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Braid (XBLA/PC/PSN/Mac) |OT|

Jtyettis said:
See post 1875 we've been had by the notorious Mike Works.
Haha, well done. Indeed, I was owned!


On another note, here are my impressions of Braid that I wrote up the other day after completing it:

http://chrisremo.com/bloggin/2008/08/09/braid-a-game-by-jonathan-blow/

I wasn't crazy about (most of) the narrative, but I did love the game enormously on balance. Here's an excerpt:

In Portal, as in many games, the player is taught gameplay “building blocks,” small solutions which can eventually be chained together to perform more impressive solutions to more impressive puzzles. Once you have internalized a fun mechanic, you can usually expect to be able to deploy it a number of additional times over the course of the game.

Braid essentially eschews that entire design philosophy. It does not so much feature a difficulty curve as much as it forces your brain into a competency curve. You aren’t being taught basic gameplay concepts one at a time, then asked to combine them, you are expected to figure out a new type of solution for just about every puzzle, because each puzzle is unique.

That’s not to say there isn’t internal consistency. Particularly within each world, stages all share the same laws of time, and learning those laws does indeed provide necessary context for solving that world’s puzzles. But the game weaves quickly between easily-digested tasks and counfoundingly brutal challenges.
 

tanod

when is my burrito
gregor7777 said:
A far higher percentage of the GAF population is likely to pick up a game like Braid than you'd find in the general population. This game seems made for people like us.

At least it'd be a hard number.
 

Brakara

Member
tanod said:
At least it'd be a hard number.

It would be a hard number. But yet a meaningless hard number.

I like VGC's approach better, in that they extrapolate numbers from mygamercard.net. That's where the 28.5k figure (for the first three days) comes from, and that seems to be in the right ball-park (as Jonathan Blow confirmed on his blog).
 

Gigglepoo

Member
Phaethon0017 said:
Yeah I'm only using one gamertag. I did switch Xboxes but with the same HDD. When I had to start over again I thought it was weird, but this is the 2nd time I've had to restart.

Same thing happened to me. I brought my hard drive to work and downloaded Braid to one of the office 360s. When I got home, I had lost my progress. Turns out, XBLA games break their license into two: one for the gamertag, the other for the system. If you want to save your progress, you'll have to transfer your license.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/?WT.svl=nav
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Chris Remo said:
Haha, well done. Indeed, I was owned!

On another note, here are my impressions of Braid that I wrote up the other day after completing it:

http://chrisremo.com/bloggin/2008/08/09/braid-a-game-by-jonathan-blow/

I wasn't crazy about (most of) the narrative, but I did love the game enormously on balance. Here's an excerpt:
Good review. While I enjoyed the writing a bit more than you did, I couldn't agree more with this passage:

This gripe hardly detracts from Braid’s overall experience, especially because the game’s most gut-level emotional impact remains intact even if you don’t read through the excerpts of its many tomes. Part of this is because the fundamental thrust of the narrative is present regardless, part of it is due to David Hellman’s unbelievably gorgeous artwork, and mainly it is thanks to the overall strength and coherence of Blow’s overall vision for the project.
I think at least part of the reason why the narrative is so murky is because Blow is more interested in creating an emotional experience rather than a narrative one. I couldn't follow the story most of the way through, but I could pick up on the threads of buried memories, regrets and longing for companionship. These are universal emotions, and I think are the same reason why the gameplay is built on universally understood gameplay mechanics (to the point of deliberately referencing the most famous origin of them).

The gameplay often reinforced the emotional context and the art and music complete the experience. So while the story remains vague, I now associate the game with a specific set of emotions - which is not something most games do to me, even with a clear, intelligent narrative.
 

DuckRacer

Member
OK, so I'm at the second to last level of World 6
and I can't get two goombas to get past the plants. I watched a walkthrough and the guy uses the time rewind to keep the plants down but I can't get the timing right to save my life. Is there something I'm missing, because if I'm not this puzzle is absolutely ridiculous. And not in a good way.

edit: nevermind, I figured it out. clever!
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Duck said:
OK, so I'm at the second to last level of World 6
and I can't get two goombas to get past the plants. I watched a walkthrough and the guy uses the time rewind to keep the plants down but I can't get the timing right to save my life. Is there something I'm missing, because if I'm not this puzzle is absolutely ridiculous. And not in a good way.
There are two solutions. The one I used was to drop the ring at each plant in sequence to keep one goomba alive, then ran back and did it to another. Then double-jump when they cross each other down below.

The other is to use the ring to change the timing of the plants, so that they are moving in sync. Get the first one so that it is down when the goomba comes out, then sync the other two plants to it. Then you can just kick back and they will all come out OK without your having to do anything.
 

Durante

Member
Duck said:
OK, so I'm at the second to last level of World 6
and I can't get two goombas to get past the plants. I watched a walkthrough and the guy uses the time rewind to keep the plants down but I can't get the timing right to save my life. Is there something I'm missing, because if I'm not this puzzle is absolutely ridiculous. And not in a good way.
Are you talking about the one with the 3 plants in the upper right of the level? If so, I thought that was one of the easier puzzles in the game (one of 45 puzzle pieces I found so far, bought the game a few hours ago). Just
start below the rightmost plant, slow it down until it is synchronized with the passing goombas, and then do the same for the middle and leftmost one. You easily have enough time before the first one goes out of sync again.

Edit: I tried the first solution outlined by GhaleonEB first (it was more obvious to me) but couldn't get it to work, so I came up with the above.
 
I love all the posts in this thread that start out "How the hell do you solve the puzzle with..." and then later there's an edit that says "Never mind, I figured it out - brilliant!" That's pretty much the story of this game and testament to the ingenuity of its design.
 

DuckRacer

Member
So I finally beat the game.

Worlds 2, 3, 4, and 5 were all brilliant in retrospect. I did think, though, that some parts of World 6 were under par and not as good as the rest of the game. Especially when you consider that some of the puzzles required really good timing. And the mechanic slowly became grating. (LOL, see what I did there?)

World 1 was pretty cool. The end level ("Braid") and the epilogue, combined with some revelation acquired by reading SomethingAwful summaries, is amazing. The end level in particular. At first you think the princess is trying to escape the knight and try to be with you, pulling levers and such to help you reach her. Then once you reach the end and have to rewind, you realize that she's trying to escape you, pulling levers in multiple attempts to stop you, detaching the chandelier at the beginning, etc. Then you realize that the talk between the knight and the princess at the end essentially suggested that the princess wanted to intentionally be with the knight.

Adding in the insight from the pre-World 1 info and the epilogue left me bewildered.

I wouldn't go as far to definitively call Braid GOTY 2008, but it's definitely the best downloadable game I've played on 360 and one of the best games I've played this year. Really good and totally worth the $15.
 

Won

Member
Gary Whitta said:
I love all the posts in this thread that start out "How the hell do you solve the puzzle with..." and then later there's an edit that says "Never mind, I figured it out - brilliant!" That's pretty much the story of this game and testament to the ingenuity of its design.

I'm actually quite shocked that gamers these days lack a certain amount of self-confidence. :(
 

exfixate

Member
GhaleonEB said:
There are two solutions. The one I used was to drop the ring at each plant in sequence to keep one goomba alive, then ran back and did it to another. Then double-jump when they cross each other down below.

The other is to use the ring to change the timing of the plants, so that they are moving in sync. Get the first one so that it is down when the goomba comes out, then sync the other two plants to it. Then you can just kick back and they will all come out OK without your having to do anything.

I stood underneath and synched up the plants with the ring so they all came out and back down at around the same time, then jabbed on X to intermittently rewind/bring time back to normal to keep all three down. This, to me, seemed like the correct solution. Now that I've heard the two ways you did it, I can see where I could have done either one and thought them to be the correct solution. Which is awesome, like the entirety of Braid.

I absolutely adore this game, have no idea who would question paying fifteen dollars for it, and really want to talk with you guys about the story. I haven't parsed through most/any of this thread -- is this the place (spoiler tagged, obviously) to do that? If so, I think a new thread to facilitate open discussion of the story would be a great idea. I have no idea if there's a precedent for that and if it's something moderators are okay with. It'd be much easier than having to interspersedly talk about it in this official thread. Also, a question below for you guys that beat it and went through the epilogue.

What's up with the two green books in each area of the epilogue being the only ones in the game that don't display text when opened? I noticed that only one book stays open at a time -- whichever was the last book you passed by is the only one open. In the second to last area of the epilogue, right before the final screen with the blocks representing each sub-level from each world, there's a platform underneath the three books that can be raised with a lever to the right of it. By standing on the platform, raising it up and lowering it down, and then rewinding time, you can be above the books on the platform. What's the point for this, there's obviously something to it. Sorry for my ignorance if there's an easy solution, and it has already been discussed here, but I really have no clue as to what its purpose is. I thought maybe leaving the red book open and then jumping off of the raised platform would result in something happening, since otherwise the last book passed by/opened is always a green one (You can't jump over the green books to leave them unopened, any way you pass by them makes them open). Also -- you'll have to excuse me, I don't have the game in front of me and this will be poorly described -- what's with the singing voice that starts when you pass by a leafy part to the right of the red book from the first area of the epilogue? It starts high and halts to a low, reverberating tone that, to me, seemingly never ends -- I stood there with my volume turned up in order to hear it for at least ten minutes. However, If you move left or go too far right, it does stop. It's also in the very next area -- with a plant thing on the left of the screen, and also on the left of the small pit you go down in to open the red book for that area -- Tim's behind some bush, invisible. Again, move too far and it goes away.

These peculiarities in the epilogue left me with the distinct feeling there was more to be discovered. Like I said, I haven't gone through any of this thread, so if I've missed out on discussion for all this stuff, sorry. I did go looking at GameFA*S (don't know if this site's banned, or whatever) and barely looked through this thread earlier today in search of post-epilogue discoveries. I read about the eight stars, which I'm (obviously) guessing get filled in the constellation hanging before you get to World 2 and Tim's house. Do people know where all eight are? Have people gotten all eight, and if so, did anything happen? I noticed a shed sitting below the dangling constellation, was hoping maybe it opened and revealed some more back-story. I also saw a brief mention of the blocks in the last area of the epilogue either changing after finding stars, or something to that degree. Also, does anything happen if you beat every speed run? Thanks for any information!
 

Sean

Banned
Some more concrete details on Braid's budget for those interested. From Kim Pallister (former MS dude who signed Braid):

I checked out the Metacritic score as of this morning, and it's weighing in at 92, which makes it the top rated XBLA title, and the #10 ranked title of all time, just nudging ahead of Mass Effect, a multi-million dollar title from a large team. Braid cost under a quarter million.

From Wall Street Journal (scroll down):

While videogame budgets at big studios can be millions of dollars, Mr. Blow estimates that he spent more than $180,000 of his own money during the past three years to develop Braid. He also took time off from his job as a videogame-industry consultant to focus on his project. "I have no idea how well Braid will sell," he says. "Realistically though, I could lose all of that [money]." Microsoft picked up the game in 2007 and decided to publish it for Xbox Live Arcade. It will sell for $15, a higher price than most downloadable games on the platform.
 
ProTip: Rewinding the game for ten minutes in World Two regresses Braid into a prototype. Rewinding for ten more minutes produces the game's original design document.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Sean said:
Some more concrete details on Braid's budget for those interested. From Kim Pallister (former MS dude who signed Braid):

From Wall Street Journal (scroll down):
$180k spent on the project, and since he took time off from his normal job to work on it, probably lots of debts beyond that as well.

He's got to be close to breaking even at this point, though. Even of 25% of all the leaderboards are promo/second profiles and he only gets 50% of the gross, that's $238k as of this morning (and a bit higher now). Hopefully the final tally is double that and he makes a tidy profit.

Making a game as complete as this with two people, with less than a quarter million - that's just amazing.
DancingJesus said:
ProTip: Rewinding the game for ten minutes in World Two regresses Braid into a prototype. Rewinding for ten more minutes produces the game's original design document.
Holy shit.
 

FrankT

Member
Sean said:
Some more concrete details on Braid's budget for those interested. From Kim Pallister (former MS dude who signed Braid):



From Wall Street Journal (scroll down):

Interesting, being a little more liberal and putting the final cost of the game at $300k with little over 41,299k sold as of now(46,299k on the LB right now with 5k off the top for free accounts) that would put the current gross at $620,000. 70% of that would be $434,000 minus the $300k for development that would put into a profit margin of $134k(If the final cost was closer to $250k, his money plus whatever he borrowed it would be closer to $184k profit margin) as of now. I would imagine it will hit the $1,000,000 point by the end of this coming week and hopefully this all bodes well for another title.
 
Gigglepoo said:
Same thing happened to me. I brought my hard drive to work and downloaded Braid to one of the office 360s. When I got home, I had lost my progress. Turns out, XBLA games break their license into two: one for the gamertag, the other for the system. If you want to save your progress, you'll have to transfer your license.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/?WT.svl=nav


That is so bizarre. I just transfered my HDD back to the 360 I originally purchased it on and my saves from the progress on the OTHER 360 were there. I guess I'll just stick to the first for now.

Finished World 3 and I couldn't be prouder of myself. Nothing will diminish this honor.
 
I did it in 2-1 (first a few minutes on 8x, then switched to the normal after a few mis-starts and did over 10 minutes). Wish I'd known it was Shawn Elliot who said it in the first place.
 
DancingJesus said:

Are you being sarcastic, or are you unsure of who Shawn is?

Jtyettis said:
Adding this theory to the official thread as I pulled it from another. Anyhow this is one of the best explanations I have seen yet if not the best. This is SPOILER city so do not click if you are not ready.

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=190136

Credit to Majora

Yep, that is the best. That is probably the first one I actually accept and that makes a lot of sense.
 
Linkzg said:
Are you being sarcastic, or are you unsure of who Shawn is?



Yep, that is the best. That is probably the first one I actually accept and that makes a lot of sense.


I guess I misunderstood the joke then, I assumed a professional journalist wouldn't report something false. It's not like it's April or anything.
 
Leaderboard now showing 46,309. Wow!!
Played the ending again. Let's just say I spent too much attention on watching Tim on my first playthrough.

=O

So cool!!!
 

User2k

Member
Just completed world 3 (puzzle and all). This game is spectacular. I just wanted to see what world 4 was like before hitting the sack and now I know I'm in for at treat tomorrow. ^^.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
User2k said:
Just completed world 3 (puzzle and all). This game is spectacular. I just wanted to see what world 4 was like before hitting the sack and now I know I'm in for at treat tomorrow. ^^.
Yeah, I did that too. Jumped in the pit, hit rewind, and literally said "holy shit" out loud before turning it off for the night. :lol
 

Jme

Member
Just finished it for the first time.

A question for those of you who are already done:
What is all this talk about gettings "stars"? I re-entered several of the worlds and did a few of the single-stage speed runs and saw nothing of the sort?

And my impressions for those who care:
World 2-4 were extremely entertaining and rewarding. When something clicked it felt great, but (for me) it wasn't ever too much to wrap my head around. World 5 was like a series of kicks to the brain. Some of the most imaginative puzzles I've ever seen, and likewise they had me physically invested when I solved them (or failed them repeatedly). World 6 wasn't as strong - the puzzles seemed more to be about patience and perfect timing than anything else. Several times I knew what I had to do but skipped it until later because I didn't feel like doing it. But man, I'm glad I did because World 1 (well, at least 1-1 "Braid") was fucking amazing. Absolutely shocking. I felt a warm rush of joy, and a stupid grin on my face the whole time we were running together helping each other along the way, "this is perfect!" I kept thinking, and then it reversed and my jaw hit the floor. A greatly executed deception. All the hype is well deserved. This isn't just a great game, it's an important game because it changes mechanics in such a groundbreaking way that I'm sure we'll be seeing a stream of "Braid-like" descriptors for years to come. Gorgeous art style, ingenious gameplay, balls-hard puzzles... 10/10. I can't think of a way to improve it, other than to make it longer because I don't want this journey to end.

Also, a dumb question - does anyone know the significance of the WASD and Z keys in the bathroom? I'm guessing they will be the keys used in the PC version (Z to reverse?)
 

mrlogical

Member
Just completed the game. The story was kind of lost on me--though I'm going to follow up on the things I'm seeing upthread giving potential explanations--but the gameplay was amazing. Every single puzzle was something that, while difficult, was totally achievable. There was no point at which I figured out the solution to a puzzle and thought "how the hell did they expect me to figure that out?" Yet at the same time, at least 30% of the puzzles were extremely difficult and had me stumped for an extended period of time. But when I finally figured them out, I felt like a frickin genius. The experience of playing Braid was very much like my experiences watching a David Lynch movie--I really enjoyed what I was doing as I was doing it (playing the game/watching the movie) and want to tell everyone I know to experience it themselves. But I am completely baffled by the story and will now have to read a few hundred forum posts to figure out what the hell just happened. Worth every penny of my 1200 space bucks.
 

Jme

Member
RPS37 said:
WTH @ the first piece (above the door) on Cascade?

Anyone have some sort of hint?

Hints in varying degrees of spoilerness:
Hint 1:
Drop down on it
...
Hint 2:
That key on the other end will come in handy
...
Hint 3:
Slow down those fireballs
 

RPS37

Member
handofg0d said:
Hints in varying degrees of spoilerness:
Hint 1:
Drop down on it
...
Hint 2:
That key on the other end will come in handy
...
Hint 3:
Slow down those fireballs

Done, done and done...before I posted. :(

I keep running into the fireballs on the way back.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
Durante said:
My greatest *click* moment (though there were quite a few of them) so far was figuring out how to get the upper right puzzle piece in "The Cloud Bridge".

well clearly you are lying, because that piece isn't possible to get... please tell me how.

One thing I want to check, if I find a piece like the one above that is 'impossible to get' is there a point in the game where you can't get pieces and must move on and come back later with a new skill or something? Or are all pieces possible to retrieve as soon as you see them?
 

Gigglepoo

Member
catfish said:
One thing I want to check, if I find a piece like the one above that is 'impossible to get' is there a point in the game where you can't get pieces and must move on and come back later with a new skill or something? Or are all pieces possible to retrieve as soon as you see them?

There are two pieces early in the game that require backtracking. The other 58 can be grabbed the first time you see them. If you're stuck, just skip it and move on to another world. It's better to just see what obstacles are in front of you than get help to figure out a puzzle.
 

mrlogical

Member
catfish said:
well clearly you are lying, because that piece isn't possible to get... please tell me how.

One thing I want to check, if I find a piece like the one above that is 'impossible to get' is there a point in the game where you can't get pieces and must move on and come back later with a new skill or something? Or are all pieces possible to retrieve as soon as you see them?

No--I had that thought at first as well, but no, there are no skills you develop later that help you solve puzzles earlier. Every puzzle can be solved the first time you approach it, there are no impossible pieces.

edit: oh yeah, Gigglepoo is correct, there are two very early on that require you to complete another puzzle first.
 
RPS37 said:
Done, done and done...before I posted. :(

I keep running into the fireballs on the way back.

I had that problem too. That was the last piece I got, because it was so tough. I'm guessing you probably are making the same mistake I did.
find a better place for the ring
 

SPEA

Member
Just beat it tonight. Great game. Puzzles were very imaginitive and cleaver. Worth every penny. I am now
working on getting the stars.
 

clav

Member
What does the completed constellation add to the game? I saw a clip on youtube to see it, but I don't understand.

Is that the princess in chains?
 

Jasoco

Banned
Has anyone noticed the flags at the end of each world?

Someone on another forum mentioned this. Each flag is a nautical flag.

World 2: N
World 3: U
World 4: L
World 5: X
World 6: K

N: No
U: You are (standing into/approaching) danger
L: Stop instantly
X: Stop carrying out your intentions
K: You should stop, I have something important to communicate

Genius.
 

Sean

Banned
Jasoco said:
Has anyone noticed the flags at the end of each world?

Someone on another forum mentioned this. Each flag is a nautical flag.

World 2: N
World 3: U
World 4: L
World 5: X
World 6: K

N: No
U: You are (standing into/approaching) danger
L: Stop instantly
X: Stop carrying out your intentions
K: You should stop, I have something important to communicate

Genius.

That's really clever.
 
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