All posts by Jonathan Blow

Braid Previews

Eurogamer reviews Braid: 10/10

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Eurogamer has reviewed Braid and given it a score of 10/10, saying:

Braid has filled my head with so many ideas, so many opinions, so many emotions that wrestling them all into a coherent critique is like trying to strangle a swan made of jelly.

And then also:

Braid is beautiful, entertaining and inspiring. It stretches both intellect and emotion, and these elements dovetail beautifully rather than chafing against each other. Still wondering if games can be art? Here’s your answer.

Thanks to Malibu for the heads-up.

Tangential

Official Braid Walkthrough posted

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I want to be a cutting-edge, modern game developer: not just during the creation of a game, but also during post-release support. So I have done a little something for the players of Braid: I’ve written up our own, official walkthrough. Because it’s straight from the source, you know that it’s accurate and contains the best solutions to all the puzzles.

WARNING: This walkthrough contains spoilers!

Only read it if you are stuck.

Click here to read the walkthrough.

Braid Previews

Recent Braid Review and Preview

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Chris Dahlen at Save The Robot wrote a highly positive preview of Braid. (The article starts out as a discussion of Jonathan Blow’s recent lecture, but soon moves on to discussing Braid.) Dahlen’s Onion AV Club review of Braid is scheduled to appear next week; it’l be interesting to see what it says.

UK print magazine Edge has published the first review of Braid, giving the game a score of 9/10. Normally I would not be happy about a 9, but Edge has a reputation for being very tough with scores. (Braid was the only game with a score of 9 or above in this issue [#192]; in previous issues, they gave BioShock and Metal Gear Solid 4 each 8/10. Headline coming soon: Edge says Braid is better than MGS4; PS3 fan riot imminent.) I can’t link the review because it’s in print, but here’s the last sentence:

Braid remains a beautiful and brilliantly demanding game that barely contains its dense population of ideas, taking its place alongside Geometry Wars and Pac-Man Championship Edition as one of the finest original titles available on Live Arcade.

The Edge reviewer didn’t like the story much; but Chris Dahlen did. So there.

Appearances, Conferences, Game Criticism, Games as Art

A lecture about how our games are inherently conflicted.

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Note: A better version of this lecture was given a few months later in Montreal, and the recording has much higher audio quality. You can find it here.

Jonathan Blow gave the closing keynote speech at Games:EDU South on July 29, 2008 in Brighton, England. This one-hour lecture is about three ways in which current mainstream games are inherently conflicted, and how this holds them back from affecting people as strongly as the forms of linear media they are striving to emulate. Art games are used to build a perspective from which to see this problem and maybe attack it a little bit.

You can download the lecture as a .zip file containing the PowerPoint slides, along with an mp3 of the audio:

(Games:EDU Keynote, 35MB).

Unfortunately the recording came out at a low quality; the questions from the audience at the end are difficult or impossible to hear, but hopefully the answers are detailed enough to provide clues as to the questions.

Game Criticism, Tangential

A Short Essay about Serious Games

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(If you are looking for information about Braid the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game, click the banner above. This blog is for general information that might be interesting to people who like Braid.)

This essay was delivered at the Opinion Jam (organized by Ste Curran of One Life Left) at the Develop Conference 2008 in Brighton, England. It was written to be 3 minutes long when read aloud.

The essay is after the fold. If you want the accompanying PowerPoint slides, click here.
 
Continue reading A Short Essay about Serious Games →

Braid Development, Braid Previews

Braid wins IGN’s award for Best Puzzle Game of E3 2008.

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Here’s the page with the award.

Braid beat Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. (And Winterbottom. Sorry Matt… but I think it’s pretty damn sweet that a student game is in this list to begin with. That’s got to look good on the resume.)

Thanks to Bruce Morrison for bringing this to my attention.

Update: Braid also won Best Xbox Live Arcade Game, beating out all the other games in the Summer of Arcade promotion!

Braid was also a runner-up for best artistic design, Special Achievement for Innovation, and Best Downloadable Console Game. That’s 2 awards and 3 runner-ups!

Also, I am making an About Braid page to answer peoples questions, provide some background to the game and links to reviews. It is not nicely-formatted yet, and will eventually have more information, but anyone who wants a sneak peek at it can look here.

Braid Development, Other Games

Braid XBLA release date has been announced; it’s soon.

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Finally the veil of secrecy is lifted. Braid is being released on Xbox Live Arcade on August 6th, 2008 (a mere 9 days from now!)

This is part of Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade promotion, wherein they publish good games on XBLA all in one big bundle. Here’s the full list of games:

  • Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, July 30
  • Braid, August 6
  • Bionic Commando: Rearmed, August 13
  • Galaga Legions, August 20
  • Castle Crashers, August 27

Here is Microsoft’s official Summer of Arcade site where you can find more information, including contests that some folks may be interested in. Disclaimer: We apologize for the way Microsoft chose to present our game’s logo with the big word “Braid” covering the interesting part of the picture, along with popping-out animals on it to make it look XXXTREME like the other games. This is not much like the art we submitted to them; our tastes don’t run that way.

Uncategorized

San Francisco Game Design Meeting?

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If anyone is interested in having a semi-regular San Francisco Bay Area game design meeting, drop me a line. It’d be every 2 weeks or every month, and focused on advanced (or at least non-standard) game design thought. If the logistics of recording the meeting work out, I would also edit it into a podcast.

This would be a semi-private meeting: attendance by invitation, but you could email and get an invitation as long as you’re not a random person.

Game Festivals

Meaningful Play Conference 2008

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Somehow, I didn’t know about this even though it’s been in the works for a while: the Meaningful Play Conference 2008 at Michigan State University.

I’m glad they are doing this, although I wonder if the focus of the conference isn’t too broad. It also seems extremely lacking on the Art Game side of the fence (looking at the board and invited speakers), and heavily weighted toward the Serious Game side of things. Which is fine, I guess, but I think they are then missing the biggest chunk of “Meaningful”; perhaps they should call it the “Utilitarian Play Conference” instead.

If you’re a game developer, they have a Call for Games posted. (Their web site has been painfully slow sometimes, so if either of these links don’t work, try again later).

I don’t know if I will be there, because some friends are convincing me to go to the Tokyo Game Show which is happening at the same time.

Snippy note to MPC2008 organizers and people at other academic conferences I’ve seen lately: Please stop using dual-analog console controllers as the symbol of your conference or the big illustration at the top of the web page. We in the industry are not proud of these controllers; they are not cool. Also they are just a stereotypical surface signifier of games; they don’t say anything about interactivity or the nature thereof. Nothing says “We Have No Ideas” more effectively than a DualShock controller.

Game Festivals, Slamdance

The Slamdance Games Festival has been canceled.

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Sam Roberts has just posted an announcement that the Slamdance Games Festival has been canceled for the foreseeable future.

The trouble all started back when Slamdance leadership attempted to remove Super Columbine Massacre RPG! from the festival, after it had been selected as a finalist. Several other finalists (including this one) had adverse reactions to that.

As a compromise solution, Slamdance was going to hold the games festival in Los Angeles, where there aren’t as many mormons (and where, I guess, the games festival would be enough far-removed that it wouldn’t tarnish the image of the film festival. Or something.)

This is kind of a bummer, because it’s one less venue for indie games to get exposure, and I know that Sam Roberts put a lot of work into it. At the same time, there are other, more-active festivals now, and Sam is a director of one of the most prominent ones, Indiecade. Indiecade are having showings at E3 and PAX this year, as well as a stand-alone show at OpenSatellite in Seattle. Braid was in the IndieCade showing at E3 2007, and it was a good situation.