BRAID

I'm having a hard time putting into words my experience with Braid. There were parts I liked, parts I didn't, and parts I just thought were being vague and ambiguous for the sake of being vague and ambiguous. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Braid, as I'm sure you know, is an indie puzzle platformer sprung from the mind of Jonathan Blow. The main mechanic this game is built on is the manipulation of time. While in Super Mario Bros, you'd fall in a hole to your death and have to start the level over, Braid gives you the power to rewind time. At the point of would be annihilation, you can rewind prior to the point you flubbed up and give it another go.

The game is broken up into six separate worlds. These worlds are accessed via a house interior, where each door leads to one of these worlds. You only have access to Worlds 2-6 downstairs. World 1 is accessed through the attic, which is inaccessible at the beginning due to a broken ladder. You will gain rungs to this ladder as you finish all the puzzles in each world. As you enter a World's door, you proceed to a cloud scene in which there are a number of books and multiple doors present. Walking in front of each book will display text on the screen, which is about our protagonist, Tim, and a relationship that seemingly went south. Each door available leads to the individual levels of that world. In each level, there are puzzle pieces scattered about, and you must figure out how to use the environment and your ability to rewind time in order reach the puzzle pieces that are enticingly close but always seem to be just out of reach.

My first experiences with acquiring puzzle pieces were very...let's say inefficient. I would see a piece and have no idea how to get to it. I'd try a couple things, fail miserably, and move on to the next puzzle piece and/or level. I appreciated the fact that no level really forced you to accomplish everything, or really anything, before you could leave for the next level. This was good because I wasn't really grasping the rewind mechanic at all due to my impatient mood that day.

I think I yelled, "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" at one point. Then I calmed down, realized I wasn't just going to tear through this game, and started using my noodle. I had a breakthrough in which I realized the very simple concept that jumping on a baddy from a high place made me jump higher. That led to solving numerous problems, getting a bunch of puzzle pieces, and the acceptance that I was just being an impatient asshole shouting about impossibility. Figuring one of these puzzles out when it had been stumping you is a very satisfying experience. I kept having the same experience in each world where the puzzles made me feel like a fucking idiot and then a fucking genius and then a fucking idiot...

Everything in Braid tends to have a purpose. There's not really any superfluous platforms or other bits in the environment that aren't somehow involved with the puzzle. If it's there, I'm probably supposed to do something with it. This logic helped me figure out some of the puzzles because when a solution was not readily apparent, I started to breakdown all that was at my disposal, trying to figure out what purpose everything served. This exacting way he created the game world meant that everything was important but also that there was a single specific solution to every problem. There was one right way to do things, and sometimes that one way was difficult to figure out. Sometimes the timing or my position was so critical that I had to try over and over, despite the fact that sometimes, I totally understood the puzzle and how I should be able to complete it. My execution of those steps was sometimes the hinderance, and that was occasionally a source of frustration. The level "A Fickle Companion" drove me nuts for this reason. I think I consulted a Youtube video for that one because I failed so many times that I assumed I must have been taking the completely wrong track. Nah...I was right, I just needed to time everything better or stand a few pixels to the right. Infuriating.

As I continued through each world to pick up puzzle pieces I missed, I reread the text each time. I wasn't really grasping how the text and gameplay related. There seemed to be a bit of a disconnect both with the game and the text and between texts themselves. However, I later realized that each bit of text foreshadowed the new wrinkle in gameplay that was to be added in that world. For example, the first world you enter, World 2, talks about forgiveness and learning from mistakes. This seems like an introduction to the rewind mechanic in general. In World 6, there's much talk about a ring, and the new gameplay ability involves a circle you can deploy which slows down time within that circle.

I continue to backtrack and pick up missing puzzle pieces. Collecting all the pieces in each level allows you to put together the whole puzzle for that world, and once that world's puzzle is completed, the ladder extends further to the attic. Once Worlds 2 through 6 have been taken care of, the ladder is complete, and I proceed to World 1. In order not to rob you of your aha moment here, I'm gonna be Lady Vague. World 1 is likely the most stressful. What once were puzzles meant to stare and ponder on must now be solved quickly as you rush forward to save the princess and escape the fiery inferno that blazes behind you in hot pursuit. (Accidental pun...sigh) When you make your way to safety, that's when the game changes, and your perception of events gets turned on its head. You understand your role in this story much clearer now, and I think I recall a "whoa" falling out of my mouth.

After this realization comes the epilogue, complete with more books and text, more indecipherable now than ever. What was contentment regarding this game's ending swings over to bafflement. The game is over, and I'm left scratching my head. I assume there is some deep meaning hidden in those final words that this pleb isn't going to get, so TO THE INTERNETS THEN! My biggest aha/whoa moment was that realization at the end, but Jonathan Blow contends that this wasn't the point of the game. Oh...well... Tell me what the point was, internet. What does it mean? There are lots of discussions going on regarding this topic, but Mr. Blow says we're all pretty much wrong about what the game means, but he smugly refuses to tell us what the game means because it cannot be explained with words, which is why he made the game, which, don't forget, we were all just apparently wrong about the meaning of. Great... Glad we cleared that up.

I don't think we'll ever uncover all that the creator intended in Braid, but that's okay. When one takes away meaning from a piece of art, there is no right or wrong interpretation. That was YOUR interpretation. I think that's what has always annoyed me about comparative lit or art appreciation. There's no RIGHT answer, and I have to get over that. I think Jonathan Blow needs to get over that as well.

What I do know is that guy who made this game is a clever dude. There's some very well designed puzzles in Braid. There's also some not so good ones peppered in there with one time use mechanics or "Gotcha bitch!" traps, but it's worth taking a look at. I think any game that causes this much discussion and wildly different opinions on it has to be experienced oneself. Go get your own interpretation. Dear Jonathan is not going to clue you in on which one you SHOULD have.