We’ve created a development blog for The Witness, the new game being designed by Jonathan Blow. Here’s the link to the front page of the site, and here’s a direct link to the blog.

Not much information about the game has been made public yet. Well… here is some. More to come!

The speech is called “Games as Instruments for Observing Our Universe”, given by Jonathan Blow at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont in February 2010.

The talk is short — about 20 minutes — followed by about an hour Q&A (in a separate file). Slides in ppt format are included.

Here’s a bundle containing those files.

The next day, we did a conversational interview at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington. This started with a short introduction about Braid and my next game, followed by some questions by Chris Thompson, and then questions from the audience. Here’s the audio for that session. (You can right-click and pick Save As… if this opens in your browser in an obnoxious way.)

I’ve just gotten word that Braid will be available on the PlayStation Network in Benelux and Russia on February 4th.

You have our apologies for the delay!

If you liked Braid, you may enjoy Terry Cavanaugh’s game VVVVVV. It’s also a platformer that is built around one core interaction, iterating on that piece of gameplay and exploring variations. In VVVVVV you will die a lot, but the penalty for death is extremely low, so it’s no big deal.

There’s a free demo (in downloadable and web-based versions). Here’s the link again.

If you are a designer of interesting/experimental/different games, and you’d like to present a game to a large audience that’s excited by new and challenging work, you’ve got just about 1 week to send in your submission. Here’s a link for more information. We look forward to seeing your stuff!

If you live in Europe and have a PlayStation 3, you’ll be able to play Braid on it starting December 17th.

The price is €9.99.

The Experimental Gameplay Workshop is an annual event at the Game Developers Conference where we show a selection of cutting-edge game designs. Each designer gives a 10-to-15-minute presentation.

We encourage all designers who are actively working on new and different design ideas to apply. Here’s a link for more information.

The deadline is January 26, 2010. (We had erroneously listed the date as February 16.)

… in America. We’ll keep you posted on releases in other territories.

If you’re having trouble figuring out any particularly hard puzzles, the Game Helpin’ Squad has you covered… they’ve recently published a video walkthrough of the game.

Of course, there’s also our Official Walkthrough, for those who prefer boring old text and pictures!

… in North America. Releases for Europe and Asia are in progress, but Sony has separate submissions processes for all those territories, so we don’t know when those versions will be available.

The PS3 port has been done by Hothead Games. It will be downloadable from the PlayStation Network for $14.99.

I’ll post here when we have release dates for the other territories.

[Update: I originally posted that there may be a release in Japan. This was a misunderstanding. There is a planned release for PSN in Asia but it does not include Japan.]

We’re hiring another programmer into the new company, to do very interesting work with full-body motion tracking.

If interested, email me: jon@number-none.com. Please have substantial 3D game development experience and be good at what you do.