maraoz.comBraid, The Game
Jonathan Blow is a very special person. He’s smart, bald, bold, and very sensitive. In 2008, just as I was entering my second year studying computer science, he released a masterpiece.
A game like no other I had played before. It touched me at some deep level, like only books or music had.
Braid is a game about obsession. It’s about the obsession of Tim, the protagonist, to rescue the princess. About obsessing with the past and thinking about our mistakes and how to correct them. It’s about the obsession that drove mankind to build the atomic bomb. Also about obsessively solving each puzzle in a game.
Like most masterpieces, Braid is self-referential. Braid is also about Blow’s obsession in making Braid.
The name is fantastic too. A braid is a intertwining of hair. It refers to how time is bent in the game, to how Tim time-travels in the story, and his exploration of memory and regret. It’s about how our mind loops when we’re obsessed. Also, about how you feel on sleepless nights of creation when you’re close to an achievement.
In 2009, I encountered and finished the game in a week. I couldn’t do much of anything else. It was a time where I was discovering obsession myself. I had found programming and a group of nerds willing to talk about nothing but math and computers all day, every day. Those were years of diving deep and fully into our obsessions. And I got obsessed with Braid too.
The game slowly and masterfully drives you into an incresingly introspective mood. The music is perfect. The visuals are magnificent. The puzzle design is extremely well thought-out. The game mechanics are art. It works on every level.
Over the years, I’ve replayed Braid two or three times. Every time, I get something new out of it. The love that Blow and his team put into this game is astounding. It’s a generous and tidy game.
I am writing this now because Blow “recently” released an Anniversary Edition. Of course I’m playing it, and so should you!
It is a work of art in the truest sense: it challenges your preconceptions about what games can be and what they are capable of.
Enjoy!
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Acknowledgments
Thank you Daniel for making me play Braid back in 2009.