14 DAY TRIAL // Developer greenhouse has blessed the Macintosh platform with what is probably the best puzzle game out there. Titled Braid, greenhouse's game was awarded the "Casual Game of the Year" at the 12th Annual Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Awards, and was nominated for five Xbox Live Arcade 2008 awards, winning one award in the category of "Best Innovation." And that's not the half of it!
Braid also won the Independent Games Festival award in 2006 during its design period, greenhouse says. Braid was selected by GameSpot for its 2008 awards in "Best Original Downloadable Console Game," "Best Platformer," and "Best Licensed Music," and by Official Xbox Magazine for its 2008 awards of "XBox Live Arcade Game of the Year," "Best Soundtrack," and "Best Ending," and one of its "Indisputably Incredible Runners-ups to Game of the Year," the company reveals on its website.
So, how did this game receive all these praises? Well, it's easy for a title to win so many awards when it explores the human condition and manipulates time in a lush, painterly world, especially when said game is a puzzle-platformer. On your journey to save a princess (typical...), you have a different power to affect the way time behaves, including the ability to rewind, create parallel realities, and utilize time dilation. Also, every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world. According to greenhouse, the main features of Braid include:
• Untraditional platforming: You can never die and never lose, but challenge is always present and focused on solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to play and replay tricky jumps.
• Puzzle-rich environment: Travel through a series of worlds searching for puzzle pieces and solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes and setting up pockets of dilated time. The gameplay is always fresh and new and the puzzles inspire new ways of thinking.
• Aesthetic design: A painterly art style and lush, organic soundtrack complement the unique gameplay.
• Non-linear story: A nonlinear fiction links the various worlds and provides real-world metaphors for your time manipulations; act out real-world themes at your own pace, exploring playful “what if” universes.
• Forgiving gameplay: The game doesn’t force you to solve puzzles in order to proceed. If you can’t figure something out, just play onward and return to that puzzle later.