Culture

Sneakpeek at Incredibly Innovative Indie Game, Braid

Last year, in a GDC session called Experimental Gameplay Workshop, I got a chance to see an astonishingly creative indie game called Braid. The game’s creator, Jonathan Blow, walked us through what at first looked like a rather familiar 2D plattformer. But the game lets players control the flow of time, and it does things […]

Braid

Last year, in a GDC session called Experimental Gameplay Workshop, I got a chance to see an astonishingly creative indie game called Braid. The game's creator, Jonathan Blow, walked us through what at first looked like a rather familiar 2D plattformer. But the game lets players control the flow of time, and it does things with time that Max Payne and Prince of Persia:TSOT never dreamed of. Now Arthouse Games has a great preview of the latest version of Blow's work in progress.

BEWARE: The preview is full of spoilers, but in the end they're even more blown away than I was:

What really makes Braid great as a work of art, from what I saw, is the way that all of its various elements are connected together. The story feeds into the game mechanics, and those mechanics change your understanding of time, and that new understanding influences your reading of the story. Ideas from the story also serve as metaphor for the overall structure of the game, which in turn complements the ending. Braid is like one giant riddle comprised, step-by-step, of some of the most interesting and innovative gameplay I've ever seen. It's all woven together into a very tight, elegant package---an ideal form, really.