Braid, Anniversary Edition trailer [video] | Hacker News Reader

Braid, Anniversary Edition trailer [video]

youtube.com

102 pointsibobev62 comments

Braid is one of my favorite games. An unusual but simple set of rules producing surprisingly complex interactions. I often compare it with Portal and Mountain Valley: one bends time and two others - space. Very excited for this release.

Can’t tell if it will have new puzzles or not. Does anybody know?

He said on Twitter that it will!

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1722709573071433996

For some reason I can't read the rest of the thread (I don't have an account).

With nitter I can read the rest.

https://nitter.net/Jonathan_Blow/status/1722709573071433996#...

> Confirmed launch platforms are Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, and iOS and Android for Netflix subscribers. Mac and Linux will come later in 2024 after the initial launch.

This feature sounds interesting:

> Sometimes in the commentary we ask, "Why was this level designed this way and not another way?" You'll be able to play counterfactual redesigns of these levels to see how they would have been, if different decisions had been made.

That thread mentions "hand-repainted graphics ... as well as totally revamped audio (the original game's sound effects were not good)".

I found the graphics and audio quite lovely, if quaint. I'll be interested to see quite how revamped it is, and whether there will be an option to use the originals.

(oops, these are addressed in the video, I still like the original sound though!)

The video says there is an extra world, so yes more puzzles.

> Mountain Valley

You probably meant Monument Valley, I gather?

Yes, thanks for correcting

If you're curious how the time rewind was implemented, Blow did a GDC presentation back in 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dinUbg2h70

The anniversary edition will also include extensive/detailed commentary.

I remember being blown away by Braid. It makes you feel very not-smart, and then very smart, over and over. Takes a great creative talent to do that, and to pull together all the graphics and sound as well.

Yes I love that feeling. The Witness also does this on a much grander scale.

I didn't have the patience, but maybe I should revisit it.

I love the inclusion of commentary, I bet aspiring game devs out there could find that quite useful.

Are there other games that provide similar commentary?

Most valve games: half life 2, portal 2 have in game commentary from game designers, voice actors, etc. But I'm sure Braid's developer will be much more technical than those, but similar concept

The valve commentary is fantastic.

Jonathan Blow also has a bunch of commentary on his youtube channel ... but it comes in multi hour chunks where the minute by minute value isn't necessarily great. Hopefully, the commentary for Braid will be focused.

[Although, ultimately, my purchase decision will probably hinge on whether or not they sped up that ~2hour cloud nap that's required to get that one star.]

> Hopefully, the commentary for Braid will be focused.

If nothing else, it's at least edited.

"We recorded over 60 hours of interviews and conversations, and we distilled those into 15+ hours of commentary that is actually in the game, in the form of 250+ activatable commentary objects." [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1722714896490512810

So the guy who made the classic Prince of Persia kept a regular journal during it and his previous game, Karateka. You can buy the journals on Amazon[1].

I found out that this year Digital Eclipse decided to turn those Karateka journals into an interactive documentary, and that's now on Steam under the title 'The Making of Karateka'[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Making-Karateka-Jordan-Mechner-ebook/...

[2] https://www.digitaleclipse.com/games/karateka

Also a lot of Valve games have audio developer commentary that can play while playing several of their games[3].

[3] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Commentary_System

Also Zachtronics (SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O) released a book called Zach-Like[4] which had a lot of design documents from their various games. It's available in a physical format as well as Itch and you can download it on Steam also. I have the physical copy. It's just a PDF though. Still super interesting.

[4] https://www.zachtronics.com/zach-like/

There's a Wikipedia list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_with_comm...

An ancient in-game commentary pioneer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Riddick:_Esc...

The Grim Fandango remaster that came out a few years back has one.

Interesting to see Netflix listed as a supported platform. I wonder why that's beneficial versus native iOS and Android versions?

EDIT: I guess maybe it's the pricing model, i.e. dev gets paid by Netflix rather than based on individual sales. Or maybe it's easier to integrate once to that platform and let Netflix handle the two OSes?

It will be listed on android store as a "Free" app. Only to be greeted later by "login to your Netflix account".

Very excited that this unique game continues. It's too bad they aren't supporting the Mac, like the old game did.

Jonathan Blow tweeted that Mac support will come later on in 2024.

https://x.com/jonathan_blow/status/1722710169744757071?s=46&...

Jon is an interesting guy and has given some really interesting talks, here's one about preventing the collapse of civilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

He was also a guest on the "On the metal" podcast over at Oxide:

https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/jonathan-blow

Which is kind of surprising considering the ire he displays towards Rust on his Twitch programming streams...

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to the linked On the Metal episode.

Braid was the first game that blew my mind with its amazing gameplay and story. The other thing that dropped my jaw was lisp when I learnt that you could make cons using closures, encapsulating data in a "function"'s arguments.

Did Braid use Lisp? I thought it was all C++

I think OP just randomly went from talking about the game to talking about lisp, with no association between the two other than just liking both.

yeah, this!

No, but I recently learned that Abuse[1], a multi-platform (including Linux) run-and-gun game from 1996 had its game logic in Lisp.

[1] https://github.com/antrad/Abuse_1996/tree/master/data/lisp

This trailer is 3 years old (https://youtu.be/Cf9A1QPG_yc), am I missing something?

Yes, it's actually coming out this time. The release date was missed by 3 years so they're re-announcing it.

Hope it will come for Switch

I don’t think it will, unfortunately, a reporter at Gematsu pressed Blow about it and he just kept repeating that it would be out for the platforms announced. The Witness never came to Switch either.

Damn :’(

Doesn't that fact make the release less certain than the last time they announced it?

I believe that features that were proposed/planned are now implemented, which makes it higher confidence but, of course, not certain.

I believed that the first time... now I want to believe it but I know they miss deadlines.

It's done when it's done (as an indie developer you can still say that).

This sentence does not inform my guess at all.

In all fairness Blow had to juggle a lot of projects during this time. His work on the Jai compiler and on the other games Thekla is working on was probably higher priority than finishing anniversary edition. Still, it's good to have something done. :)

Looks like the team is setting a more concrete date, so hopefully it means they are closer to completion now.

I vaguely remembered I read some news about Braid that it was originally developed by a single developer, and he was involved in some serious scandal/imprisoned, thus stopped developing a possible sequel. Was it true or was it about the Fez game instead of Braid? If it was true, are the new edition taken over by new dev?

I think you're thinking of someone else.

Here's the developer's wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow

He created The Witness after Braid, which is another excellent game. He's been creating his own programming language for the past few years called Jai.

You're almost certainly thinking of Phil Fish, who did indeed leave the games industry after creating Fez, being featured in Indie Game The Movie (alongside Jon Blow of Braid, which might be the source of the confusion), and getting in a lot of spicy Twitter arguments.

supercool! 2004 vs 2023 screenshot: https://photos.app.goo.gl/5LtAhqoGQrpwp62PA

One of my all time favorite games! The soundtrack is amazing as well.

Blow needs to release his new game. Also I know these things take a long time but this was originally announced to come out in 2021. Has he just been working on Jai?

The Witness was announced in 2009 and came out in 2016, and it was a pretty simple project compared against replacing C++. I kinda imagine Blow is what I would be like with projects if I had no time constraints or managers, and that's probably a bad thing, but it seems like it'd be a nice way to exist.

I agree it seems very relaxing. He's the kind of person whose ambition always seems to slightly exceed the domain he's working in. This leads to great products but very protracted deadlines.

See also The Witness, an amazing puzzle game by Jonathan

Yes, I can't recommend it enough. It's amazing how it feels like every detail of the environment was deliberately and meticulously placed.

Braid was a life changing game for me. Hit me at exactly the right time in my youth to really “get” art for the first time.

Loved Braid and have fond memories of playing it. Surprised this won't be released on Switch though.

One of the major upgrades is all the art redone, and game running at 4k, but Switch outputs 1080p like the original game.

Youtoba

This is cool. It's too bad Johnathan Blow is so insufferable.

I mean ... sure. There's lots of people out there who have annoying personality traits that some people are going to be put off by.

In my mind, though, the difference between annoying and insufferable is whether or not you're willing to admit to being incorrect. And Jonathan Blow has gone on record to talk about his failures, flaws, and when he was definitely wrong. So while I can sympathize with people who don't enjoy him on like a personal level. I think it's objectively unfair to sink to "insufferable."

Also, I personally get a LOT of mileage just avoiding people and conversations about things that annoy me. Of course, I suppose your mileage may vary.

'Admitting his flaws' certainly isn't the way I would describe Jonathan Blow. Even ignoring his political turns, he's had a long history of saying some outright wrong stuff on game dev, web dev etc and being insufferably rude to anyone that tells him he's wrong. I could go off on how many ways he was wrong in his talk on Software Decline [1] or his many wrong takes on Linux. All of which he's doubled down on.

[1] https://youtu.be/FeAMiBKi_EM?feature=shared

If I recall, he attacked the guy who created home-brew or cocoa-pods (?) because the guy had failed a job interview where he was asked some algo question that he didn't know.

He then posted something like "<Company(Google?)>, where they reject you for not knowing <X> algorithm, even though they use and depend on your open source software".

I think Blow said something along the lines of "well the dumbest comp sci 101 student would know that algo, so I'm not sure what kind of coder you are?"

This is vaguely from memory ~10 years ago but is what I remember about Jon Blow too.

He's said some things I really disagree with, especially when he veers away from game design and programming and more into politics or climate change (or even somewhat when it comes to web development), but he still has a lot of interesting thoughts and I think he's well worth listening to on the whole.

I've listened to him far more than probably any other game designer or programmer at this point, probably well over 100 hours worth. Attended a couple of his talks in person at GDC too, many years ago (before Braid was released, he showed a brief demo of it during one of them). Didn't even know who he was, just had interesting sounding game design talks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com