Braid Review

If the standard game is the novel of the medium, games like Braid are the poems. Much like novels, which take several hours of combined reading time, the average well-paced game can flesh out a story, construct worlds, and sustain enjoyable play for about seven to ten hours. Games are the 100,000 word epics. Braid is the succinct fourteen line sonnet of poetic perfection.

Braid contains a relatively brief three hour experience. Just like a sonnet, however, its concise nature makes every seemingly minute part all the more vital to its overall purpose. The cohesive whole culminates from masterful authorship that meticulously tunes all internal parts to achieve harmony and unity. In such a way, Braid tries to achieve artistic quality. Each of its elements brim with meaning, and the inherent subtleties lend themselves to deep interpretation.

As a platformer and puzzle game, Braid initially seems to rely heavily on the conventions of traditional 2D sidescrollers. Tim, the main character, must walk from the left side of each level to the right side. He solves puzzles to gain access to later levels. He must save the princess.

Tim’s adventures, however, go beyond the scope of platforming conventions and beyond the boundaries of time itself. He can rewind time, but, moreover, he relentlessly and recklessly exploits impossible time contradictions that will enable him to find his beloved princess.

Braid bases its gameplay on traditions, but doesn’t let them off the hook without some amusing satire. Braid definitely pokes fun at a certain popular plumber’s game.

Too bad, Mar…I mean Tim.

Even the levels themselves parody traditional game expectations, as they throw out the mandatory order and linear progress between levels. Tim can walk past just about any puzzle, reach the level’s end, and proceed to the next level. Later worlds of levels only unlock, however, after he solves all puzzles to collect puzzle pieces found throughout currently available levels. If a particular puzzle stumps you, the game flexibly allows you to save it for later, so you can intuitively solve them at your own pace.

The sonnet of Braid’s levels set a pacing and flow with metrical rhythm and rhyme. An in-depth analysis of Braid would contain too many spoilers, so just pay close attention to the repetition of certain levels and the dramatic changes to the solutions of their puzzles. The tone shifts along with cycle of levels. Paradoxes compound to cause deterioration, but simultaneously build towards Tim’s ultimate goal.

To solve puzzles, Tim must not only manipulate time, but also break it. Additionally, each of the six worlds contains different time properties that work on top of Tim’s time-rewinding base. You’ll encounter enemies and items impervious to changes in time. Sometimes time will tie directly to your movement. You’ll even work with your double, or your imprint left in time. The game combines time elements to create intricate knots of time puzzles, but it encourages you to use some creative clumsiness, which can surprisingly work more effectively than even your best puzzle solving logic.

Tim literally solves puzzles

Tim can rewind time no matter what happens, and even death cannot stop him. He simply uses death to create improbable paradoxes that solve impossible puzzles. Death is not an end, it is merely a means.

The lack of death deceptively creates an illusion of easiness. The challenge of the puzzles doesn’t derive from the frustration of failure or death, but from the actual nature of the puzzles themselves. Their extreme challenge, though, really creates a double-blind deception that masks a subtle simplicity: you could spend hours finding the precise way to reach a key needed to open a door to a puzzle piece, but then realize the solution takes about ten seconds to perform.

Tim’s foolhardy venture through the six various worlds constructs a narrative with overtones of joy, determination, and remorse. The impressionist influence of Van Gogh perfectly sustains Braid’s emotional breadth of whimsy and gloom. Despite the apparent simplicity of 2D graphics, the stunning amounts of layering, post-processing, and shading creates a gorgeous art style that makes every frame a fresco.

Your Doppelganger, your death, your friend

The music also heightens the emotional variety to create a euphonious soundtrack that supports Braid’s elation and elegy. “Undercurrent,” the track for final level, is an absolutely ingenious composition that plays both backwards and forwards to perfectly match the level’s duality.

The emotion and the gameplay combine to create a fantastic narrative that unfolds along with Tim’s time manipulations to find the princess, but some on-screen text also reveals the backstory. Like solving a puzzle, the narrative unveils information that the player then pieces together for a continuous story. The normal and alternate endings feel satisfying though they both reveal the shocking inevitabilities of time travel. Make sure to replay the game to find the secrets that unlock the alternate end; the effort truly supports a worthy outcome.

Every piece of the Braid puzzle resolves into a phenomenal whole. Every line of the poem speaks towards a voice previously unheard. I’m not sure whether the future will remember Braid for its complexity and meaning, but I can sincerely say that Braid is a masterpiece of an artistic game.