The Last Candle

In my years, there have been few objects, people or concepts that I’ve singularly devoted extra time or attention towards, fixations of sorts, minor or major. Examples are few: Akira Kurosawa (which blossomed into enjoying Eastern films in general), Stevie Ray Vaughan (whose music introduced me to the blues at large), the Battle of Hastings (of October 14, 1066), and the Ace Attorney series.

But the most recent infatuation is Braid.

Braid trailer by David Hellman.

In typical infatuation fanboy-speak, I’m going to spend a lot of time here talking about the game’s mechanics and makings, most of which is unnecessary to anyone’s who has played the game or read the official web site. Even the official Braid “walkthrough” provides some meaning insightful about the game, although not the kind usually offered by a walkthrough.

Braid is the masterwork of Jonathan Blow, Braid’s designer, programmer, and writer — everything besides the art, which was created by David Hellman (and who also created the trailer above), and the music, which was licensed from a few Magnatune artists.

The gameplay’s core is a puzzle-platformer, with an emphasis on puzzles; the platforming aspect is merely a conduit to solving puzzles. The game is divided simply into chapters and “Worlds,” much like the original Super Mario Bros., although the similarities to Braid stop after the basic platforming and several earnest homages in Braid.

The most basic use of the dominant mechanic of time flow is the player’s ability to reverse it. Everything in the world of Braid works on a timeline, and the simple push of a button can reverse the flow of time. When time reverses, everything moves backwards along the chapter’s history: sound effects, the music, enemy locations, the movement of waving grass, projectiles, clouds in the sky, and, of course, the player character’s movements, all rewound (with some exceptions — more on that below).

Braid does not require the player to follow a health bar or hit points, and it does not use 1-ups or time limits. If the player makes a mistake, all that’s (usually) necessary for the player to rebound is a couple seconds of reversing time, going back in the chapter’s history to before the fatal error was made, allowing a second, third, or twentieth chance at a puzzle (and I’ve definitely kept at some puzzles after more than twenty time-reversals).

But this is a puzzle game after all, and the player is constantly confronted with new twists on familiar methods. What happens when some objects or characters in the game are not affected by reversing time, creating two completely time contexts? Or when all objects in a chapter move as a function of the player character’s horizontal position (as seen in the trailer, where one of the Goomba-like monsters hovers above the lead character’s head in an inevitable death-drop)? Or if time could be dilated within a certain radius, with the dilation dropping off with distance? Interesting puzzles abound in Braid.

If time is the basis of gameplay, the actual root of progression is collecting puzzle pieces, each piece contributing to a final mural that represents a history in the lead character’s life. The difficulty is determining out how to collect those pieces, and the real meat of Braid is how those pieces are retrieved: manipulating and moving through time.

The most controversial subject about Braid, proving that even puzzle games can be controversial, is the game’s subtle marriage of gameplay and story — or plot and story, as it could be better called in this case. In fact, the game’s narrative is so subtle and divisive that discussion of the story’s intention continues to this day (and will no doubt be reignited as a new platform’s market enters the arena) among game analysts, developers, fans and critics, armchair and professional. For examples of critical analysis of Braid, see Corvus Elrod’s or Michael Abbot’s commentaries from last year. More commentaries are sure to come.

I have my own theories about what the game is trying to say through its sparse writing and rare exposition (and thankfully complete lack of cut scenes), but I’ll leave those for another post.

Braid was originally released on the Xbox 360 in August 2008, but beginning two days ago, Friday the 10th, it is available on the PC. The fact that I’m considering purchasing a PC copy, just to play it all over again on a different platform, in addition of nearly fully completing the Xbox 360 version would be the final puzzle piece in a mural that depicts a happy infatuation.