I approached Braid with high expectations, drawn in by promises of stunning visuals and intricate puzzles centered around temporal mechanics. In this regard, the game delivered handsomely. My initial experience, however, was slightly marred by control issues, which I later traced back to problematic keyboard drivers. The game frustratingly failed to register up or down arrow inputs while holding Shift, effectively blocking the ability to rewind time at high speed. Unaware that high-speed rewinding was even possible, I became stuck on a particular puzzle, ultimately resorting to breaking my personal rule and consulting an online guide.
Despite this initial hiccup, the game itself is a true gem. Its age might mean you’ve either already experienced its brilliance or remain unconvinced to try it now. If you fall into the latter category and are open to persuasion, I wholeheartedly recommend giving Braid a chance. It boasts perfectly balanced puzzle difficulty, breathtaking visuals worthy of desktop wallpaper, innovative gameplay mechanics, and even introduced me to some fantastic new music, particularly the work of Jami Sieber – a discovery I highly encourage you to explore.
Adding to its appeal for me personally is its stark contrast to the Mario franchise, a series I’ve never quite connected with.
Whether Braid represented a quantum leap for puzzle games or the broader video game landscape is something I hesitate to declare definitively, lacking a sufficiently comprehensive gaming background. Beyond its polished execution, the game’s primary differentiator lies in its narrative. Yet, I confess, the story remained largely elusive to me, each narrative paragraph proving somewhat difficult to fully grasp. Braid‘s narrative seems intentionally crafted to be profoundly ambiguous, inviting vigorous debate and diverse interpretations. This narrative approach, however, instinctively raises my skepticism. It strikes me as a form of deliberate obfuscation, a way to sidestep clear and direct statements, effectively offloading the author’s interpretive work onto the reader. When confronted with such invitations to impose my own interpretation, my inclination is often to simply refrain from interpreting altogether.
Therefore, this analysis will not delve into the textual narrative of Braid. From my perspective, the game’s essence resides in its aesthetics, its masterfully designed puzzle scenarios, and its core mechanics. Braid elegantly introduces a novel time manipulation mechanic in each of its six distinct worlds. While some of these mechanics arguably qualify as time travel, others remain outside that definition; some lend themselves to narrative possibilities, while others do not (irrespective of Braid‘s actual story, which, as far as I can discern, isn’t truly about time travel, a point I’m willing to overlook). These mechanics and their inherent possibilities are the central focus here.
However, a word of caution: spoilers may follow.
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I have previously written extensively about time, time travel and time travel in specific works of fiction. A recurring theme in these explorations is the existence of models for time travel, broad frameworks from which individual time travel narratives select and refine elements to suit their storytelling needs. Another frequently revisited topic, unavoidable for anyone intrigued by time travel, is the prevalence of inconsistencies or deliberate errors in the time travel models presented in many stories. Moments inevitably arise where established rules are conveniently disregarded, allowing the narrative to deviate and progress in directions previously deemed impossible.
This flexibility stems from the nature of fiction itself: writers are unbound by constraints, free to craft any sequence of words, prioritizing narrative flow over internal universe consistency. In essence, nothing prevents the creation of a film where the central conflict resolves through a sudden reversal of gravity.
Conversely, computer games operate within defined rule sets. A game, like any computer program, can only behave according to its programmed instructions (barring hardware malfunctions or cosmic anomalies). When a program is designed to instantiate and execute a virtual environment, allowing player navigation, it constructs a universe governed by an inviolable model. This inherent structure effectively eliminates the potential for internal inconsistencies.
(In The Matrix, Morpheus, within a virtual combat environment, explains to Neo: “It has the same basic rules, rules like gravity. What you must understand is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken.” This statement has always felt somewhat inaccurate. A more precise description would be: “Some rules have flawed implementations, exploitable loopholes. Others are correctly implemented but poorly conceived, leading to unforeseen exploits.” Regardless, let’s assume the opposite for Braid. While a buffer overflow vulnerability might exist, allowing for a warp directly to the game’s conclusion, none has been discovered. We’ll proceed under the assumption that Braid‘s world is consistently implemented and free from exploitable glitches.)
Braid combines conventional platforming elements with a rich array of time-related game mechanics. While the “time travel” qualification of some mechanics is debatable, their consistent implementation is undeniable. To the extent that time travel exists in Braid, and given the game’s stability and lack of hard-coded exceptions, it operates consistently and without contradictions. This consistency is a significant achievement for time travel fiction.
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However, this approach has a slight drawback. Even the most advanced game universe is necessarily simpler than the real world. Braid, like most games, does not model air particles or the real-time propagation of light and sound. Its collision detection is intentionally forgiving. Individual breaths of air and blades of grass are not simulated.
Therefore, a consistent game model does not guarantee its seamless transposition into the “real world” without contradictions. These contradictions extend beyond conflicts with established physics, which already largely preclude macroscopic time travel unless we witness a gravity reversal tomorrow or discover exotic matter. The scientific objections are more fundamental, questioning, for instance, the very workings of Tim’s nervous system.
Tim, of course, is the player character’s name. Tim/time – a deliberate wordplay, perhaps?
These inherent simplifications are not unique to time travel games. Many games feature teleportation, infinite ammunition, or perpetual motion, all departing from real-world physics.
2. Time and Forgiveness
World 2, numbered as such for reasons revealed later, introduces Braid‘s core mechanic, a constant throughout the game:
- Time Rewind: Players can rewind time, traversing backward along their personal timeline, observing events unfold in reverse. Rewinding can be done at varying speeds, with the option to fast-forward or pause. Player perception remains normal throughout this process.
- Foreknowledge: After rewinding, players can resume normal time flow, retaining full awareness of all previous timeline events.
- Action Modification: This foreknowledge allows players to alter their actions, diverging from past timelines.
- Get-out Clause: Upon death, time freezes, prompting a rewind to avert the fatal outcome.
These mechanics yield intriguing consequences. Game designers are freed from the constraints of restart points, save systems, lives, or health bars. Players can simply rewind time upon making a mistake, such as falling into fiery spikes. In seemingly inescapable situations, a rewind to the level’s beginning becomes a viable solution.
Forgotten items become retrievable through rewinding. A gap requiring an enemy bounce from above, for example, can be revisited by rewinding and intentionally leaving the enemy alive. This introduces a subtle layer of puzzle design.
Precision jumping challenges, often over bottomless pits or amidst fireballs, can be made exceptionally demanding. Player failure merely necessitates a quick rewind and a slightly adjusted timing for a fresh attempt.
These mechanics facilitate puzzles and challenges, relatively straightforward in nature. However, this core mechanic alone fuels only a single, brief world. Can it also serve as a foundation for storytelling? Absolutely. The ability to be seemingly unkillable, perpetually prepared, and unnervingly lucky constitutes a legitimate superpower. Its applications range from coin toss victories to flawless conversational choices and unerring firearm accuracy.
Such potent abilities, however, often require narrative tempering for practical storytelling. Potential explorations include: the monotony of reliving the same moments repeatedly until perfection is achieved; the jarring discontinuity upon resuming time after a rewind; the agonizing repetition of unpleasant confrontations until victory. Paradoxes arise when characters with this ability interact. How does one character perceive another’s rewind? In a conflict, who prevails? How far back can one rewind? How much of one’s life is one willing to relive for a single confrontation? How much of life would one willingly relive repeatedly?
The more I contemplate these possibilities, the more compelling the narrative potential becomes. Though, it’s difficult to imagine these themes haven’t already been explored in fiction.
3. Time and Mystery
World 3 retains the time-reversal mechanic but introduces new rules:
- Green Object Immunity: Luminous green objects are unaffected by time reversal. They operate normally regardless of time flow direction or player death/time freeze.
- Historical Track Rewind: Rewinding time retraces the player’s established historical path back to the level’s entrance. This holds true even if: (1) a green platform obstructs the original path (rewind occurs through it), or (2) a green platform used for access is absent in the current timeline (player appears to traverse thin air).
- Obstacle/Air Death: Unfreezing time while within an obstacle likely results in death. Unfreezing while traversing air leads to a fall.
- Contagious Green Platforms: Certain green platforms impart “greenness” upon contact, rendering the player immune to their own time-reversal power. This effectively erases past history. Rewinding to the beginning of time leaves the player on the platform, not at the level entrance.
Green objects disrupt “history,” suggesting the Braid universe possesses at least two time dimensions. This dual-dimensionality allows green objects to adhere to “forward” physics even as the surrounding universe rewinds. (This duality has arguably been present since World 2. Consider the player at the computer, also seemingly glowing green?)
The consequences of these rules are explored through the game’s puzzles, each world building upon the last. Puzzles range from “The Pit” to the boss encounter, whose persistent health across timelines necessitates repeated chandelier drops over five timelines for defeat.
A synergy exists between science fiction narratives and puzzle games. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics in I, Robot exemplify this, generating diverse short stories through permutations and variations of these laws. This technique has broad applications. A new physical law or MacGuffin is introduced, prompting questions: “What if? What are the consequences? How does the universe change, and retroactively adapt to accommodate this new element?” This iterative process can generate compelling narratives. My own fiction archive, particularly in reverse chronological order, increasingly reflects this approach.
Game designers, similarly, build puzzle games by developing mechanics and implementing game universes governed by these rules. Experimentation reveals unexpected outcomes, which then become puzzle solutions.
However, significant differences exist between storytelling and puzzle design. Puzzles are designed to be initially impassable, requiring player thought and solution for a sense of achievement. Stories, conversely, aim for diverse reader responses, but always allow for complete consumption.
Yet, some science fiction stories resemble puzzles, particularly Asimov’s, where wacky concepts lead to wacky consequences. Economy of invention is also valuable in worldbuilding.
Returning to “green” mechanics and their narrative potential beyond game retellings: narrative substance is possible. Toning down time-rewinding power is crucial to avoid universe-ending potency. Introducing entities immune to this power, like the aforementioned boss, is a promising starting point. The boss concept offers compelling narrative potential: “I see your tricks, protagonist! Hyper-preparation won’t save you this time. I’m coming for you!”
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“Time and Mystery” also introduces paradoxes. Paradoxes, scenarios seemingly contradictory but ultimately not, are common in time travel narratives. From a time-locked, non-green Goomba’s perspective, Braid‘s universe is highly paradoxical. Tim enters levels from green platforms, traverses platforms from past timelines, and jigsaw pieces vanish, collected by past Tims.
These are not true contradictions. Contradictions are undesirable in most storytelling, and absent from the real physical world. Ideally, fictional model universes should also be contradiction-free. Computer games, simpler than reality and embedded within it, generally avoid contradictions, except perhaps through crashes. Braid‘s universe, while paradoxical in appearance, is consistently behaved and contradiction-free, enabling rational puzzle-solving.
4. Time and Place
World 4 introduces another rule. Tim and green objects retain their previous behaviors. However:
- Level Time Axis: The game level, including Goombas, cannons, clouds, levers, and platforms, operates on a third time axis, linked to Tim’s X-position.
- X-Position Script: Tim’s left-to-right movement triggers a pre-determined sequence of events, a script that Tim can influence through actions like bopping Goombas or flipping switches.
- Right-to-Left Rewind: Moving right-to-left reverses these events, un-bopping Goombas and un-throwing switches, regardless of path.
- Physics Isolation: Objects moving “backward” (right-to-left) do not interact causally with “forward” physics objects. Bopping a Goomba while moving left is causally nonsensical and thus impossible.
The puzzles in this world involve engineering left-to-right event sequences to collect jigsaw pieces. The level is less a live scene and more a dynamic maze, where history becomes a tangible object manipulated to achieve desired outcomes.
(Ordinary, non-green keys exhibit bizarre behavior in this world, warranting a dedicated level, “Fickle Companion.” This behavior may be emergent, not deliberately coded, with puzzles built around discovered properties. Normally, keys remain stationary. Carried left-to-right, they follow normally. Right-to-left movement causes keys to rewind along their personal timelines, not Tim’s path. Keys jump back onto platforms and descend ladders climbed previously, with unnerving discontinuities. Green Goombas, however, can carry keys right-to-left, rewriting the key’s past history and placing it in unreachable “past” locations, allowing retrieval and access to new paths.)
“Time and Place”‘s multi-dimensional time system is difficult to explain in writing. These complex rules are more easily grasped through interactive gameplay. Reading this without playing Braid likely makes the preceding paragraphs challenging to understand.
Converting this world into a coherent science fiction narrative is also difficult to imagine. Some concepts are best experienced interactively. Games become the most sensible medium for explaining or experiencing convoluted models and mechanics.
This resonates with past experiences. The absurdly complex model here once tempted game development, though its limited value deterred further exploration. Primer similarly tempts game adaptation to enhance film accessibility for confused viewers, suggesting potential for a neat game.
However, some models, like real physics, are too sophisticated for even well-programmed games to fully capture. We inhabit one of these complex universes.
5. Time and Decision
World 5 abandons “Time and Place”‘s zoetrope-like behavior, introducing:
- Shadow Timelines: Players see a shadow of their previous timeline. Rewinding and taking different actions creates a shadow self performing the rewound actions, alongside a shadow world with shadow cannons and Goombas.
- Shadow Persistence: Shadow universes continue until their prescribed sequence ends (player input ceases, rewind occurs), then fade, with shadow Tim continuing movement until rest.
- Pink Object Interaction: Pink-glowing objects exist in both timelines, interacting with both shadow and present universes.
Puzzles involve cooperating with shadow selves, often requiring shadow self-sacrifice. This potent storytelling concept, neat and grisly, can be executed without time travel, as seen in The Prestige or X-Men’s Madrox the Multiple Man.
6. Hesitance
World 6 features a movement-slowing ring, creating clever platform puzzles. While unforgiving (due to rewind mechanic), this isn’t strictly time travel. Real-world time dilation, caused by massive objects and explained by general relativity, is a genuine phenomenon. Perhaps acknowledging this, “Time and” is omitted from the world name.
This section is brief, leading to the final world.
1.
World 1, the final world, is foreshadowed throughout the game. Here, the logic becomes remarkably clever. Game universe time runs backward. Goombas rise, dead, from the screen bottom, revive upon flame contact, and are sucked into cannons.
Most strikingly, bopping a rising Goomba “retcons” its death from flame to bop, shifting its origin cannon. Past possibilities are altered!
Solving this world’s first puzzle was a highlight.
This mechanic is easily implemented incorrectly. Observation reveals the game doesn’t reverse physics; that’s impossible in our temporal universe. Nor is a pre-existing game history rewound. Instead, the game is programmed to behave realistically when wound forward. Goombas near cannons bounce towards the mouth, while cannon fuses wither. Cannon swallowing ignites fuses and refills cannons.
This requires careful programming. The first three levels are tightly constrained to hide the “scaffolding.” Green objects and mobile platforms are absent to avoid causality issues. Consistent handling isn’t impossible, but the backwards physics conceit would be broken.
(Imagine combat under these rules. Enemy hits increase health. Full health hits cause universe explosions? Braid was initially intended to fully utilize this mechanic, but its complexity led to its partial abandonment. This highlights the Braid team’s impressive achievements.)
A visible slip-up exists in the final section. A cannon constantly sucks in fireballs flung by a distant wall. Even after the cannon is engulfed by flames, the wall continues firing. The backwards-traveling fireball, lacking a “coherent past history track,” simply vanishes mid-air. A more advanced game would predict future level states to determine fireball generation.
Yet, fireballs don’t accidentally disappear. This issue was discovered and coded for specifically. This is a hard-coded exception.
Causality is essential. Only Red Dwarf‘s “Backwards” episode uses this model, relying on comedy to mask inconsistencies, a legitimate and perhaps only viable approach.
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In the game’s climax, Tim flees through a fire-pursued tunnel while the princess – notably, braid-less – pulls levers to aid him. Reaching her bedroom, time reverses, revealing the princess fleeing Tim, activating traps. The perceived rescue was actually an escape.
This narrative trick is effective, a knockout climax. Its narrative illumination is debatable, but its impact is undeniable.
This story reversal technique isn’t unique to Braid. Films have employed it.
The Matrix: Neo, the One, is defeated by Agent Smith. Neo weakens, loses abilities, and becomes useless. The Nebuchadnezzar crew returns him to the Matrix, essentially surrendering him to Smith for a bleak, drone-like existence. Humanity loses its savior.
Toy Story: Woody and Buzz prank Sid, their new neighbor, but Sid captures and tortures Buzz, causing mental breakdown and space ranger delusions. They escape, but Buzz is changed, eventually given away by Andy, forgotten by other toys.
Reversing story order drastically alters meaning. Stories have arcs, structures, and different starting and ending points. Symmetrical, palindromic stories are rare and deliberate.
These examples require “fuzz.” Simply reversing a film or human speech fails. Thematic reversal, using broad strokes, is necessary.
Replay Braid‘s final level, “Braid.” The princess pulls extra levers on both passes. Ladders appear on the second pass, absent initially. Tim leaps impossibly high. Dialogue tone and princess’s rescued expression differ.
“Braid” is also “fuzzed,” essential for coherent backward and forward readings. Recontextualizing a story is valid, but recontextualizing by avoiding accidental backward reading is contrived.
Epilogue
In the epilogue, the princess remains absent, and Tim builds a castle from his experiences. Lessons learned:
Game implementation clarifies ill-defined concepts.
Small rule sets yield vast storytelling possibilities, discoverable through exploration. Games excel at this. Unexpected discoveries are possible.
Gameplay facilitates complex concept exploration. Some concepts are best understood interactively, some are too advanced.
Idea execution, regardless of medium or complexity, demands immense effort.
Mistakes are inevitable, inviting critical analysis, a form of entertainment in a flawed real world.
Braid was enjoyable and inspiring, leading to new projects. Highly recommended, five stars.
