The build of Braid on PartnerNet has been updated to a newer one. This one is less-crashy; it has some cosmetic changes, and some gameplay changes (the player now collides as his full height, the last puzzle on world 6 has been redesigned), and some text changes (the text has been lightly revised everywhere, and a piece of the Epilogue has been rewritten.)
To play this one, just delete your old version of Braid off the xbox and download the new one. Your saved game will carry over.
David Hellman has posted a new Art of Braid update. This time he talks about the title screen (which is one of the nicest parts of Braid), and how he took it from the original Programmer Art version into what we have today.
I’ve also added an Art of Braid link to the sidebar; it goes to an index of all the pages.
(If such a place exists.)
Please keep in mind that there are a lot of small tweaks to be done in terms of presentation. This build is only a day old, and already a number of things have been done to make the game look and play better. But if you don’t mind title screens that are slightly off-center (ugh!), give the current build a whirl.
In other news, Jason’s NYU speech has been rescheduled for Friday, May 2, at 3:30pm.
In case anyone is reading this blog right now, we see on Game Design Advance that Jason Rohrer’s talk at NYU today has been postponed due to illness. Get better soon, dude!
David Hellman has posted a new Art of Braid, where he shows the process of revision we went through for the first castle in the game.
If you want to know why Braid has taken so long to get done, it’s because we want through this revision process for pretty much everything.
David Hellman has posted Part V of The Art of Braid over at his blog.
This time he moves away from the Visual Art side of things and gets more into the Emotional Art territory (of course, these two territories are inseparably intertwined — how things look are a dominant factor in how you feel about them). He discusses the ways in which we make the player cry and become more socially conscious, and in the process reveals why Braid is taking so long to be released. Really we are revolutionizing the emotional landscape of the player experience in ways that mainstream games could never hope to match.
Reverend Anthony at Destructoid wrote up a preview of Braid. He said:
The preview build of Braid comprises one of the most interesting, satisfying, beautiful game experiences I’ve ever had…
Except that he didn’t say that. (Read the article to see why!)
Braid was also discussed in a very positive way in the latest Destructoid podcast, #48. This podcast also discusses art games in general, and contains specific discussions of The Marriage, Stars Over Half Moon Bay, Passage, and Gravitation. Warning: This podcast is also chock full of crudity.
Sean Bell wrote a very positive preview over at Darkzero. A quote:
Let it be known that, at the time of writing, I envy every single person who reads this preview. Why? Because I’ve just started up … Braid for the first time, and I’ll never get to do it again. I’ll be able to play it again, sure, but it won’t ever be the same as it was just now. I can’t, unlike the game’s protagonist, rewind time and have the same experience again.
Corvus Elrod wrote up his impressions over at Man Bytes Blog. He likes Braid, but not as much as the previously-mentioned previewers; but he’s also still early in the game, so maybe that will change. Or maybe he will totally hate it in the end!
David Hellman has written another installment about the art of Braid. This time, he discusses the way we build the in-game scenes: the different elements that we compose together, and what the editing process is like.
In comments to previous Art of Braid postings, people asked specifically about these topics, so it’s cool to see that David is addressing them directly.
David Hellman has posted The Art of Braid, Part III over at his blog. This entry goes into a lot of detail about the early art concepts, as they developed once we became serious about trying to lay out a level.
This entry makes it sound like I just kept saying “No, that’s no good! That’s no good either!” about 100 times. Hmmm, maybe that’s how it was.