The Humble Indie Bundle in 2012 included an all-star lineup: Bastion, Psychonauts, Super Meat Boy, Limbo. And even so, Braid was a standout inclusion. Reminded me of playing Portal for the first time in the way it made me rethink an entirely unconventional mechanic. Then, for the time mechanics to later be revealed as a major twist for the plot. Remarkable title!
I adore Braid. I had a particular interpretation of this game, considering the game mechanics on each world Tim ventured in: the princess is not a woman, and the castle is not a place.
The game mechanics always spin around the notion of regret. Tim must undo his actions in order to overcome his challenges. In every stage this deals with the irreversibility of actions, so instead of fixing things, Tim strives to undo them.
In a few puzzles the solution involves killing yourself before fiddling with time. Perhaps Tim, at some point, contemplated suicide as a solution to his problems. This is rather dark, but what was he chasing after all? What is this princess he is obsessed with?
The princess in my view was the personification of an ideal of perfection. Tim was chasing a situation where he would be free of shame and regret, unburdened by responsibility. He looked for it in a variety of places: in a girlfriend, in marriage, in work, in his own past. But the princess is nowhere to be found. Whenever he reaches a castle, the princess is elsewhere.
The more he pursues this ideal, the more it eludes him. Like the girlfriend he wanted to protect, but she took his actions as suffocating - "you're going the wrong way and you're pulling me with you". Like the engineers who worked in the first atomic bomb, brilliant man that did their best, but in the end, they were all sons of bitches.
What Tim was chasing doesn't exist, like princesses in fairy tales. In his view, there's a knight in shiny armor that gets the princess, but never himself.
In that sense, the ending of the game is positive. He realizes that each step of his journey is a building block in his castle, and finally admits that while he needs many more blocks what he has is a good start.
His goal was always there. The perfection of life is the journey, not the destination.
The mechanics also work on a second level: they represent real physics concepts being studied around and leading up to the time of the Manhattan project. The reversibility of time, the effect of gravity on the spacetime continuum (the ring), time and space as part of the same fabric.
I also took the "final" text about a good start as an indication that the level of understanding of the mechanics required to get the stars to actually reach the princess (which is possible in the game) is quite advanced.
Braid is the video game that made me realize I like art. Not just the beautiful visuals, but the core concept of art. The way the mechanics represented both the internal mental state of the protagonist and the physics research being conducted was mind-blowing to me at the time.
>It's old, I guess, which means either you've played it already or you haven't and never intend to.
Strange sentiment, which is well past the massification and gamesjournalismification of video games. By then, cover shooters were just a bad memory and most serious hobbyists had for a long time embraced both indies (Braid, in 2009) and older titles (Braid, in 2015, when the article was published).
Even if you're putting in 10-20 hours a week, you still have to pick what you play. When Backloggery was more popular, it was quite common to see profiles with dozens or hundreds of "I want to play this when I have the time".
I just recommended lena [0], a short story from the same author, to a friend.
I really liked it. He liked it too. I recommend looking around on that website a bit.
It seems like over the years Braid has gone through alternating periods of being praised as an absolute masterpiece and being derided as pretentious self-gratification by an arrogant and particularly insufferable developer.
In any case, anyone who like Braid should play Baba is You. Both games present the same sort of enjoyable mindscrew.
The game mechanics always spin around the notion of regret. Tim must undo his actions in order to overcome his challenges. In every stage this deals with the irreversibility of actions, so instead of fixing things, Tim strives to undo them.
In a few puzzles the solution involves killing yourself before fiddling with time. Perhaps Tim, at some point, contemplated suicide as a solution to his problems. This is rather dark, but what was he chasing after all? What is this princess he is obsessed with?
The princess in my view was the personification of an ideal of perfection. Tim was chasing a situation where he would be free of shame and regret, unburdened by responsibility. He looked for it in a variety of places: in a girlfriend, in marriage, in work, in his own past. But the princess is nowhere to be found. Whenever he reaches a castle, the princess is elsewhere.
The more he pursues this ideal, the more it eludes him. Like the girlfriend he wanted to protect, but she took his actions as suffocating - "you're going the wrong way and you're pulling me with you". Like the engineers who worked in the first atomic bomb, brilliant man that did their best, but in the end, they were all sons of bitches.
What Tim was chasing doesn't exist, like princesses in fairy tales. In his view, there's a knight in shiny armor that gets the princess, but never himself.
In that sense, the ending of the game is positive. He realizes that each step of his journey is a building block in his castle, and finally admits that while he needs many more blocks what he has is a good start.
His goal was always there. The perfection of life is the journey, not the destination.
I also took the "final" text about a good start as an indication that the level of understanding of the mechanics required to get the stars to actually reach the princess (which is possible in the game) is quite advanced.
Strange sentiment, which is well past the massification and gamesjournalismification of video games. By then, cover shooters were just a bad memory and most serious hobbyists had for a long time embraced both indies (Braid, in 2009) and older titles (Braid, in 2015, when the article was published).
When people are arrogant enough to claim predictive trends in something as complex as human psychology, I get doubt.
I enjoy the technical insights tho.
"serious hobbyists" would've already heard about Braid and be in the "played it already" category
It's in my Steam library. I'll get around to it eventually. Or perhaps my kids will do so before me.
[0] https://qntm.org/lena
https://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
In any case, anyone who like Braid should play Baba is You. Both games present the same sort of enjoyable mindscrew.
Dorkly would like a word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc26EKhZNyM