Braid distinguishes itself right from the start. As soon as the game loads, you are controlling your character, a surprisingly rare trait for a game–no initial menus, no options. Just your silhouetted avatar up above a hand-painted cityscape saturated in deep reds and oranges, with the game’s title writ in flame.

Even had you not been aware of the building anticipation for Jonathan Blow’s Braid–at least within the game industry and in the immediate periphery, where Blow has long been a proponent of experimental gameplay–and many gamers likely were not, the game wastes no time in painting itself as something unique.

There seems to be a mini-trend of recent games that play like examinations of various physical properties: Valve’s Portal is suit of puzzles largely constructed around momentum, while Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy, to a less dedicated degree, is a celebration of gravitation.

Braid, then, is an exploration of time. This kind of analogy is trite on its face–after all, these games succeed for a multitude of reasons beyond this arguably link I propose.

But it’s worth making the comparison, because Braid’s participation in that prestigious puzzle/platformer pantheon is particularly unique. Our brains have an instinctive grasp of things like momentum and gravity, even while they are being depicted in fantastic ways, in part because we have largely conquered them in ways our ancestors could hardly have imagined. Time, on the other hand, despite theoretical hypotheses, remains to us so fundamentally linear, so unyieldingly constant, that Braid’s unrelenting abuse of it presents a kind of challenge which at times eclipses its constant impartation of delighted challenge with genuine intimidation. (more…)