February Analysis: Braid

          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.