The benchmark for Indie games!
I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that the reason I picked up Braid was its $2.50 price during a Steam sale. I had heard the rave reviews but was never that compelled to not think that I could just play it later for "academical" purposes. It was lucky therefore that I did pick it up due to the price because the game had me enthralled from the get-go.
Braid is all about time manipulation and it builds puzzles around variations of this concept to form six worlds. In every world the player must collect all the puzzle pieces to reach the final level. Every interpretation of the time manipulation is explored in one of these worlds and the interpretations of time manipulation are ingenious. My personal favourite is a world where time moves forward when the protagonist "Tim" moves to the right and time reverses when he moves to the left, truly mind-bending.
The puzzles require out-of-the-box thinking and may often lead to some frustration. As soon as you complete them though they seem immediately simple, the mark of great puzzle design. I was furthermore left with a sense of accomplishment I have received from few other games, possibly because I felt that my own creativity was driving me forward. It is in the balance of player coaching and simultaneous encouragement of lateral thinking that the game design in Braid stands out.
The presentation is also rather lovely with a painterly art style being complimented by a pleasant though somewhat repetitive soundtrack. Special attention to small details such as the expressions on Tim's face and the manipulation of sound over time makes Braid quite extraordinary for an independently developed game.
My only gripe with Braid is the rather vague storyline. The game tells a story of a lost love and mixes in some theoretical physics and philosophical meanderings to attempt to tell some kind of touching story that unfortunately flew right over my head. Maybe it was because I was using most of my brain to solve the puzzles. The storyline most functions however as an introduction of the puzzle mechanics present in a world and serves adequately as that.
I fully enjoyed the 7 or so hours I spent with Braid. While I probably spent five hours actually progressing the game I spent a fair amount of time demonstrating the sense of bewilderment its time manipulation concepts can instill, to others. One could call Braid the "Citizen Kane" of Indie games I guess, but I would say that it feels much shorter and much more entertaining. I could not recommend it more!
