But, I realized that I don’t really know how to explain the new ideas in a way that would really make sense, yet. You saw some pieces of the game at the GDC, so you know what it’s sort of about. I think that if you read the new ideas, you would be, like, “wtf, that is exactly like the game I saw.” And it is, sort of. But it’s just a shift in perspective that lines things up, turning something pretty good into something really good. Things like that can be too subtle to talk about effectively, and yet make all the difference in the finished game.

The most concrete I can get is that, in the new version, the game is very much about setting up unique set-pieces for the player to encounter, inasmuch as that is possible given the abstract nature of the gameplay. Whereas before my big emphasis was on noticing subtlety — the game would sort of ooze you into a mode, and the idea is for the player to notice the subtle differences between 30 seconds ago and now. Well, that is kind of interesting, but I think it is also really hard to get players to feel that without being really heavy-handed. So now, it’s more like, every once in a while the player enters into a new situation that doesn’t get slowly oozed into; it has a distinct beginning and end, thus providing some closure, and it makes more obvious what the things are that they’re intended to notice, and what space they are playing in.

But yeah, that is still really vague. Even after I put in my new list of changes (which is going to take a while since Braid is the #1 project), to a casual observer, the resulting game will probably not look different from the prototype for Raspberry… but in reality they are very different games.

Good point, anyway.