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.

Your idea on the “message” is also the best I’ve ever seen. By totally ignoring any idea of the Princess being a person, or the atom bomb, or trying to make sense of the disjointed vignettes, I think you’ve probably arrived at the intended meaning, even though all the other meanings people have arrived at are equally as interesting.

However, you totally lost me at your discussion about whether the message is appropriate: “But finally, because I do have problems with the idea of the pursuit of truth…”

Before that, I was thinking to myself, “Yeah! It’s a message about science, REAL science!” Not bubbling beakers and tesla coils and hating religions; real science as in the search for truth and the beauty of understanding.”

You explain that the game is about finding the Absolute Truth, but that’s wrong because a single truth doesn’t exist, but I disagree (with the first part- we can’t really say whether the second part is correct or not). Braid doesn’t even care whether a single truth exists, it focuses solely on the search. Indeed, you never find the Princess, you only get closer and closer.

“I think we abandoned the idea of a single fundamental truth long time ago. Even a scientific mind should realize that there are many stones and many castles. All we can do is to construct models. … There is no princess, only castles.”

Stephen Hawking once said, “My goal is simple: It complete understanding of the Universe and it’s reason for existing.”

It’s completely reasonable to think that there is some fundamental truth, otherwise what are these models approximating? We may never know it… I don’t think any scientist reasonably EXPECTS us to ever know it. So thinking of The Princess as a metaphor for Absolute Truth really doesn’t contradict anything at all.

Even though you say, “I think the princess is yet in another castle. The one that isn’t in the game,” you could also say the Princess is not in ANY castle. Tim/The Player will never find her, not in this game nor any other other. Nor will anyone else. She is unattainable.

The message is, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find her.

There might still be problems with this quick fix such as, "Why am I stuck facing to the right?" or the paradox not being realized again.

I know this reply is ancient in this day and age of the internet. Been playing Braid recently and wanted to contribute. Loved Legend of Kay and Excit! Can't wait for your future projects!

Edit: Corrected the directions of the doors I was trying to talk about. >_<

3-6: “irreversible”: The title is too vague to make any difference as a warning. Calling a level in MegaMan “You might die” isn’t going to make the game any easier.
Restarting that level is more difficult than others. Just recently, my collage Yu-Chung experienced a situation where he couldn’t get out of the underground area because enemies collected at the exit. And while you can always use the menu, it feels somewhat awkward.

4:6 Movement Amplified: You are right. There is the same puzzle in “Jumpman”. I mentioned that in my review. I chose this one as an example because it was clearer. The “Jumpman” puzzle doesn’t warn you on anything. It’s just the same puzzle with the same mistakes. If you failed to understand the mechanics back then, you will struggle again in “Movement Amplified”.

5:4 Crossing the Gap: I agree that I haven’t considered that there is indeed an enemy falling from above in this level. However, claiming that it is there to explain the mechanic is quite the stretch. It is not set up to explicitly hit the player, there is no effort made to make the player pay attention to how the enemy bounced off the player’s avatar. The player will most likely try to avoid collision anyway. I don’t believe the ability is likely to be discovered. At least I see no effort from the game designer to make sure it would.

4:7 Fickle Companion: I do understand the reasoning behind it. However, it is very obscure. Especially the fact that there are different rules for enemies and the player make this puzzle very difficult to comprehend. The problem is that if it would be consistent, it would look even more erratic. Best solution would be to leave it out.

3-6: “irreversible” is the theme of the entire level, the player is given a warning and a hint at the same time. Resetting the puzzles is as simple as leaving through a door and re-entering. Though this does have some “you can get stuck” moments, I think the designer tried to minimize this problem by making it easy to reset the level.

4:6 Movement Amplified. In 4:1, Jumpman, there is a puzzle piece locked by two doors, similar to this one. That puzzle warns you about the consequences of opening the right-hand door, with less punishing results.

5:4 Crossing the Gap. The author states that there is no time where an enemy will fall on the player’s head to demonstrate what happens. The first part of this level has an enemy falling from a great height toward the player, and if the player starts running from the door, they are very likely to be hit on the head. This ability of the enemy is also likely to be discovered by players as they work through the game.

4:7 Fickle Companion. The level records the key’s progress through the level at each instant in time(x position), until it is touched, carried, or dropped, at which point it overwrites the recording at that point. Only an enemy who can traverse the x axis while moving forward in time can send the key “back into time” so you can reach it when you go back there. This one was probably the most confusing puzzle for me, but there is some logic there, even if this behavior only shows up in one level.

I agree that some changes / indicators could have been more pronounced, but exploration of time in a gameworld, a dimension explored only superficially by other games, is its greatest strength.