Oh, was there some kind of poetic meta explanation for why the game was forcing me to go back and grind annoying puzzles to get to the ending? What a piece of smug self satisfied tripe. Sorry, that was going a little bit overboard, but it really peeves me off when a game doesn’t warn me that I’m not going to reach the end of the game unless I do a bunch of extra things that I may not end up wanting to do. If the game had told me outright that I’d have to solve every single puzzle in order to conclude the story, I wouldn’t have even bothered from the start. The format of the game lead me to believe I’d be able to play the game a certain way and it felt like betrayal when I found out that it had just been stringing me along and expected far more from me. Of course it wouldn’t be giving me little snippets of story along the way to make them more bearable, either, since I’d gotten all the snippets it would give me already. (Don’t give me that “the puzzles themselves were snippets themselves” either, as I’m still being left with a different experience than I was having before they forced me to backtrack.)

This happens a lot in indie games. Braid is the most notable for me, but it’s hard to call it bad game design because it has this air of subtlety to it where it tries to pass off any of it’s failings as something it meant to do all along. (”You know what else has bad game design? REAL LIFE! It’s so deep!”)

Another example is Cave Story, where you are forced into a rather terrible ending unless you accomplish a bunch of really arbitrary things along the way. NOBODY gets the good ending on the first try, and the game seems entirely built around this fact. I felt coerced into playing the game a second time through to get the “good ending”. When I did get to the final section of gameplay that unlocks this ending, I found that it was about 100 times more difficult than anything else in the game and found myself bashing my head against the wall for what felt like hours trying to complete 2 minutes of gameplay. I gave up and never finished the game. Cave story betrays a completionist by first not making it clear that small arbitrary actions will lead you into a bad ending, and second by making the “real ending” require a feat of skill that even two playthroughs do nothing to prepare the player for. ARGH!

The Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP has an obnoxious mechanic whereby the game is impossible to complete without cheating unless you wait from several days to almost a month(!) of real time for badly explained reasons.

Jamestown has 8 difficulty levels and at the start it seems like you’re going to be able to beat the game on the easiest one to see all the bosses and soak in the story. What it doesn’t tell you is that after level 3, you’re going to have to play levels 1-3 again on the second highest difficulty to unlock the next level. It does this on EVERY SINGLE LEVEL, meaning that you have to play the first level like five times, and that the last level is going to be absurdly difficult. (RGRRRRHRHRHHH!)

What these games all have in common is that they have intriguing story and ambiance that make you care about the conclusion of the story, and then pull those “dick moves” on you by being extremely dishonest about how much of the gameplay you’re going to have to sit through in order to absorb all of that story. This is especially egregious when it comes suddenly at the very “end” of the game through a sudden revelation that you’ve been playing the game wrong without knowing it the entire time, or that the very last hurdle is going to be exponentially more difficult than anything so far.

Its hard to understate how angry I got while writing this. I really want to throw a tomato or something at some of these game developers and their smug faces, or at least to beg them to please stop doing things like this.

Thank you for writing an insightful and interesting article explaining why you found some of the puzzles in Braid frustrating. It has helped me understand why I got up halfway through the game and never went back to it.

I’m not sure if you’ll see this post, but if you do, I’d like to follow up on one of the replies that you made to another reader.

In that reply, you state that:

“One of the great insights of the humanities was the exploration and ultimate realization of the concept that absolute truth doesn’t exist.”

Later, you continue by stating:

“It’s completely reasonable to think that there is some fundamental truth, otherwise what are these models approximating?… The models are just means of interpreting what is happening for us humans to somehow comprehend in a certain context….they are simplifications. The question if there is a truth they approximate towards is useless. The function of the models works towards the human end – they work because they deliver us temporary answers. If they would to represent the world faithfully, they would in fact become like the world – incomprehensible. ”

How are you able to reconcile being able to state what you believe to be plain truth, that the ultimate realisation of the humanities (one categorical absolute) is that absolute truth does not exist (another categorical absolute) , with the idea that all we have to work with are models that only approximate the real truth? Moreover, though you state that “the question if there is a truth they approximate is useless”, your argument seems to draw on the idea that one ultimate truth has been established in the humanities; it is then not true that the question is useless – it has great significance in that it enables us to measure other truth claims.

You also state that you don’t need the idea of absolute truth to drive science, to which you cite as supporting argument the statement “society didn’t devolve into anarchy when we started secularising”. Could you explain how your supporting argument actually supports the statement that you don’t need the idea of absolute truth to drive science, or even that society didn’t devolve into anarchy why we starting secularising? Society didn’t devolve into anarchy when we starting secularising not because we stopped taking certain truths as absolute – we just changed what we believed in as absolute. As you point out, the German Constitution is based on Kant’s idea of human dignity – is that not the absolute truth that is stopping anarchy?

Regards,
sahwar

“Irreversible,” pt. 1: Though I agree with your complaint that leading the player into an irreversible mistake is poor design, I think that it is disingenuous to imply that no player would think to look down the well. As is clearly shown by your screenshot, there is a ladder there to suggest that interesting things might lie below. My experience with this level was that I made the obvious mistake the first time, and I then went to look down the well to see what was there. I noticed that there was a second key, and it was not difficult for me to put the pieces together to see what should be done in another attempt.

“Movement, Amplified”: I strongly disagree with your and Yahtzee’s assessment about the difficulty of understanding the mechanic of what had happened. Again, forcing the player to completely restart the level isn’t great, but it was entirely and immediately clear to me what trap I’d fallen into by attempting to put the key into the rightmost door. The broken key mechanic had been very well established in my mind by that point, and I realized that by going left through an open doorway I was contradicting the time flow law for that world.

“Crossing the Gap:” Here, I fully agree with you. The mechanic of enemies using you much like you’d used them was not something that had been established (or even hinted at) prior to this point in the game. I was extremely lucky in that it happened for me completely by accident and my own carelessness, after which point it was easy to solve the puzzle.

“Irreversible,” pt. 2: You have a point here. I think a better solution to this problem would be to somehow establish earlier in the game that if you can’t find a solution to a problem, you should re-enter the door that led you into the room. This could have been done with a book in the clouds leading to the level.

“Fickle Companion”: I can’t disagree with you much more on this level. I found the mechanics of the level (including the behavior of the key when touched by an enemy) to be very consistent. I wouldn’t say it was *easy* to predict the behavior of the key — my solution to this level involved me staring at the monitor for several minutes, plotting and attempting to find inspiration — but I thought the mechanic of the level was sufficiently obvious. It was clear to me very quickly that the time-constant groundhog must be used as a vessel for moving the key to the left.

I actually have a different design complaint with the game: In World 2, Puzzle 2, “The Cloud Bridge,” you are unable to obtain the two puzzle pieces at the end without progressing further into the world, obtaining puzzle pieces in later stages, and returning to The Cloud Bridge to use those pieces on the portrait. I *love* the idea of interacting with the portrait, but having to progress further into the game to find the requisite puzzle pieces is extremely unhelpful. If the game was to be designed like Metroid — where one sees an unsolvable puzzle, progresses through the world and finds a tool to solve it — then this should have A) been a mechanic that was addressed in the flavor text, and B) been used more than once in the game. Whenever I encountered difficulty in a puzzle after this one, I always wondered if I was even able to solve the puzzle at that time. This is unhelpful in a puzzle platformer where you are occasionally running on the fumes of desperation and trial-and-error to attempt to solve puzzles.

In short, I disagree with your first, second, and fifth critiques. They seem, in part, predicated upon the player not making some key realization — a realization which (apparently) some players will make and others won’t. I don’t accept this as a strike against the game. However, I certainly agree that the user shouldn’t be expected to divine some of the stranger combinations of game mechanics — e.g. Crossing the Gap — without a nudge from the developer. I was absolutely shocked to see no mention of my biggest beef with the game, but I think that underlines the fact that different users can have dramatically different experiences with the game.

Thank you for your honest, insightful write-up of your complaints with Braid. I loved this game with every fiber of my being.

When you die in a game, or when you break a level, it's the game's way of telling you that you did something wrong. But not knowing something is not the player's fault, it's the games fault. Of course, you can also learn by punishment but that's a very bad way of teaching people things. My girlfriend is a teacher, she'd gladly talk for hours about this.

As for your arguments:

3-6: "irreversible": The name is not a hint, it won't prevent you from doing something wrong. I explained that above.

World 4 Puzzle 6 "Movement, Amplified": As I explained, the problem is not only the random punishment but also the fact that the game doesn't explain to you WHY it doesn't work.

World 5 Puzzle 4 "Crossing the Gap": I beg to differ. There are a lot of different objects in that level – levers, ladders, platforms and other backrgound objects that may or may not be of relevance. Also, it only works in a very specific moment. I think there are too many variables to expect players figure that out on their own.

World 4, Puzzle 7: "Frickle Companion": As I said, the fact that the enemy is green explains why it's not affected by your position. It does not explain why it can hold on to the key. In fact, he shouldn't as not even the player can.

You keep saying, that those advanced machanics like unrewindable key/rewindable door – pairs should have been shown earlier for a learning curve – i disagree again: You (me?) realize it anyway and reentering and getting to that point is always a matter of less than a minute.

@Trevor: Finally someone commented on that part. I was eager to discuss that.

You bring up an excellent point. It’s true that you never find the princess. At least not the Truth-Princess. So in that way, the game doesn’t claim that the absolute truth is real. I haven’t considered that.

However, there are a other aspects in the game which do support that ideology. It is especially the way every puzzle seems to be designed with a singular, specific solution in mind. And this has been critisized by other writers as well… but then again, that was the whole point.

By the way I find it quite ironic that even though Blow claims he had designed the game with a single specific interpretation in mind, it was able to generate so many different ones – like the A-Bomb one.

The game didn’t leave me with the impression that it was about the search. After all, there was a clear winning condition. If it was about the search, I think it would have to (to stay within the metaphor) focus more on castle building. Then it would need to have some Sim City’esque qualities where there wouldn’t be any winning conditions, just exploration of rules and designs and general pointers.

The Hawking quote you mention illustrates quite well the fundamental misunderstanding many bright minds in the scientific community exhibit – they expect the universe to have a reason, they (maybe even secretly) expect a fundamental truth. One of the great insights of the humanities was the exploration and ultimate realization of the concept that absolute truth doesn’t exist. That neither the universe nor humans have a purpose but are merely means to themselves. I think the most striking example is Immanuel Kant with his concept of Human Dignity/wiki/Human_dignity which is the basis for the German Constitution and even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (as opposed to a religious one).

It’s completely reasonable to think that there is some fundamental truth, otherwise what are these models approximating?I think that’s the tricky part where many people loose track of the argument. The models are just means of interpreting what is happening for us humans to somehow comprehend in a certain context. In order to do so, they reduce complexity and leave out details which can be important in different models. In any cases, they are simplifications. The question if there is a truth they approximate towards is useless. The function of the models works towards the human end – they work because they deliver us temporary answers. If they would to represent the world faithfully, they would in fact become like the world – incomprehensible. But there is the whole branch of Ontology with many way smarter and more eloquent people who wrote their whole lives about it.

And I don’t think we need the notion of a fundamental truth to drive science. Society didn’t collapse into anarchy when we started secularizing after all.