It’s rare that a small game distributed as downloadable content has so much hype leading up to its release, but Johnathan Blow’s Braid was one of this year’s most talked-about games. Finally released as part of Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade promotion, this title more than lives up to its hype; and proves that video games can be just as much about emotion and self-exploration as they can be about concrete challenges and objectives.
The structure of the game is inherently simple: the player-character, Tim, is on a quest to find The Princess. To reach her, he must traverse six different worlds populated with bizarre creatures. In each world, there are puzzle pieces that Tim collects to assemble them, jigsaw style, and make a picture that helps to advance the story (and is necessary to unlock the final world). Each level itself is a puzzle, with a unique design and solution based on logic and reason. There is no tutorial mode and limited hints given; the player is encouraged to explore and discover on their own, to experiment and find solutions to the puzzles based on trial-and-error and good, old-fashioned critical thinking.
Tim has the power to rewind time, and has no limitation as to how much he can do so; this means that essentially, Tim never dies. The player can simply rewind time back to a point before they made the critical error that resulted in player death. While it’s easy to say that this eliminates all sense of challenge and removes any kind of penalty that the player must face for a mistimed jump, Braid does not pretend to be a side-scrolling action game with puzzle elements (as it may appear to be at first); it is through and through a puzzle game, and when the point of the game is to solve puzzles as opposed to reaching a set goal, it makes sense to not penalize the player with death. Indeed, the enemies are not the obstacles themselves but merely another element of the puzzles one must solve, adding another layer of depth and complexity to the game play.
Speaking of depth and complexity, those are two things that this game is full of, both in game play and more abstract elements of the game. Each puzzle is extremely well thought out, with a logical solution that may not be obvious at first, but after some experimentation and spending more time planning your approach than executing it, the solution to each puzzle presents itself. Such mental work makes for a satisfying experience and a sense of accomplishment, something that is not always present with games that involve intense combat or more physically-based challenges. Each world presents its own form of puzzles, becoming less and less like a traditional platformer and growing more unique as objects unaffected by Tim’s ability to rewind time and a constantly-changing flow of time is introduced. The level and puzzle design is genius, and is punctuated with whimsical graphics and contemplative music.
What the game is really about, however, isn’t solving puzzles or killing monsters: its about discovery of self. I have never seen a game delve so deeply into the metaphysical, not Ico or Shadow of the Colossus or the Metal Gear Solid series. The game itself is a metaphor for happiness and forgiveness; the story even serves as a puzzle with numerous unanswered questions and a sprawling narrative (told by old-fashioned text) that goes off on tangents and asks big philosophical questions. It’s not even clear if the events of the game are indeed happening. Are we just experiencing Tim’s inner turmoil personified and made physical, so that he may more easily deal with it? Is the game all just a dream?
Blow says he has no plans on doing a sequel, and that’s fine with me. Braid is a beautiful experience that is just fine on its own, a near-perfect game with no glaring flaws that engages the player on a mental level not seen before; It moves gaming forward and pulls us right along with it.
