expanding experience”.
16/04/2009 at 20:58 Meat Circus says:
@unclelou:
Left to right.
16/04/2009 at 21:48 flo says:
graphics/gameplay look way too much like an enhanced super mario world … even with all the puzzle elements/reality distortion stuff and what not, it still seems to be a platformer/jump n’ run thing, and those things are evil and I’ll cherish the day when they hopefully die forever. (which will unfortunately probably be never) whatever works for you guys i guess …
16/04/2009 at 23:32 unclelou says:
Not only does it not look like MSW at all, it’s as much a jump and run game as Portal is a first-person shooter.
17/04/2009 at 01:15 Robin says:
I’ve moaned about the technical issues (and they’re neither excusable nor trivial) on my blog.
Kieron has completely nailed the description of the actual game. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube, or Super Monkey Ball, or one of those fairground wiggly wire games, but with no failure condition except the limits of your patience. It’s cold and clinical, but I guess that adds to the uneasy mood.
I’m glad it was made and had so much thought put into it, even if I don’t personally enjoy it anywhere near as much as World of Goo or, well, most things.
WoG impressed me more because at no point did I have any idea of what it was going to do next. It managed to get more character out of some wonky shapes with eyes than Braid’s thirty thousand layers of swirling paint daubs.
Incidentally, Braid is the only game I can think of where the main disincentive to dying is the sheer hideousness of the main character’s death animation.
17/04/2009 at 05:02 SirNuke says:
Overall, I’m really enjoying Braid. Art direction is beautiful, sound track is awesome, and gameplay is largely pretty awesome. But it’s not perfect, and I think I enjoyed World of Goo quite a bit more.
I’m currently stuck on a puzzle half way through in World 6 (involving sneaking goomba guys past plants). Last puzzle piece before the attic as a matter of fact.
I typically judge the quality of a puzzle by my response upon determining the solution. If I mentally respond with “Oh yeah, that’s pretty awesome”, it’s a good puzzle. If I respond with “You have the fucking shitting me!”, then there might be something wrong (typically a completely illogical solution: see 90%+ of adventure games [I love them anyway, but seriously, what the hell The Longest Journey?]).
This particular puzzle falls under the second. Determining what the solution is took me, maybe a minute. Actually executing the solution… well, I’ve wasted probably over an hour at this point. Watching a couple walkthroughs on Youtube and checking an FAQ on gamefaqs confirms that I have the correct solution in mind but it has a very difficult execution.
The root of the problem is that it requires extensive precision but without the benefit of time-rewind (goombas are time resistant). Time-rewind in Braid is used both a tool for the player and as a gameplay element, and it used brilliantly in both. Letting a player undo mistakes is a difficult problem in game design and has lead to a number of (mostly poor) solutions, such as Prey’s Spirit World and BioShock’s Vita-Chambers. Time-rewind solves this problem with flying colors, allowing players to revert death and other errors with minimal repetition and without the difficulty curve flatting problems of Bioshock and Prey.
So you have to understand my irritation at Braid for introduction an excellent tool in the time-rewind, but then arbitrarly breaking it, apparently for the sake of being ‘clever’ on a couple puzzles.
17/04/2009 at 05:20 Matzerath says:
Robin: “Incidentally, Braid is the only game I can think of where the main disincentive to dying is the sheer hideousness of the main character’s death animation.”
Really? I think the first Tomb Raider is the winner of that one. I remember my girlfriend watching in abject terror as I neared the top of some precarious edifice, hoping against hope I wouldn’t screw up and initiate once again a seemingly endless stream of hideous hopeless screams terminating finally with a sickening thump. Or spikes. Braid didn’t seem nearly as bad as THAT. Not the demo, anyway.
I can hardly wait to buy Braid — it looks great. When a computer game has generated as much heated debate as it has, it’s a foregone conclusion that it has merit. At least for me! Long threads on RPS pique my interest far more than advertisements or glowing write-ups!
17/04/2009 at 09:41 SirNuke says:
SirNuke:
YES! Exactly. That is exactly my issue with it. It totally breaks the flow. The rest of the rule re-writing is introduced in an excellent manner. But the decision to just make your time-manipulation not only useless, but to have it break the puzzle, just doesn’t sit at all well for me.
I can see why these puzzles are there, in the context of what the game’s trying to say. But still: a big design “no.”
17/04/2009 at 09:42 Lewis says:
Inexplicably, I posted that under your name instead of my own. Wtf?
17/04/2009 at 10:21 IcyBee says:
@SirNuke
I couldn’t manage that 3 plant puzzle either.
There is a slightly cheaty way of doing it: Get the plants in sync using the ring, then press shift, followed by up and down. If you keep shift held down, then time passes at 0x and the greeny goombas all make it past the plants – allowing you to do your multi-bounce.
If someone has figured out a better way – please tell me!
17/04/2009 at 11:23 Meat Circus says:
@IcyBee
You don’t even need to use the ring to get the two goombas out, just judicious use of mini-rewinds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOCv6-e8sM
17/04/2009 at 18:55 Taillefer says:
IcyBee,
Work on each plant at a time until all the plants sync up to let every goomba pass every time. The trick is where to drop the ring. To slow the first plant, drop the ring directly under it. Drop the ring for, say, a couple of seconds at a time until it lets everything pass in its own time. To manipulate the second plant, you want to drop the ring nearer the third, so the first plant isn’t affected by the time-slowing. Then, to manipulate the third plant, drop the ring under the platform with the puzzle piece on so the time-slowing only affects that one plant. Shouldnt’ take long at all to get all the plants moving how you need.
18/04/2009 at 13:06 Brulleks says:
@Meat Circus
Okay, maybe pixel-perfect is an exaggeration, but it is utterly pedantic – and the slippery acceleration of your avatar doesn’t help that.
However, I found that switching the god-damned horrible sound effects off and playing it in silence actually helped my concentration enough to solve many of the puzzles that I couldn’t get before.
A couple of the slow-down time puzzles are all that’s left now. I’ve only found the click of satisfaction with about two of them so far (notably the first elevator one) – mostly it’s been groans of repeated execution. Even though I’ve persisted with it, I can’t say I’ve found any of it particularly ‘enjoyable.’ I’d hoped that the jigsaw puzzles might play a larger part in the gameplay, but they seem pretty pointless apart from the first one (and their alleged link to some kind of ‘plot’).
18/04/2009 at 14:38 Kua says:
Been out of ‘the scene’ for a while now. But my word this is a stupendously good game.
19/04/2009 at 05:57 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:
Indie game, 150+ posts.
19/04/2009 at 22:06 cowthief skank says:
I really liked it. Enough that I spent today finding all the stars (with a guide, admittedly). I loved the ending too, like most people. Not a perfect game, but quite remarkable. This from somebody who has no memory of enjoying any platform games in the last 10 or 15 years.
03/06/2009 at 19:45 sfury says:
Amazing game.
I can’t remember enjoying something that much since Portal, and I hold it even higher than that. JB is genius.
27/05/2010 at 06:12 Monte Design Glider says:
Thank you for the share, keep impressing like this.
Chris Harris