Sean Bouchard

That's harsh. I do like it - somewhat. Certainly it's charming. The artwork and the music are beautiful. The text was off-putting at first, but has grown on me, and without question it is poetic and evocative. Jonathan Blow wanted to realize his vision for this game in a way that's only possible on the indie scene, and it shows. It feels different from the games large publishers frequently produce, in a good way.

As I said, my reaction to this game is a little complex, so for the moment I'm just going to tackle one aspect of it. This has a little bit to do with genre and a lot to do with Portal. (Apparently, when I talk about it, everything has a lot to do with Portal.)

Other critics have described Braid as a puzzle game with platforming elements. I keep going back and forth about whether it is really, at heart, a platformer organized into puzzles. In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter much. The platforming and puzzle elements are integrated extremely tightly.

Certainly, there is a lot of platforming going on here - not only in the gameplay, but in the presentation. A number of design elements are strongly reminiscent of the classics of the genre, specifically the goombas and carniverous pipe-plants lifted almost directly from the pages of Super Mario Bros. Even the lecterns that the character runs by to trigger the presentation of text remind me of the checkpoint spinners out of Sonic the Hedgehog.

My point is that platforming, as a philosophy, is deeply ingrained in this game. Platforming is about reaction time and precision of movement and timing. They're also about inspiring fiero, the feeling of accomplishment, on a low level. Platforming games will frequently involve level designs that push the limits of the character's abilities. A ledge, for example, is almost too far away, and in order to reach it the player must execute a perfectly timed jump (or, frequently, a rhythmic pattern of movements and jumps) with little margin of error. Because of the difficulty and the precision required, succeeding in each small part is an accomplishment, an emotional reward.

Braid has this in spades.

Puzzles, likewise. On the most surface level, the player's implied goal is to collect jigsaw-puzzle pieces scattered throughout each world. The player then assembles the puzzle pieces into an image that represents the world. Actually collecting these pieces, however, requires that the player solve larger puzzles that involve jumping around and manipulating time.

Before Portal, I don't think it ever occurred to me to try to define or deconstruct puzzle games. But here goes: a puzzle is a desired end-state that can be achieved through a non-obvious sequence of simple manipulations to an unfamiliar logical system. Open Doors is a good example of this, or Bloxorz. These are games where the end-state and the rules of the system are clear, and the player interacts with the system in very simple ways, but figuring out the sequence of actions needed to achieve the end-state is nontrivial. These games also demonstrate the progression that is typically found in puzzle games. Subsequent puzzles use the same basic system, with different initial conditions and a different end-state. The first puzzles are easier, but as the player progresses, the puzzles get harder and harder - that is, the sequence of manipulations required becomes less and less obvious. The goal of this progression is to train the player to think in a way that aligns with the rules of the unfamiliar logical system. The better the player gets at thinking in this new way, the easier it is to come up with a sequence of manipulations that result in a given state.

This is where Portal shines. The levels are designed so that the player learns to master the unfamiliar logical system incrementally. First of all, it's generally very hard to complete a puzzle by chance or a flurry of uncoordinated action (unlike, say, Open Doors or Bloxorz). The player is required to carefully consider how actions can be strung together to achieve the goal - to understand the actions and sequences of actions available to him or her, and how they are applied in a given situation. Then, compared to the planning, actually executing the appropriate sequence of actions is (relatively) easy. By the time the player progresses to the next room, they've learned to think a little bit better within the logical system presented by the game. And so the next room is marginally more complex and difficult. The key is, because this progression is smooth, and because the levels have been designed with the learning curve specifically in mind, the puzzles are more intuitive. That's not because the solutions are obvious. It's because the player is learning.

(Of course, Portal isn't perfect and it doesn't do this perfectly. Executing a sequence of actions can sometimes be difficult or chancy; some rooms are frustratingly difficult to solve; sometimes rooms can be completed without a full understanding of how it was done. But Portal did this progression better than I had seen it done before, and for me, it is a proof-of-concept that a puzzle progression can be designed to be intuitively difficult rather than frustratingly difficult and the result is as satisfying a play experience, or more so.)

And this is what Braid is missing. There is very little sense of progression from puzzle to puzzle. Generally, the puzzles get harder, but not in a smooth way, or with any form of guidance that helps the player learn how to think about the system properly. The game starts with a section that trivially teaches the basics of interaction with the world, and immediately follows it up with a pair of puzzles that literally can't be solved yet. This is the opposite of progressive difficulty. This is explicitly designed to frustrate the player.

Obviously, there is a market for a game that uses frustration as a motivator. Lots of games do it. It's a core part of the (traditional) platformer philosophy. But I don't care for games that inspire frustration, which is why, historically, I don't like platformers in general. They tend to use unforgiving gameplay to create frustrating experiences that cater toward an audience of expressly hardcore gamers. It's no coincidence that pathologically difficult games (video) almost always take the form of platformers. And although Braid is not pathologically difficult, it shares this same underlying philosophy: overcoming frustration is fun, and the greater the frustration, the greater the fun.

It's just not a philosophy that I can really get behind.