By now, many of you have probably heard of the critically praised Braid, the downloadable Xbox Live Arcade game that is capturing the imaginations of tens of thousands of gamers throughout the world. And everything you’ve heard is true. It’s beautiful, it’s brilliant and it’s an experience to cherish. So stop whatever it is you’re doing and go play this game right now.
Developed over the course of three years by Jonathan Blow, Braid is a 2D platformer in which you manipulate time in order to solve the puzzles contained in each world. With a setup similar to the original Super Mario Bros., you must navigate through each level collecting puzzle pieces as you search for the princess.
Each world in Braid begins with a dreamlike prologue in which little snippets of the story are given. It tells the story of Tim who is on a quest to save his princess. Be forewarned, this is a nonlinear and nontraditional narrative, and information is never given out in a straightforward manner. Half the fun is filling in the blanks for yourself.
The second you start playing Braid, what strikes you immediately is how lovely it is to look at. Each world is uniquely designed with a painterly background by artist David Hellman. As you work your way through each world, it is like playing through a living painting. The artwork, coupled with music that is both soothing and at times haunting, helps create an ideally graceful and calming environment as you methodically try to solve every puzzle.
Like Super Mario Bros., the gameplay of Braid is very basic. You control your character with the left joystick while the A button is for jumping and the X button is for manipulating time. There is no limit to how many times you can control time, but it can only be rewound. So there are no lives in Braid since you can never really die. If you do, just rewind. While these simplistic controls might give the sense that there is not much variety to the game, believe me, these elements are more than enough to keep you occupied as each puzzle is unique and every world has a different method of manipulating time.
At $15 for a downloadable game, you might question whether Braid is worth its price. While there isn’t much replay value other than a Speed Run mode to solve puzzles as fast as you can, it’s well worth the price just for a single run through. If you’ll pay $15 to watch a two-hour movie then you should be willing to pay that price for a game that will probably last three to four times longer. But regardless of length, Braid is something to marvel at, and for $15, I think it’s worth every penny.
Many of the joys of Braid are found in its surprises, so it’s best that you discover everything on your own. On message boards and blogs, there seem to be many interpretations about the meaning of Braid. I advise you not to read those posts or blogs or even the rest of this article so that you can come up with your own theory uninfluenced by others.
At its core, I believe Braid to be a philosophical meditation on the nature of perception, experience and relationships. Its concerns are not in the how or the why but in the moment itself, and everything it explores echoes with truth. But regardless of what it all means, Braid is a new spin on an old formula and one of the best platformer puzzle games ever made. It’s an astonishing achievement not only as a game, but as a work of art, brimming with the essential qualities of all great works: namely truth and beauty.
