Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Indie-Developers”
The End of Braid Part 1 of ?
warning: The following contains many spoilers about Braid. I, personally, feel that your enjoyment of the game will be greatly reduced by reading this ahead of time. You have been warned!
I finished Braid last night. I did cheat a little. Of the 60 possible puzzle pieces, I used a walkthrough to get about 10 of them. Each of the ones that I used the walkthrough for (and I did not do this until I had spent a good chunk of time trying everything I had learned up to that point and even afterwards (since you could revisit worlds) were puzzles I would have NEVER solved. For example, the puzzle piece that is accessed by moving around the giant replica of the puzzle in the level would never, ever have occurred to me. Someone of a certain type of mind would surely have realized that the puzzles would not exist in the world if they did not have a purpose, but I could not figure this one out. And the fact that most of the puzzles are one-offs means that you never do this again.
First Look Review: Braid
That a game like Braid can exist is a statement on where video games are as an art form with a well-established history and canon. To make a parallel in the paint world: without a long canon of traditional paintings of tables with fruit and bread, people wouldn’t have really understood the “parody” or “remix” of a Cubist rendition of such a painting. In the same way, Braid is most enjoyable to those of us who have been playing video games for the past 20 years, growing up with Super Mario Bros. as our first video game experience. In fact, Braid does indeed make a few callbacks to this classic game which has almost become a scripture to us. Any game that allows users to design levels (eg Little Big Planet) cannot exist for more than a femptosecond before at least four people have recreated Super Mario Bros. World 1-1. Braid does nothing so brash and that’s where the game design genius begins to show. The game designer does not ape Mario, but hints at it here and there. One can almost see the developer giving you a knowing look and a nudge in the ribs. “Look here, I’ve made this or that subtle reference.” I don’t want to ruin it by speaking of it even though this game has been out for ~ a year already. It would ruin the delight of experiencing it.