Braid is a
time-base puzzle platformer created by Jonathan Blow. It has this strange mix
of narrative and gameplay. Braid
shows clear inspirations from Super Mario
Bros. with tropes such as the male protagonist saving a princess, enemies
you can jump on to defeat, and even a friendly character stating “Your princess
is in another castle.” However, this game isn’t trying to be a classic
platformer; it stands on its own. The inclusion of Mario-esque elements are likely jabs at those kinds of tropes.
Players start off on the edge of a bridge. The game prompts
them with controls for movement. For now, moving right is your only option as
there is nothing to the left of our protagonist Tim. When you move far enough
to the right, you enter a house with a room that lights up. There are other
rooms, but they don’t light up yet. Upon entering the single door in the room,
Tim ventures into World 2. Shouldn’t this be World 1? Why would the game begin
with World 2 as its first?
Inside the room we see clouds and a blue sky. It appears
lofty and dreamlike. We can also see green books on pedestals that can be read
if the player walks up to them. These books are in every one of these kinds of
rooms and they hold most of the game’s narrative. The rest of the narrative can
be found in the puzzles themselves, though it isn’t easy to pick up on.
Braid’s levels
consist of time based puzzles to solve. The main mechanic is Rewind, a power
that lets Tim go back in time to a previous state. Whenever Tim falls into a
spike pit or touches an enemy, he dies. The game doesn’t end, but stops. The
player can get right back into the action by Rewinding time and trying again.
They can even adjust the speed at which they go backwards. Alternate mechanics
include green, sparkly platforms which make Tim or other affected objects
immune to Rewind, creating shadows of the player, and slowing time to a near
halt. One world has players affect time by moving forward or backwards. The
world only moves when Tim moves (like a precursor to Superhot). What’s intriguing about these mechanics is they tie in
with the narrative surrounding Tim.
Every
World has a series of books that Tim can read. The passages inside of them hint
at what kind of mechanics are in play in the World. World 6, for example, has
books that talk about Tim’s ring. One of the lines from the books says “It
makes people slow to approach.” This implies that the ring slows down time and
that is the very mechanic that becomes prominent in World 6.
In
order to progress, Tim needs to collect jigsaw pieces to make portraits. When
the portraits are complete, new Worlds open up. You can technically bypass any
puzzle by going through the next door, but you don’t make any progress until
you collect these jigsaw pieces. One portrait has a part that serves as a
platform when moved around. It becomes essential to obtaining another jigsaw
piece. The portraits themselves convey a high class style of living. Possibly
it’s something Tim wants, but doesn’t have. In a way, he comes off as
pretentious. The whole game has this high class aesthetic to it. Even the
soundtrack with its classical style of music adds to this. The only place that
doesn’t really fit into this aesthetic is the hub world where players start
their journey. The house looks ordinary. Spacious, but ordinary.
The
mechanics of the game hint at a narrative about Tim. Look at the shadow
puzzles, for example. The whole idea of this mechanic is that Tim moves and
performs an action, then goes back in time to do another action whilst his
shadow does what he did before. There are moments in which Tim has to sacrifice
his past self in order to progress through the level and take the puzzle piece.
The player has to think of what they need to do in the present to make the
future easier to handle. If they mess up, then the new present can’t reach a
solution to the puzzle due to a lack of cooperation from the past’s shadow of
Tim.
Tim’s
goal is to find this princess, but why? Why specifically this person? Does she
even know Tim? At the end of the game he finds her, but something doesn’t seem
right. Why would the sinister knight release his captive? Why does the princess
run so oddly? When players reach the end, they see exactly what’s wrong. As
time winds back, it is revealed Tim is the villain. He had relentlessly pursued
this princess to the point of stalking. He chases after her despite rejection.
She is saved by the knight who carries her to safety and players are left to
think about what this all means.
I almost feel like Tim made up his relationship with the
princess in his head. To quote one of the books in game: “He made many mistakes
during the time they spent together… Memories of their relationship have become
muddled, replaced wholesale…”. If they had a meaningful relationship, wouldn’t
Tim have many good memories of it? He only seems to remember the time she
turned away from him. And what of these mistakes of his? In the books it states
that Tim reversed his mistakes and kept the princess safe from harm. He also
writes for her. How does he know what she thinks? Is Tim just idolizing this
girl and forming the perfect idea of what she should be rather than what she
is? He’s also selfish with the princess. To quote again: “Her benevolence has
circumscribed you, and your life’s achievements will not reach beyond the map she
has drawn.” Tim still wants to be himself and not change. Being yourself isn’t
bad, but in Tim’s case he wants to pursue something that may require him to get
rid of his partner. He doesn’t consider her say in the matter at all.
As
for the writing, it looks as if written by an adolescent. This is not to say
the writer of the game is terrible, but if it’s meant to be Tim’s own thoughts
then it makes sense that the books have these kinds of words in them. The books
themselves seem to jump from various times in Tim’s life such as childhood,
adolescence, and young adulthood.
In
the epilogue, Tim learns his lesson. He worked so hard to find a castle and a
princess, but he went about it the wrong way. He couldn’t just find a castle
and force someone to join him. Tim realizes he has to work at it, slowly building
up a castle from a small base.
Braid is a game
that has many interpretations on how it’s meant to be seen and played. There’s
no definite way to experience it. Some theories lean towards Tim dealing with a
breakup, others to the atomic bomb, and even with Tim dealing with growing up
with an idealized fantasy that was far from reality. It’s a complicated game
with surprising depth. It requires the player to think about everything they’re
doing and why they’re doing it. Why Tim is here and why his world is the way it
is. Playing through without thinking about what the mechanics are conveying to
you is not the way to go about it. To play for competency is missing the point.
