You may or may not agree with what Jonathan Blow has to say about video games, their role as art, and their role in society. You know what? You may never have heard of Jonathan Blow at all. He’s a man that clearly takes games quite seriously, and you can find some compelling writing from him online. But all you really need to know for now is that he’s the man behind Braid, an upcoming release for Xbox Live Arcade and PC.
If you really want to strip it all down to its barest surface, Braid is an homage to Super Mario Bros. You jump on top of creatures to kill them, big plants pop in and out of pipes, there’s a castle with a flagpole at the end of the world, and so on. Of course, if that were all the game did, it wouldn’t be anything special. In fact, it’d probably be actionable. Braid’s big difference is that you have control over time itself. That lets you rewind your mistakes to prevent death, its first useful feature. But it only took a few minutes for me to realize that Braid isn’t primarily a platformer. It’s a puzzle game. You’re eased into the time controls, but each world makes changes to how things work. For one example, you’ll eventually encounter certain enemies, keys, doors, or other pieces of the world that are covered in sparkles. This denotes that they don’t move backwards when you rewind time. So you’ll need to account for that. From there, things get much trickier and very entertaining.
The game feels like it was at least partially inspired by all the tool-assisted speed run videos that are out there online, created by players using emulators and save states to rewind all of their mistakes and present a perfect run-through of classic console games. The game will have a speed runs option on its main menu, but it won’t be immediately available.
There’s also a story here, one that plays off of the gameplay’s concepts. Furthering the Nintendo homage, the lead character, named Tim, is on the hunt for a princess, and you’ll bend time as you attempt to find her. Along the way, you’ll collect puzzle pieces, which you can assemble into some story-related artwork.
Though that’s really all there is to Braid in a pure gameplay-and-story sense, I feel like I’m only scratching the surface. The unfinished PC release I played made an immediate impression, both because it’s well-made and because it tells its princess-seeking story in an interesting way. I won’t go on to ruin any of the puzzles or describe how the time mechanic is altered from world to world, because that seems like something you should see for yourself when the game is released later this spring.
Or, if you’re interested in seeing more, check out the game’s official site.