Braid?

shando · Post by **shando** » April 11th, 2009, 4:31 pm

Anyone played this game? I haven't owned a game system in forever, but this game looks fricking awesome. I may just have to get an XBox 360.

Lindsey · Post by **Lindsey** » April 11th, 2009, 5:00 pm

Damn. I was really hoping this was a thread about you growing a long braid in the back of your head. Dare to dream I guess.

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » April 11th, 2009, 10:28 pm

I actually won (runner up in) a contest and got Braid for the PC as a prize. Ironically, though, while that's still processing, I can't buy it for PC, because who wants to waste the money?

Marc Majcher · Post by **Marc Majcher** » April 12th, 2009, 3:20 am

shando wrote:Anyone played this game? I haven't owned a game system in forever, but this game looks fricking awesome. I may just have to get an XBox 360.

Yes. It is awesome. You are absolutely welcome to come over and give it a spin sometime.

Post by **bradisntclever** » April 12th, 2009, 4:17 am

majcher wrote:
shando wrote:Anyone played this game? I haven't owned a game system in forever, but this game looks fricking awesome. I may just have to get an XBox 360.
Yes. It is awesome.

Awesome is almost an understatement. It's quite impressive. The final level is one of my favorite gaming memories of the last few years.

PaulM · Post by **PaulM** » April 12th, 2009, 3:25 pm

I concur with the others. Braid is extremely awesome.

Jonathan Blow is the game's designer and has been involved with the independent game developer scene for quite some time. Keep an eye on his blog here for his Braid and other game dev ramblings.

shando · Post by **shando** » April 12th, 2009, 3:55 pm

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Brian Boyko wrote:I actually won (runner up in) a contest and got Braid for the PC as a prize. Ironically, though, while that's still processing, I can't buy it for PC, because who wants to waste the money?

Boyko, I have looked at these sentences for quite a while and have no idea what you're getting at. You won this as a prize, and......? You don't have a PC? I am confused.

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » April 12th, 2009, 8:02 pm

shando wrote:Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Brian Boyko wrote:I actually won (runner up in) a contest and got Braid for the PC as a prize. Ironically, though, while that's still processing, I can't buy it for PC, because who wants to waste the money?
Boyko, I have looked at these sentences for quite a while and have no idea what you're getting at. You won this as a prize, and......? You don't have a PC? I am confused.

Sorry.

What I meant to say is:

I entered a contest for a free copy of Braid for PC. I won second place, entitling me to a copy, but it's taking a while for it to process.

On the other hand, if I hadn't won, I would be playing and enjoying Braid already, because $15 is an impulse purchase.

shando · Post by **shando** » April 12th, 2009, 8:04 pm

Brian Boyko wrote:
shando wrote:Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Brian Boyko wrote:I actually won (runner up in) a contest and got Braid for the PC as a prize. Ironically, though, while that's still processing, I can't buy it for PC, because who wants to waste the money?
Boyko, I have looked at these sentences for quite a while and have no idea what you're getting at. You won this as a prize, and......? You don't have a PC? I am confused.
Sorry.

What I meant to say is:

I entered a contest for a free copy of Braid for PC. I won second place, entitling me to a copy, but it's taking a while for it to process.

On the other hand, if I hadn't won, I would be playing and enjoying Braid already, because $15 is an impulse purchase.

Gotcha.

shando · Post by **shando** » February 14th, 2010, 7:56 pm

Just finished this today. Man, what an incredible game. By finished, I mean I completed through World 1. Now, to go back and get the other 7 stars I don't have.....

zyrain · Post by **zyrain** » February 15th, 2010, 2:18 am

Yes! Great game. A board game friend of mine turned me onto it. A little on the short side, and the puzzles were mostly easy, but super fun mechanics. I only paid $10 for the downloadable PC version.

mpbrockman · Post by **mpbrockman** » February 15th, 2010, 7:57 am

I just read a review: the the names of the levels strongly resemble the names of chapters of a Calvino book I'm rather fond of (Invisible Cities). Does anyone else know this book? Are the two things related?

Post by **bradisntclever** » February 15th, 2010, 8:46 am

mpbrockman wrote:I just read a review: the the names of the levels strongly resemble the names of chapters of a Calvino book I'm rather fond of (Invisible Cities). Does anyone else know this book? Are the two things related?

"I started the game with some very strong literary influences -- Invisible Cities is a book by Italo Calvino. It's a series of very short, three-to-four page pieces about different fictional cities that have different kinds of reality and different ways that they work.

Then there was another book written by Alan Lightman called Einstein's Dreams. He's a physicist, actually, and he wrote this book which was very much like Invisible Cities, but was about Albert Einstein thinking about... he still hadn't quite figured out relativity, and he was still working as a patent clerk during the day and was very busy, but he would go home and think about how time behaves in the universe. Like Invisible Cities, the way that he was thinking about time was linked to how people are in the universe. Because if the universe is a certain way, it's going to determine what's in it and if people are in that universe, what they're like. That was never quite a satisfying book for me, but it was definitely a strong influence on Braid.

But I wanted to take that and go in a different direction. The initial idea was to do something like that, but with gameplay. Go to different rules, have different rules of time, have that relate to humanity somehow, and just speak to what it means to be in our universe. I didn't know the details. I had ideas for details. Then I started filling in the details and that took the higher level idea further. So the game is still about that, but it has a lot more to it now.

I started out by stylistically imitating Calvino, and I moved away from that as I saw that there were better things for this work. There are a lot of details in the game that I hope that people notice or they at least feel at a subconscious level. There are a lot of things, even in screenshots and stuff on the web, that no one has noticed. I follow forum discussions about the game, and it's cool that nobody's noticing them, because that means that they really are not obvious, and I think once people start discovering those, they'll enjoy the game even more." - Johnathan Blow (the creator)

mpbrockman · Post by **mpbrockman** » February 15th, 2010, 11:47 am

Oh! Well, there you go.

I can see the Einstein's Dreams parallel, but it was the similarity of the titles of the game levels and of the chapters in Calvino's Book ("Cities and Memory", "Cities and Desire" et al) that struck me.

I stand informed.

joelusher · Post by **joelusher** » February 24th, 2010, 2:16 pm

I have mixed feelings about this game. From a pure gameplay perspective, it's fun and interesting. The time manipulation mechanic is pretty cool and I enjoy how it changes throughout the game.

From a story-telling perspective, it's an absolute mess. Listening to Jonathan Blow talk about this game makes it seem like it's a very deep and personal narrative. In my opinion, though, he committed the worse sin of art: being overly vague to add import.

The writing in the game makes me cringe at certain moments. The only clear thing is that the protagonist has issues with many different women in his life. Beyond that, very little can be gleaned. It's been a year and a half since I've played it though so maybe I'm not being fair.

Did you guys finish it? Did you find the story moving/interesting/meaningful if you divorce it from the gameplay?

Austin Improv

Braid?

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