4/5 ★ – SingleActionArmy's review of Braid.

Braid /no spoilers for the story/ Braid is a 2d platformer that was made in 2008 by a man named Jonathan Blow, who also later made the Witness. Braid won many awards and has been held in high esteem since releasing, and for good reason. This game, while seeming like a run-of-the-mill indie platformer, uses in-game time and gruesome puzzles to create an amazing, challenging platforming experience. I’ll first talk about the game itself in the first part of the review, then the story in the second. The game is very simple on the surface. You have buttons to move, jump, and rewind time. Later on you get an item that you can place down as well. There are only 2 kinds of enemies and one kind of boss. Tim, the main character, is just a normal looking dude who never goes through any physical changes throughout the game. Throughout most of the game there’s only one other npc, a dinosaur looking thing that shows up when you finish a world to tell you, “The princess is in another castle.” In the last level, two more npcs show up, and also theres a few lines of dialogue. The dinosaur “princess” dialogue, a few lines of simple dialogue at the very end, and story books that explain the story are the only real words exchanged. The books can be found in the overworld in between levels, and they’re made somewhat vague on purpose. Telling you just enough so you understand (kind of) what’s going on, while also raising more questions. I like this because it adds to the mystery of everything. I bring all this up to drive home the fact that Braid, all throughout, can feel somewhat empty. There’s this overarching feeling of loneliness and bleakness, which can create a good atmosphere for your game, but also at times I was left wanting more. More characters, interactions, enemies, just something. But this does a good job of creating this lonely, almost metroidvania like atmosphere where you are left alone to complete puzzles and platforming. As Tim, you play through 6 worlds, each with multiple levels (3-2, 3-3, 3-4, etc.). In each level you have to collect X amount of puzzle pieces, then to beat the entire world you have to collect all puzzle pieces and put them together in a picture. The puzzles you need to solve to get these pieces can be very hard because of the base time mechanic. In Braid, the game's puzzles and platforming are built around you being able to rewind time. You can rewind time slowly or very quickly, and there are times where you’ll need to do both precisely. There are only three enemies, these goomba looking creatures, piranha plants, and bunnies. There is only one kind of boss, a very large goomba who wears king attire. The only grabbable item in the game are keys, which unlock doors. There are also levers that do multiple things, like raise and lower platforms. As the game progresses it introduces new concepts, like items and areas that are unaffected by time manipulation, which glow green. The game also introduces, for lack of a better term, “shadow” versions of Tim and some enemies. Basically, if you go through and jump, die, kill enemies, etc., you can rewind time and a “shadow” version of Tim will go and do everything you just did, up to a certain amount of time. Tim, the keys, and any enemies affected by this are black. This can also affect keys, enemies, and even the bosses. You eventually get a ring that slows down everything in its radius A LOT. This ring is completely separate from your normal time manipulation, so time can be going normal and everything around the ring is slow, including platforms, doors, and essentially everything around it. The last big curveball are items that don’t change or revert when time does, these items, enemies, and objects glow purple. So a purple door, if you unlock it, won’t go back to being locked if you rewind time. The puzzles are very tough in Braid. Most puzzles involve manipulating time in a very precise way, which can be very tough, and also stacking two or more of those concepts I just mentioned. You also have to manipulate enemies and in-game items in certain ways that are tough. The platforming is usually never that tough, the only real instances I found the actual platforming hard were when I had to jump on goombas with a very small window of time to do it right. Other than that, the main bulk of this game is spent trying to solve puzzles. It’ll take forever to explain different kinds of puzzles and what makes them difficult, but they’re done brilliantly in my opinion. They’re never too hard to figure out, and a lot of times it’s just precise execution. But there are some that I had to look up because of their difficulty. The way you interact and manipulate the environment, various enemies, and items is not only very clever and smart from a design standpoint, but is incredibly fun to figure out and execute. Not only does Braid use time better than any other game I’ve personally played (the only games that come close are Majora’s Mask and Dishonored), but its puzzles are some of the trickiest and most clever. This is the main bulk of the game, and it does it tremendously. There are also hidden stars in each world that aren’t necessary but are there if you want to 100% the game. Getting all stars does get you a “hidden” ending though. The stars are incredibly well hidden, most being out of view of the camera, and most players (myself included) will go their whole playthrough not even knowing they existed. I didn’t find out they existed until I watched a speedrun of the game after I beat it. The puzzles and platforming to get the stars are brutal, for the most part. The first one isn’t terrible, the rest will challenge your execution and brain power a lot. However, one puzzle is infamous because it, literally, takes two hours to get. You have to wait on a cloud platform to reach a certain area, and it literally takes two hours. A very central point of the game is that Tim is a very obsessive guy, and to me waiting two hours to get a star kind of reflects this. It’s insane, kind of like Tim. Note that it’s only necessary for 100% the game, I didn’t even know this existed until after I beat the game. The story of this game is very good, oddly. You wouldn’t expect the story to be one of the best parts of the game in a 2d platformer/puzzle solver. But it is. I won’t go into specifics for anyone who hasn’t played the game, but you experience the story through books you read in the overworld. It details everything about Tim and his story very vaguely, but with just enough detail. It draws on real world analogies most people can easily understand, and tries to illustrate who Tim is and what he is doing. I don’t want to say anymore, but the game doesn’t just tell you everything. Some details are left for you to infer, and it does a good job of conveying these details to you. Overall, Braid is an amazing game. It uses time in a way no other game does, has a fascinating and deep story, and has brilliantly clever puzzles. At times it feels empty, with the lack of npcs, dialogue, and the lack of diversity of enemies. It also was always weird to me how they drew on Mario for inspiration for their enemy design, and the whole “princess in another castle thing”. That always felt gimmicky to me. To me, this game is a ⅘. What it does, it does brilliantly, I’m docking it one point because it can feel empty, due to the lack of npcs, items, enemies, and any other minor in-game concepts. And the music isn't anything to write home about either.