50 Years of Video Games: Braid (Xbox 360)

Independent game development has been part of the video game industry since its early days, but there were many barriers to pulling it off successfully. Producing the physical media for game releases often required a publisher, and when the internet was young you still needed the kind of marketing budget a publisher could provide to really make back the money used to develop a game. The PC space still saw some occasional hits since distribution was easier but their impact still felt limited, partly because attention still went mostly towards major games from well known names. In the Mid-2000s an indie game revolution began, Steam and consoles like the Xbox 360 starting to open up channels for independent developers to more easily release games. One of the breakout hits of this movement was Braid, a 2008 puzzle platformer from a small team lead by Jonathan Blow that not only showed that an indie game could be immensely creative in what its gameplay brought to the table but it could do so while looking and sounding beautiful as well as telling an artful story.

 

Braid is the tale of a man named Tim, and when the game kicks off, his platforming journey is contextualized as the simple standard “save the Princess” narrative that has been a part of the gaming industry since Mario took off running to do the same back in 1985. In fact, even some of the game’s enemies look like little twists on Mario’s usual enemies, carnivorous plants popping out of pipes and the little furry heads with feet evoking the appearance of the classic Goombas. The game even goes as far as to have the little dinosaur at the end of a world quote the first Super Mario Bros. in saying the princess is in another castle. However, as you begin Tim’s adventure you’ll notice some peculiarities, like how the game starts you at World 2 instead of 1 and the books you read before entering each world certainly don’t describe a straightforward heroic rescue. As you delve deeper into the adventure and start putting together that not everything you’re told might be reliable, you’ll begin to uncover a more metaphorical examination of not only Tim but the concept of motivation and what goals should even be achieved. Braid doesn’t directly tell you its story, leaving a lot up to interpretation, but even a surface level understanding can still make for an effective final stage where gameplay and revelations go hand in hand beautifully.

 

The epilogue does start to lay down a few more direct references to the allegorical underpinnings of this adventure to help loose strands weave together into something with more substance to work with, and in doing so it can even help contextualize what otherwise might seem like a bit of bad game design. A set of collectible stars can be found throughout the levels of Braid, and while they don’t really earn you any new content if you collect them, they do help to cement one of the messages about whether something should be done simply because it can be. One of the stars, for example, requires waiting on a slow-moving platform to get in the right spot, this taking over an hour in real time to try and emphasize that maybe you shouldn’t do something just because it can be done, but here the player themselves is asked to make that decision rather than having it be part of the character’s narrative. Rather than seeing how Tim handles such choices it is now in your hands how this particular subquest unfolds, although thankfully none of the main adventure ever gets so brazen or obtuse in how it designs the required gameplay to see the ending of Tim’s tale.

While the only consistent skill Tim has in Braid is his ability to jump, depending on the world you’re in, you’ll also be given some ability to control time. The earliest and most present of these abilities is the power to reverse time, this already having some simple use cases as any time you miss a jump or get hurt by an enemy you can reverse time and undo the error. However, time reversal is not just used to erase mistakes, the game coming up with plenty of clever ways to utilize this ability. Some can be immediately gleaned like reversing time so platforms are placed properly for you to cross but things can get more complicated as things exempt from the time rewind come into play. You might need an enemy to move a key to a place you can reach it by reversing the movement of things in its path so it doesn’t die on the way. Positioning becomes incredibly important as you need to line things up to get you where you want to be without undoing your work, but interestingly enough you can skip levels if you feel you can’t figure them out at the time. This can help a little as some of the game’s expected out of the box thinking isn’t really taught to you but you might stumble across the idea later, although there are a few interactions that still feel like you really need to dig deep and think of all the possible ways your powers can mix with level objects. Thankfully though the game never puts any clutter in the stage, everything you see either an obstacle or an important piece of a puzzle.

 

While time reversal is the heart of Braid, it doesn’t only employ that idea. Different worlds introduce new ways to influence time or be impacted by the flow of it. One world will have every forward step by Tim move time forward and every step back reverse it, puzzles becoming a lot more complex as every move you make can move things out of position if you aren’t careful. One gimmick lets you use a shadow version of Tim to repeat actions, each time reversal having him do what you did but you can now work with your past self to try and solve puzzles that you couldn’t do alone. There’s even a late game gimmick where you can drop an item to have one space slow down drastically, the player able to upset the rhythms of the world to change how hazards or mechanisms behave. Because of the way these different time abilities can impact play, Braid can get away with reusing some of the early levels later on, the solution you used before now invalid under the new conditions. A puzzle that can be a decent challenge the first time can wrack your brain when it reappears with the rules changed, this not only helping to emphasize how things have evolved but also providing a puzzle that only looks similar when its solution will turn out to be much different.

In general Braid definitely leans towards designs that will require a fair bit of time to puzzle out. Experimenting with your abilities and learning the outcomes of each step makes for an interesting gradual learning experience. While there are times with time sensitive tasks that can be a touch annoying to retry since it can require exiting and reentering the area to reset objects not impacted by your powers, most of the game lays out conundrums that rarely can be solved at first glance. The ones that can be finished so easily are usually introducing a mechanic, and while the game hides some mechanics from you, learning they exist can lead to a little eureka moment that can even benefit you down the road if you try to be as creative in your puzzle solving as Braid was in designing them. There are a few boss fights that do feel a bit simpler than most of the adventure, the difficulty level certainly inconsistent but not hurt by dips in complexity since it can be nice to have a breather between the frequent head-scratchers. Most of your work is done to collect puzzle pieces that stitch together into meaningful images, these working towards unlocking the final stage as well so returning to complete skipped puzzles is necessary even though the game is quite lenient in letting you set many aside until later.

 

Some beautiful and relaxing music accompanies much of Tim’s adventure in Braid, the tracks not only a lovely accompaniment that suits moments spent in careful contemplation of difficult puzzles but works well when time is reversed and the sound would have to be looped back to match. The visuals of Braid are also particularly vivid and artful, important objects not lost in the painted style even when extra attention is given to details like the foliage or the color variation in the background. At times it can seem like the action takes place before a beautiful painting while others even the environment you cross can look like part of a greater artistic work, and while characters and enemies have a bit of a squat and strange look to them they don’t disrupt the look of this world with their more cartoonish appearance. For a game you’ll no doubt spend a while looking at what you are working with while hanging out in one area, the aesthetic attention definitely makes it easier to accept the time taken to clear even the more demanding time-twisting challenges.

THE VERDICT: The mind-bending time puzzles in Braid come in many creative shapes and styles, even a simple level turned into a complex conundrum when the right mechanics are applied to the design. Braid’s time reversal may mean failure is never permanent, but the tasks required of the player require deep thought to solve so it’s not a question of survival so much as figuring out how a player must use available objects and skills to overcome a clever challenge. The game definitely wants you to consider all possible uses of your shifting powers and the variables in the environment even if it could do with hinting at a few a bit more of those applications, but with lovely music and a lush art style backing things up it’s not too unfortunate to be stuck on a puzzle for a while. Add in a story that defies genre conventions while having deeper meanings to uncover and discuss both on who Tim is and what the game is saying in general and Braid brings together an experience that will leave the player thinking in many different ways.

 

And so, I give Braid for Xbox 360…

A GREAT rating. Braid’s tight design can make for puzzles that really demand you figure out how things work together to solve them rather than having you luck into a solution, although this can lead to little moments of finicky adjustment since everything needs to be just so. Time reversal probably assists the game better in this manner than it does in reversing outright failure, the player given the tools to continuously adjust and evolve their approach as they experiment with what’s on hand and realize what the next step towards the solution is. The variation in the time mechanics definitely gives the game continuous life, having to manage your movement as it’s tied to time’s flow or working with your shadow duplicate feeling particularly separate from other styles featured while still working well within the established ideas. The imagination in how these puzzles are designed and the puzzle-solving skill required to figure out how to finish many of them gives Braid its gameplay substance even if a few boss fights feel lean by comparison, but adding in a story with a bit more to say than just context for the adventure gives you something to ponder after you’ve finally worked out how to do everything. While I’ve mostly put forward my ideas about this being a game tied to the concepts of motivation and why we aim to achieve goals, I’ve left out some key details as well to avoid spoilers that open up more discussion about who Tim is and what the game can be saying about the broader human condition. It’s book-focused story-telling and delaying how long it takes to reveal some of its deeper meaning can mean it doesn’t delve as deep as one could into such subjects, but it can construct some strong mechanical representations of certain ideas on top of making you reconsider the sequence of events told in the story once you have a better picture of it all.

 

Braid wasn’t at all alone in ushering in the indie game revolution, games like Cave Story, Super Meat Boy, World of Goo, and many more deserving to share that credit as well. One thing Braid did show though was how unique a voice could be from outside the industry, Jonathan Blow not just reproducing game concepts he enjoyed elsewhere but introducing new and varied ways to play within the well-trodden platformer genre. Attention to details like the game’s appearance and music ensured the game didn’t look cheap either, and while major games of the time were mechanically advanced and with graphics pushing ever more towards realism, Braid had clear focus and a defining look that helped it stand out. This 50 Years of Video Games series will mostly focus on the big names in the industry as they still lead the market and evolution of games even now, but the impact of Braid and other games that paved the way for the indie game scene mustn’t be forgotten. So many amazing games from smaller teams would come in the future, ones with more room to be daring than publishers beholden to stockholders or worried about consistent success. Artistic vision and risk taking would lead to many more indie successes after Braid, the exceptional quality of a game where one man was behind most of the gameplay and story design opening the door for many more creative minds to make their mark on this amazing industry.