Braid

Overview

A darling of the fledgling late 2000s indie scene, Braid's puzzle platformer action made waves at a time when the industry was changing (and not for the better). The review below was written in February 17, 2016 with a few edits. (Previous version here)

Review

The Humble Indie Bundle games, which I got in 2011, were largely great (at least overall), and I don't even think I've tried all of them (Hammerfall and Cortex Command). Of what I played, I had my top three favorites. Two of those I've already covered: Machinarium, which I played some in late 2011 but didn't beat until May 2012, and VVVVVV. My third favorite was Braid.

Let's get one thing straight, Braid is probably one of the most pretentious indie games out there. But unlike story-driven "games" (in a loose sense), things like

Sunset

or

Gone Home

, things that I'll probably never cover here (with one notable exception I am actually interested in, but one that I still can't justify paying $15 for), Braid actually has gameplay.

This review I actually started writing back in 2014, but reasons related to "I don't really have a PC that can run this properly" issue delayed this review. And to be entirely honest with you, because of the disconnect and the fact that I turned it on to discover I only had five puzzle pieces left to go, made me actually like the game less before I wrote the final review! Can I use a walkthrough now? I've already done 85% without cheating. Which is another weak point of the game. The official walkthrough attempts to sway you into thinking that the puzzles are able to be figured out, everything is reasonable, and using a real walkthrough would be depriving yourself of the experience. Unfortunately, it's not fair to say such things when some of the puzzles really are trial & error sometimes, and I specifically one puzzle from almost five years ago from when I first played where I thought "I've tried everything! Why isn't this working? It should work!", finally breaking down and consulting the walkthrough (again...), and discovering I had figured it out, it was mostly timing.

Now, despite Braid being one of my favorite games of 2011, it has a rather glaring error—to get 100% completion and see the full ending, you have to do some rather absurd things to get the stars (like waiting over 90 minutes on a slow-moving cloud) but it's nothing you can't figure out without GameFaqs. Only one, where you have to arrange a puzzle the wrong way to have one chance to gain a star (World 3) because if you don't do it correctly you'll lose that chance permanently. That is absolutely ridiculous and a design error that should've been left in the 1980s and their adventure games. Forgot to check the mailbox in the beginning of the game and take the letter? Ate or otherwise got rid of the garlic bulb you found at the beginning of the game? Didn't properly bandage the cut on your finger early on? You WON'T WIN! Yes, I know some games do have "one chance" things, but not when a game openly discourages you from using a walkthrough AND when these things are necessary to get the "true ending"! It's these things that cause the game to get bad marks. (All of those scenarios are from other games. Can you guess what they are?)

So, how is the rest of the game? Great. The music is gorgeous. The graphics are smooth, the controls are great. It's a great game...though not on the best 10 games of all time, not even close.

Player Notes

I gave Braid a 4/5 ("Good") last time around, though I felt charitable at the time. I'm not sure about that now, which is why I don't review games with numerical systems. By the way, the game I was referring to that "I can't justify spending $15 on" was That Dragon, Cancer, which I still never ended up buying. The three games I mentioned in the prose are all adventure games, but that's it, no more hints.

Port & Rerelease Notes

The original Braid was released for Xbox 360 as a timed exclusive. In 2009 it received ports for Windows, PS3, and Mac, with Linux coming in 2010. (A version for the Wii was explicitly denied, likely due to the limitations of the Wii and WiiWare titles).

In May 2024, Jonathan Blow released Braid, Anniversary Edition, featuring enhanced graphics and additional levels. Unfortunately, by this time, Blow had largely fallen out of favor as far as game creators went and the Anniversary Edition was sold as a $20 separate product (developed and published by Thekla) and not free or discounted for existing consumers. There was also criticism that the original Braid had been removed from Steam (but has since been restored as of this writing). Braid, Anniversary Edition was ported to a wide variety of modern consoles (Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S) but despite that (and likely because of the high price for what was essentially the same game) sold poorly.

Additional Content

I found my soundtrack that I ripped from my Mac version all those years ago (though had to replace one at some point as one file got moved accidentally at some point)—download here.

Screenshots