Braid Coming to Windows Today

By: Derek Yu

On: April 10th, 2009

The long-awaited PC version of Braid is now available on Greenhouse (including a demo), and will be unlocked on Steam around noon PST. The game will also be available through Impulse and through Gamersgate today. The price is $14.95 USD.

TIGdb: Entry for Braid

Posted in Highly Recommended, Platformers, Videos, Windows | Tags: JonathanBlow

audio conferenza

No that’s not $14.95 US fiat dollars. That’s something 18.65 US fiat dollars.
audio conferenza
cinergy

I waited too long for this and damn, i don’t ‘get it’. Next.
http://pqgames.exofire.net mirosurabu

Played the demo and I can say it doesn’t disappoint. But it’s pity the framerate on my lap is so low – floating between 5fps and 15fps.
Karry

Meh, who cares about this traitorous crap.
Oh well, at least it didnt take years to come to PC, like some other traitor – Halo – did.
TCM

Played the demo. It’s excellent, but I have serious length concerns. I’m waffling over whether to buy it now, or wait for the inevitable Steam Sale.
Zyrxil

You know, I enjoyed the game, but so much about it screams “have never designed or possibly played a PC game before”:

-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.

-Alt-enter for Window mode (as a workaround the refresh rate): runs fine except game viewing area is vertically squashed, makes playing impossible.

-Gamepads: Does not support non-360 pads, which is terrible considering pads designed for PC come with superior configuration software.

-Keyboard: Does not support the numpad arrow keys. WTF? Does not allow any kind of key binding.
Consarnit

I’ve unlocked worlds 2-6, and cleared the first three worlds (i.e., got all puzzle pieces). Question — aside from the lairs, is there any challenge to the game aside from getting puzzle pieces? It seems like the levels are otherwise just walk from left to right and win. Kind of odd.
Anonymous

The only way I can get to run the game with any semblance of smoothness is at 10 fps.

orz
JoseHeno

What exactly does this mean, and what can I do to fix it?

TODO: has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
doop

@Consarnit: You can’t beat the game unless you get all the puzzle pieces. Getting the puzzle pieces is the point of the game, “completing” the levels is ancilary. It’s a puzzle platformer, not an action platformer.
Flamebait

@JoseHeno, put -windowed after the target in a shortcut to the game. Unfortunately you have to run it windowed until Blow fixes it (see his blog).

Played the full version at a friend’s house, and while I’m impressed with the mechanics and most of the puzzle design (also, contrary to what I heard there’s plenty of content for a puzzle game), I don’t find it a particularly enjoyable game. There were too many instances where I quickly figured out how to solve a puzzle, but the enaction of the solution was extremely fiddly. This lead to long periods of trial-and-error tedium.

I probably suck at platformers, but *still*…
nullerator

“-Refresh rate: Locked to 60hz, crashes if forced to anything higher. Hello eyestrain.”

Yeah, that is pretty bad. I’m very sensitive to this, so I can’t use 60hz more than five minutes before I get a headache for the rest of the day.

I did find Braid playable in windowed mode, but I’m disappointed there’s no proper menu where you can set different resolution/refresh rate settings.
MisterX

Blow posted that he is going to include resolution settings sometime soon. He didn’t want to do this, because all the art was hand drawn for exactly this one resolution. But I suppose everyone would rather play with downscaled graphics than not at all.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up for changable refresh rates, though. He said it is locked at 60HZ for the platforming physics to be most precise. But then again I know nothing about programming.
nullerator

I have very little technical insight, but as it’s possible to run the game in windowed mode and with 85 Hz (as that’s the refresh rate my desktop uses), I don’t quite see why it shouldn’t be possible to do the same in full-screen mode as well…

I know I’m not the only one who have serious problems with games that run 60 Hz. Without the windowed mode (which should have been easier to access), I would not have been able to play this game at all.
Consarnit

Well, it’s just kind of weird to have a level structure where passing the levels is secondary to collecting the collectibles. Maybe it’s a meta-commentary of some sort, but it’s dislocating to say the least. Why not make the collectibles requirements for beating the level or, alternatively, make it possible to enter the levels in any order from the get go?
Jonathan Blow

Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you can’t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on. This is a classic problem with puzzle games and is one of the reasons games have been getting easy to the point of lameness.

The thing is, you could run fullscreen at 85hz but the game would be running at 60hz, so some frames would be longer than others, so it would look stuttery. However, maybe this would be preferable to the flickering of CRTs. I don’t know, I haven’t used a CRT in 7 years (for this exact reason).
sinoth

Dammit Jon, I really love Braid but you need to stop pushing the game’s inadequacies onto the platform. Yes, some people still use CRTs, and have different refresh rates and resolutions and video cards and input devices. It sucks having to accommodate all this but it is NOT impossible. It takes extra effort from the developer but it’s worth it. Your message will reach a much larger audience.

I would hate to see your future games be console only because of these small annoyances. Just give the PC people options and they’ll be happy. Sure, this means that someone is probably playing Braid at 5 fps, 640×480, and with a Gravis joystick but LET THEM. Better they see the game like that than not at all.
Anonymous

PC gaming is all about giving the options to the consumer. Console gaming is all about keeping the options in the hand of the company.
nullerator

“The thing is, you could run fullscreen at 85hz but the game would be running at 60hz, so some frames would be longer than others, so it would look stuttery. However, maybe this would be preferable to the flickering of CRTs.”

It would, believe me. As I said, I play it in windowed mode which means that the screen refresh rate is 85Hz while the game updates at 60Hz, and it looks pretty smooth to me. So I don’t quite see the problem. Include a warning about it if you want, but please give us the option to run it with a proper refresh rate.
Consarnit

“Because if collectibles are requirements for beating the level, then you canâ€™t get any further in the game once you reach a puzzle you are stumped on.”

Well, that’s a partial (and I think inadequate) explanation — though I appreciate getting an answer at all!

First, it’s inadequate because it doesn’t explain why you have to enter the levels in order. Indeed, requiring the players to enter the levels in order (with the very small exception of worlds 5 and 6 or whichever they were opening at the same time) belies the claim of a “nonlinear” story (at least in terms of the story’s presentation). The linearity is strong with this one. It’s just you spend a lot of time backtracking.

Second, it doesn’t explain why you don’t have some collectibles, which are easier to get, required to clear the level, or some *other* kind of obstacles, which are harder to clear than those currently in the game, in the player’s path. Having the levels so short and easy means that beating the is a source of absolutely no satisfaction. The only satisfaction comes from solving the puzzles. Why rob the player of a sense of satisfaction? Why not let him earn it with more interesting level challenges?

Third, I note that the combination of very easy levels and relatively large number of time-stuck keys, levers, and enemies actually makes the time time-traveling *as a way of avoiding death or dead-ends* significantly less meaningful. The only time I really died (in the parts I’ve played) is to the bunnies (who actually kill me relatively regularly). And I’ve had to quit and reload levels fairly often because I’ve dead-ended them. The time-traveling doesn’t even reduce replaying that much because the time-stuck aspects, or coordinated shadow, or whatever often makes traveling backwards in time an inadequate way of getting back to where you were before.

This last point sort of is what it is. There’s no reason the game *had* to make its rewind feature a perfect way of avoiding dead-ends and boring replaying. But that’s how most reviewers (and I seem to think the game’s own publicity) described it.
Flamebait

Consarnit reminded me, the thing that really annoyed me (even more than solution-death) was puzzle state resetting. For me it wasted quite a bit of time. If there was also an absolute state-rewind, that affected even the time-immune objects and thus just undid the player’s actions, it wouldn’t be a problem. I understand such complexity isn’t desirable on consoles, but as a PC gamer I would’ve appreciated it greatly.
Zyrxil

Hrm? Leaving the level from the door you came in, then re-entering the level resets the puzzles. I found that fairly quick and painless.
Consarnit

@ Zyrxil — the time adds up on the trickier unrewindable puzzles.
Dustin

You guys got the 360 pad to work with yours? No such like with mine.

Anywho, finally bought this. I have to say, the graphics, music and most of the gameplay is quality, but I don’t think the story could have been much worse.

Really, if I’m interpreting this correctly, there’s some super awkward metaphor relating the Manhattan project to an abusive relationship. I also became more and more tempted to just skip the text-books as they were so disconnected from the gameplay except for vague descriptions of the level’s gimmick.

I’d rather there be no story than have to read bizarre passages about explosions being candy stores.
Indier Than Thou

Fuck this commercial bullshit. Who cares?
J

We can’t let _that_ be the last comment. Even if it is (hopefully) a joke.

I’ve been enjoying the game the past few days. That includes both the gameplay and the story, which I see not everyone appreciates. There are some ideas raised of the sort that you don’t often see in games.

Now if we could just do something about Blow’s overly brief (*ahem*) development period. :)
Krux

the system requirements are too high. I have a dual core, and this is a 2D Game with no shader effects, at least no visible ones, but it runs with very view fps. This means the code behind the scenes is bad. This game was developed for XBox360 and optimised for that, and after that it was ported very lame to the PC.

No Gamepad support
No Options

you cant config the input
you cant config the graphics quality
you cant config anything

As long as it is still this bad, I would not pay any money for it.
Paul Eres

It does have shader effects actually — shader 2.0 is required. The game was also developed for the PC, not the XBLA. I agree about the gamepad support and lack of config options, but there was a new update to the game recently that allows you to change the resolution and fixes some of the low fps bugs.