Braid

Moby ID: 35529
Xbox 360 Specs
Buy on Windows
$14.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

Braid is a puzzle game disguised as a 2D platformer. The player controls Tim during his search for a princess he has known and lost. Although the objective appears to be rather straightforward at first, the meaning and the motives become much more implicit and are interwoven with the mechanics during the course of the game. From the main hub, Tim can eventually access six worlds that consist of different areas. The start of each world reveals a part of Tim's background and emotions, rather than progressing a storyline. The second to the sixth world can be entirely explored without solving all the puzzles. Difficult situations can be ignored and revisited later. When all worlds have been completed, the first one becomes available and brings closure to the story.

The game's concept is entirely based on time manipulation. Tim cannot die permanently as the player can rewind time at any moment and usually for any length, even all the way back when an area was entered. While rewinding, the music is synchronized in a similar fashion. Rather than a gimmick, rewinding is an essential element to solve the puzzles. The different worlds give a spin to the mechanic by introducing clones as the player collaborates in a parallel reality with a past version of himself, time can be affected through the movement direction, and Tim can create a circular area to cause time dilation. Certain items, enemies, and parts of the scenery are immune to time manipulation or behave in a very different way. Puzzles require close examination of the environment and the behavior of different items and enemies. As such, the game is entirely about solving the puzzle theoretically by applying the game mechanics and then using trial and error to executive it and discover possible flaws in the proposed logic. This also brings limited replayability to the game.

A world is solved by collecting the puzzle pieces. These need to be arranged and eventually show a picture related to the game's story. There is no filler in the level design, meaning that every platform, item, or game element (except for a few enemies) has a specific purpose to solve a puzzle. Fast times can be tracked in a separate speedrun mode.

The later released Windows and Macintosh versions are identical but come with a level editor.

Spellings

  • ブレイド - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Xbox 360 version)

86 People (77 developers, 9 thanks) · View all

A Game by
Graphic Art by
Additional Graphical Effects Programming by
Animation Prototyping by
Additional Sound Effects by
Helpful Patron
XBLA Facilitation
Room and Board
Rewind Evangelist
Play-Testing and Discussion
Special Thanks
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 92% (based on 75 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 139 ratings with 7 reviews)

Poor puzzles, poor story and poor references, but hey, it's artsy so we have to like it.

The Good
The backgrounds in this game are very beautiful, every single one of them is hand-drawn and the aesthetic is very original. Braid focuses mostly on looking beautiful and I'll be damned if it doesn't pull that off very well. The art-style for the backgrounds also fits really well with the level-design and the style is consistently present, while also varying enough to stay interesting.

Likewise, the spriting is also done very excellently. I want you to jump on one of the basic enemies and then slowly reverse time, you will see the expression on the sprite change slowly instead of an instant-transition, that's pretty cool. Like with the backgrounds, the sprites fit really well with the overall aesthetic and this all creates a sense of atmosphere that I personally found quite endearing.

Like with "Banjo & Tooie" this game has you assembling puzzles, this time around in order to finish a level off entirely. I actually really enjoy this, I like making puzzles and when done virtually I don't end up with a million boxes and missing pieces.

The Bad
The story in this game is very poorly implemented, to the point of it been a few steps back in video game storytelling. Remember how I said that in "Bastion" the gameplay and story are perfectly put together? Braid does the complete opposite and gameplay and story are kept miles away from each other. Before you start each level there are a few books on pedestals that you can read, each containing an entire paragraph of ambiguous text that is supposed to form the story. Some call this poetry, but I call it retarded. I am not saying that a 2D platformer can't have a story, but when we have to go out of our way to read a load of text before we get to play, then that is clearly a failure. As for the content: I am underwhelmed. Every level just turns around the same thing: Tim is a whiny idiot, he is looking for a princess and the game can't go for a single level without referencing the atomic bomb.

On the gameplay side of things there is nothing groundbreaking to be found either, in fact, the gameplay feels very out of place. The story and atmosphere set the game up as a very dark or at least a dramatic experience, but once gameplay starts you are jumping around with cute creatures while cheerful music plays in the background. At first glance the first level appears to be doing a Mario reference, but you quickly realize that the entire game is a Mario reference. Every single level uses the piranha plants coming out of green pipes, goomba-like enemies walking straightforward until they hit something and weird-looking creatures at the end of levels telling you the princess is somewhere else. The entire game is like this, so I consider myself justified in saying that it's just Super Mario with puzzles and artsy bullcrap thrown into the mix.

Unlike what the creators claim, the puzzles in this game border on the horrendous. Their official strategy guide says that all the puzzles are fair and never involve guessing, but in the very first level I was confronted with a puzzle that demanded that I grew bored and started fucking around with the scenery (turned out you could move the picture frame, thanks for hinting at that, that clearly didn't leave me guessing for random solutions). There are plenty of examples all around and one of the most mind-bending of them is a puzzle where there are two doors and only one key, one door opens and the other breaks the key and forces you to repeat the entire stage. That is a returning puzzle, ladies and gentlemen!

In fact, there are quite a lot of stages that demand you reset everything if you make even one mistake. One annoying example was early on in a level where certain elements were immune to your time-reversing abilities. The only puzzle here was that two platforms were moving towards each other at exactly the right timing, but one was immune and the other wasn't, so in order to prevent a conflict I just had to wait... next to three enemies with varying attack patterns.

Also unfair about the puzzles is that they are incredibly overwhelming. Many stages contain various dynamic objects that start working the second you enter, this creates the problem that the player can never get his bearings before diving into the actual puzzle. Imagine if you're playing Banjo & Kazooie and once you enter Mumbo's mountain you don't start off on top of that hill without enemies, but next to that monkey throwing fruit at you and with no way to escape. As the game is normally, you can observe the monkey from a distance, but in this scenario (which is what Braid does) you are just going to run around in circles because you can't grasp what is happening around you. What Braid does can be done right, like in Ocarina of Time where you enter that icy room with the timer, it gives you a quick adrenaline-kick and forces you to think faster than usual, but when the entire game is like that...

The Bottom Line
Many people praise Braid because it shows that "games are mature" and "games are art", but personally I can only see a poorly-assembled mess of a game. I do believe that some games are mature and I most certainly believe that games art, however I also believe that you don't need to throw in pointless references or ambiguous paragraphs of text to achieve it. I think Bastion is a piece of art, the same can be said about The Path, "art" is not some kind of official stamp that government employees hold meetings over, it's an opinion that varies from person to person. I think Psychonauts is a piece of art, but on the other side I don't care for modern paintings.

If you hang out on websites like The Escapist were any game that a reviewer calls art is immediately consider to be 100% flawless, then this title should definitely be on your to-play list. Besides that, I can only recommend this game to the so-called "hipsters".

Windows · by Asinine (957) · 2012

Easy to play, hard to get

The Good
Thinking about the moments I played Braid, mostly late at night, it brings back the range of emotions that went through me. In the dimly lit room, the game took me on a grand voyage of surprise, frustration, victory and sadness. It was a sensation I can only compare to some of the best titles I have played, such as Shadow of the Colossus, the first Monkey Island, Ecstatica or Dreamweb. A large part of my enjoyment of those is because they arrived at the right moment in my life and fit the way past games shaped me as a gamer and my expectations for new experiences. Braid is different however, as it has many layers you need to peel away at first. It is a game with many disguises and your enjoyment will depend on plunging through the different surfaces.

To understand why this game is so different, you need to know more about the author, Jonathan Blow. The past few years, he has been very vocal about the industry and trends, loathing design choices of heralded games such as Half-Life 2 and calling World of Warcraft a treadmill of tedium, a drug, the junk food of gaming. He labels the game "unethical", saying it provides simple rewards for a suffering scheme to keep players in front of their computers. Much as why I am drawn to indie games, he longs for the sense of wonder that pulled him in as a kid. But growing up, expectations change and he feels too few games manage to grow along with a maturing audience.

Secondly, he says games have to find their own voice, in the way music captures through sound, books through words and imagination, and movies through images. Too often games mimic tried concepts of other media. For games, this has to be the game mechanic itself, something inherent to the idea of a game. Blow also loathes cut-scenes as a way to tell a story, it should stem from the gameplay. In that way, Braid is not a game to attract a new audience, it's a gamers' game. While I expected a game such as Heavy Rain to take storytelling one step further, Blow does it through the age-old concept of a platformer. Yes, Braid is just a regular platform game, no different from Super Mario Bros. and nothing in the game design is particularly new. That means that with no instructions available, anyone knows instinctively how to play. You walk, you jump, that's all there is. While exploring the worlds however, accessed through the protagonist's house, further game mechanics are discovered rather accidentally with small hints. You find out you can rewind time, retracing every step you have taken in a level and back as far as you want. Each world uses a variant of time manipulation. The way time is manipulated does not become increasingly complex and difficult. In some worlds you reverse time (and as such you can never die), in others time changes according to your movement, you collaborate with a past version of yourself in a parallel reality or slow down time in a specific area. The platforming is eventually a false sense of familiarity, as Blow uses it as a vehicle to tell his story, twisting the genre into unexplored paths. It does not even matter if you like platformers.

Time manipulation is the only mechanic you need to learn and you use it solve puzzles. Certain objects and items are affected differently through time and you need to distort reality to turn it to your advantage. Almost all worlds can be travelled right away. There are no enemies you absolutely need to kill, you can just walk straight through a world and decide to finish it later, a very meditative experience. Each world holds a number of puzzle pieces that need to be collected and arranged into a frame to reveal a photo. The story about Tim's seemingly simple quest for a princess is carefully mixed into the gameplay, even though Tim never speaks and does not meet anyone directly relevant to the story. He is also very out of place, a tiny man in a suit with his hair neatly brushed in a fantasy world, but this is for the player to discover. The way time is manipulated and puzzles are solved is a part of the storyline itself. Before attempting to grab a puzzle piece, you need to examine the behaviour of enemies and items, imagine how your time manipulation can affect them and devise a strategy. Mostly, you will be solving puzzles by devising a pattern in your mind before even trying. If it does not work, you rewind time, look where you went wrong and adapt your strategy. The puzzle pieces that form pictures resemble Tim pondering his past, trying to fit the pieces. Final clues to the story are provided through a few sentences at the beginning of a world. Very little is revealed and the search for the princess soon becomes a metaphorical quest for something completely different. Like a poem, with so little details, it is profound and deeply moving, yet largely implicit and asks the player to work it out himself. Even more, you can easily ignore the entire story as there are no sequences where you are forced to read or interpret, it is entirely optional. But when you do get to the final world however, the mixed and reversed storytelling leads to a tremendously powerful ending where everything you thought you knew is brought into a very surprising perspective you could not possibly imagine.

The gaming roots also show. The end of a level, “The princess is in another castle”, a sentence burned into the collective gaming history, is given an entirely different meaning in this game. The cheerful graphics will deceive the player how much of a melancholic reminiscing about regret it is, though it is open for interpretation.

The quiet atmosphere is enhanced through fitting music and beautifully drawn graphics. They complement and dearly need each other. The way rewinding time is reflected in visuals and music is stunning. There is also no filler. All puzzles and scenery have a meaning in the game. Even though it can be considered quite short, none of the gameplay seems abundant or meaningless, everything is moulded together with mathematical precision. After finishing the first five worlds, a ladder can be constructed to the attic in the house where a final world brings closure to the story. It is not told in a linear way however. Each sequence reconstructs another memory and your insight into the events constantly needs to be adjusted. Many of the puzzles seem very difficult at first, but there is always a logical solution. They are hardly ever the same and the ingenuity of some will leave you baffled. When you finally figure it out, you feel a great and deserved sense of accomplishment.

The Bad
It is not a game for everyone. If you cling to a certain genre Braid can be disappointing. There is no action without meaning, no dying, and no enemies to defeat without a purpose. You can finish a level without any action at all. Without the background story, as faint as it may seem, this game would not make sense. If you don't grasp all the elements that make up the game world, it doesn't work. On paper it seems poor game design, but Blow is incredibly clever in his presentation. You grow along with the game and it is hard not to be impressed by the maturity carefully crafted into the game design when it fully reveals itself. This game is however a must for anyone who has been playing for many years, as a mosaic that brings together some of the best elements from gaming history (hence the title) with fresh ideas.

The Bottom Line
Braid is a one-of-a-kind experience, a game stronger than anything else released before, because it is not ashamed of being a simple game at the surface. It acknowledges everything that precedes it, but refuses to be influenced by other types of culture. As Blow once said, there will eventually be games you cannot explain or compare. You simply need to have played them to know what they are. Through the humble, yet familiar game mechanics, Braid tells a story that puts almost everything on this site to shame. When it finally comes to full bloom in the end, it stands tall as a masterpiece that mocks every revolution the game industry has been preaching. As such it deserves my humble praise and a hearty recommendation.

Xbox 360 · by Sciere (926971) · 2009

Time and Lions

The Good
Cool characters. Tim is a short guy that looks mature and wears suits and a tie. The way he looks is symbolic of an old soul trapped in a young/infantile body. It is itself a paradox of time. The main characters, however, are a bunch of lions that Tim jumps on in order to gain access to higher ground. The basic obstacles are similar to Metroidvania games. You can only jump so high, so figure out a way to jump higher. You can't crawl through narrow passages, and you can't morph into a ball. The lions can get there and get the items for you.

Visually fascinating. While the gameplay itself is almost zero fun, I kept playing due to the beautiful graphics, and the following reason.

Deep thoughts and sophisticated views about life, the universe, and existence. I'm touched by World 3 and World 5 especially. In World 5 you create a parallel universe version of yourself, and work with that alter-ego to accomplish a goal together. It makes you ponder upon the choices you have made in life, and how things may have turned out differently. In World 3 a type of glowing objects is introduced that isn't affected by time. It's a symbol of eternity, The Constant, the things in life that never change no matter what happens, such as family, such as There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

You can't die. It's a game with an undo button that can undo everything you have done. Obviously inspired by the game/software development process itself, as you can type something, change a line of code and then undo. This is a very, very cool and useful feature, that would have been very helpful in a lot of other games.

The Bad
However, Braid doesn't feel any more user-friendly with this unlimited undo feature. You can't die. But you can't solve the puzzle either. About 20% of the puzzles can be solved by a normal person. About 20% more can be solved if you think really hard. The rest of the puzzles are too difficult. Braid really could have been 500% better, if it had just included a hint system. Give me three hints to each puzzle piece. I have to do things to earn the hints. That'll make the gameplay fun. But right now, it's not fun at all, and you constantly have to read a guide just to complete the level.

After reading the guides, it seems that each puzzle has only one, unique solution. How can a game that covers a topic so broad and deep, be so narrow-minded at the same time?

How about this: Let's summon Tim right now and rewind back to the day Braid was released, and surround Jonathan Blow, the project manager, with a bunch of lions and rabbits that are immune to everything ever. The lions and rabbits will not go away until Jonathan Blow give us three hints to each puzzle.

The Bottom Line
Unless you have the ability to manipulate time, and then manipulate Johnathan Blow, there really isn't any fun in Braid. It's probably not meant for that either. A game that aims to provide not fun, but deep questions, and eternal answers.

Windows · by Pagen HD (146) · 2013

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Recommended literature Sciere (926955) Sep 7, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Braid appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Budget

Developer Jonathan Blow said he invested about $180,000 of his own money in a three year period to create the game.

Inspiration

In an interview with the website Joystiq on 25th September 2008 Jonathan Blow cites the musical influences that initially lived in the same emotional neighborhood as Braid: the album Horse Stories by Dirty Three, the music of Lisa Gerrard, and the soundtrack to Dead Man by Neil Young.

References

Many of Braid's levels appear to draw their names from various cultural sources: level 3.2 -- There and Back Again -- is from fictitious hobbit Bilbo Baggins' autobiographical account of his adventures in author J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, while level 3.4 -- The Ground Beneath Her Feet -- is named either after a book of the same name by author Salman Rushdie or the U2 song also inspired by the book. Level 3.6 -- Irreversible -- suspiciously shares a title with a French film told employing an unorthodox time flow, while levels 4.2 -- Jumpman -- and 6.6 -- Elevator Action -- are names of video games. (Level 6.7 -- In Another Castle -- is one of many nods this game plays to the great granddaddy of the platform genre, Super Mario Bros.)

Awards

  • GameShark
    • 2009 - Best Xbox Live Arcade Game
  • GameSpy
    • 2008 – XBLA Game of the Year
  • IGN
    • 2009 - Overall Best Puzzle Game
    • 2009 - Best PS3 Puzzle Game
    • 2009 - Best PC Puzzle Game

Information also contributed by Big John WV and Sciere

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Blaze & Blade Busters
Released 1998 on PlayStation, 2019 on PSP, PlayStation 3
Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd
Released 2007 on PlayStation 2
Blade II: The Return of Evil
Released 2019 on Nintendo Switch
Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest
Released 1998 on PlayStation, Windows, 2019 on PSP...
Rise of the Dragon
Released 1990 on DOS, 1991 on Amiga, 1992 on SEGA CD...

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 35529
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

PlayStation 3 added by Kaminari. OnLive added by firefang9212. Linux added by Iggi. Xbox One added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Kabushi, Pseudo_Intellectual, Solid Flamingo, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, FatherJack, Kennyannydenny, click here to win an iPhone9SSSS.

Game added August 8, 2008. Last modified March 7, 2024.