You can download Braid from any of these sites:

Greenhouse
Steam
Impulse
GamersGate

All sites have free demos; I recommend trying the demo first, not only to see if you like the game, but to make sure it runs well on your computer.

There have been reports of a few problems and I am ironing these out, and shipping off new versions to these publishers as the fixes come in.

We had a rough few hours for the web site here, but the hosting company has upgraded the bandwidth so hopefully it will survive the stormy waters.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the game!

-Jonathan.

Some number of people are getting crashes when they start Braid. Most of the solid reports I got came from people with Athlon FX CPUs, which don’t support SSE2. I have built a new version of Braid that does not use SSE2, but since I don’t have any Athlon FX machines, I can’t test it for sure.

If someone could try it out and let me know if it fixes the problem, that would be great:

https://number-none.com/braid_demo_1010_impulse.exe

This demo also should fix the vsync problem that people were having.

Some users of high-end Nvidia cards on Windows Vista 64 and Windows 7 are having a problem where the game doesn’t sync to vertical refresh (they get visible tearing in-game).

I am going to put out a new version today that fixes this; but in the meantime, you can use this command-line option:

-no_vsync_test

(for example, adding it to the Braid shortcut) which should fix this problem in the meantime.

Another option is to set forced vsync in your Nvidia control panel.

If someone who has the problem can verify that the command-line option works to fix it, then cool.

The good news is, Braid is coming out soon! The bad news is, I am delaying it slightly, til April 10th.

The delay is just to fix some problems that came up in testing with various versions of Windows.

So far the game is planned for release on Steam, Greenhouse, Impulse, and GamersGate. If I have some more time to do the appropriate discussions, it may appear in one or two other places.

Also, we have a special surprise planned concerning the music in Braid.

So, sorry for the delay, I know folks have been waiting a long time for the PC version and it’s not so great to have to wait an extra 10 days, but it’s only so that I can try to ship you guys a version that works well (which frankly is impossible in Windows, but the best I can do is make it work for most people most of the time).

[Edit: This post incorrectly listed the new date as August 10th. It is April 10th.]

Yesterday, Stardock announced that they would be selling Braid at the end of March for $19.95. This price has proven to be unpopular in certain areas of the Internets, so I’ve reduced it to $14.95. Pre-orders from Stardock have not been charged yet, so if you pre-ordered at $20 you will still get the game for $15.

Some people have asked why I picked the $20 price point. The answer is, I just looked at some comparable games on the PC and saw how much they were charging. Crayon Physics Deluxe, World of Goo, and Aquaria, among many others, are all priced at $20. It seemed reasonable not to charge less for Braid than for those games.

But ultimately, I don’t care that much about the PC release price. The XBLA version was nicely profitable, and my goal with the PC release is mainly to get the game out to a wider audience. Sure, it would be nice to earn the optimal amount of money from that release — I have interesting ideas for games that I want to make in the future, and making games is very expensive, and I will probably have to hire people to help! But ultimately, I would rather have people talking about the game itself, what they like and dislike about it, than about how many American Fiat Currency Dollars it costs.

So, you’ll be able to buy Braid for $14.95. Stardock is one of two or three Windows PC-oriented download sites that I have signed with. The others haven’t made their announcements yet, but when they do, I’ll post it here.

A lot of people are writing in asking about the release date for the Braid PC version.

I had originally announced the release date for the end of 2008, but for various reasons, this hasn’t happened. Once we slipped into mid-October and all the big Christmas-season blockbusters started coming out, it just seemed like a bad idea to schedule Braid for that time period, as it seems likely it’d get released and then disappear.

At this time, we’re looking at a window of February-March 2009 for the PC release. I know this isn’t good news for those of you who have been waiting a long time for the game, but there sure are lots of games out there for you to play in the meantime.

I am also in talks with someone to do a Mac version (native code). The release date for this would be hopefully not long after the PC version.

There are no plans for other platforms in the near future, though as I’ve mentioned before, a PS3 version a little later on remains a possibility (though again, this depends on whether Sony is interested in the game).

Thanks, and have a good New Year.

One of the first songs you hear in Braid is Shira Kammen’s “Downstream”, from the album Music of Waters. In the credits for the Braid I credited the entire song to Shira Kammen, but it turns out that’s insufficient, as some melodies are by other musicians.

So as not to distort anything, I’ll quote Shira directly:

Although I recorded these pieces, and arranged and played them, parts of them are by others or are traditional, and I don’t want to misrepresent them.

Downstream has three different tunes – the first one is by me, and is called Downstream (The whole cut is called Downstream, just named after the first tune).

The second tune is from the Galician group Luar na Lubre from their album Plenilunio and is called “O Son do ar”, composed by Bieto Romero (Canciones del Mundo), and the third tune is called ‘Borrela d’Aragon’ and is by French bagpiper Eric Montbel. (I thought it was traditional, and just found out in the last couple of days that it was written by Eric).

The Lullaby Set is a combination of Manx and Irish traditional tunes.

So, there you go!