Braid

Haha, awesome :)

World 4 hurts my brain.

Is the soundtrack available anywhere?

I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get the last two puzzle pieces in World 3. Most of World 4 was pretty easy though, when I grokked the time mechanics there.

You can probably assemble it yourself at Magnatune.

You have to burn the rope. Err, wait, wrong game. Which two? The actual last two going in order through the level, or there are just two somewhere left you can’t get?

The two pieces in the last level. But don’t spoil it, as I’ll try to sleep on it first.

And what tunes on Magnatune?

Lost most of the day to this game. Must find food. Two of the final puzzle pieces on world six are giving me fits, though. Not that I want hints, but I feel like I know what to do on one of them-the middle piece on ‘Elevator Action’, just it’s not letting me do it. As for the final piece on the last level, I have no f–ing idea.

Great game, though. I’ve got some friends that I’d like to buy a copy for- is there a way one can do this over Live (buy it and then ‘gift’ to their GT?).

The music was all licensed from Magnatune (check the credits). Of course it doesn’t make any sense to license it yourself just to listen to it (unless they have some kind of explicit cheaper license for that), so it might be cool for someone to see about putting it together as a Braid soundtrack. Since anyone can license them, maybe anyone could do that (though it would be an unofficial soundtrack, of course).

I love it when new games come out on days I don’t have to work.

I picked Braid up early today, and so far I’ve been very impressed. I’ve found that this is one of those games where it’s the experience as a whole that makes it so great.

The graphics are phenomenal. All the little touches have me scanning each area for cool new sights hidden in the artwork. I can only imagine how awesome it would have been if we’d had visuals like this back in the heyday of 2D platformers.

Thankfully, the game plays as good as it looks. The actual control mechanics are very solid and should be easy to pick up for anyone who’s ever played a Mario game. I love the way that the game blends platforming and puzzles. The fact that you can instantly retry missed jumps is another huge plus.

Clearly though, it’s the puzzles and their time-altering mechanics that make the game shine. After a fairly easy to figure out first world, I can tell I’ll be spending plenty of time thinking my way through the rest to get all the puzzle pieces (and I will be getting them all).

Overall, great game. First the amazing Geometry Wars 2, now this. If Castle Crashers proves to be good, it’ll have been one of the best months for Live Arcade since N+ was released.

Hooray, World 4 solved! A break and fresh perspective coming back to it made it actually a lot easier than I thought it would be when I left it. Several pieces were simpler than I realized once I started thinking about exactly what to do for certain pieces instead of just looking at everything on the screen at once and panicking.

Still, quite challenging.

Regarding the music, I just made a posting with links to everything on the soundtrack:

http://braid-game.com/news/?p=260

I agree - it’s strange that the rest of the game is so beautifully polished and precise, but that the twee 1st year composition class prose stylings stayed.

EDit: Too harsh - they’re ok, they’re just not up to the extraordinarily high standard of the rest of it.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get one last piece in world 2. I believe I’m past the “aha” moment for this world, too. The one I can’t get is right above the exit door to right of the puzzle assembly area.

I can PM you a clue if you’d like.

Edit: On second thought, I’ll just let you puzzle it out :)

Well, congrats to Jonathan for making what, by all accounts, is a critical success. I did a quick bit of dumpster diving into the bowels of the internet to see if people were talking about it and it looks like a lot of people have bought and are enjoying it. I just hope that your tendency to get nothing out of praise doesn’t also mean that you are oversensitive to forum douchebags like the folks posting fascinating treatises such as

Oh, internet, you scamp!

Played the trial and I thought it was pretty good. The use of reversing time is great from the trial. The writing reminds me a little of the dialogue in Wyx for some reason. Unfortunately I’m 40 points shy of being able to buy it, so I’ll be getting this on sunday .

And then there was one. One last piece. The last one, of course- it looks so easy- you know that you have to put the ring there- its obvious. But you can’t do that, because you need the ring to get over there, to make the first spot work. Grrr. I’ll get it, oh yes I will.

I’ll have you… my precious… my final puzzle piece.

Ugh. I really, really like this game, but it’s not saving my progress.

Problem is, my 360 died this afternoon after I bought Braid and played through about half of it. On my backup system, everytime I start the game, it thinks it’s a trial until I open the menu and choose to unlock the full version. I’ve tried redownloading the game and everything.

I may power through it and not turn off my console until I beat it :)

Speaking of the vast amount of stupidity that gets thrown around on the internet, I would like to present this onion article.

Just beat the game. My God, the last level. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Just so awesome.

It’s frustrating to see many people dismissing this game because it’s “trying to be artsy.” I can understand that we’ve been burned by art games before (just look at something like Space Giraffe), but the fact of the matter is that it is a great game. Saying people would be willing to give it GotY just because of its artsy and indie status really diminished this game’s accomplishments (granted that yes, it is way to early to talk about that stuff).

Really what this game gets right as an art game (if we must call it that), is that it doesn’t forget to be a game first. I’ve gone back to play the so called great games of past generations, things like Silent Hill 2 and Okami, and found interesting art aspects, but I found the gameplay itself to be mediocre at best. Braid has some of the best game design I’ve seen in recent memory. It is for this reason that anyone can enjoy it on whatever level they want. Kind of like a Pixar movie.

(PS, yay first post. That only took two months. I kid, Tom, I kid)

I am by no means a writer (unless you call technical documentation writing), but I do my fair share of reading and I fail to see anything truly bad in the quoted text - especially within the context of the game.

The third sentence may be a little awkward to read, but that is easily forgiven when you get to the wonderfully evocative fourth line.

Care to show us how you would have written any of it?