Time travel in Braid | Hacker News Reader

Time travel in Braid

qntm.org

127 pointspanic35 comments

> There are also deep paradoxes which arise when one character with this power runs into another character with the same power. What does this person perceive when you rewind time, and vice versa? In a fight between you, who wins? How far back can you go? How much of your life are you willing to unravel and experience again just for the sake of a particular confrontation? How much of your life would you simply go back and re-experience over and over again?

This reminds me of the plot of the movie "Primer" (which, if you haven't seen, you owe it to yourself to go watch).

I second the recommendation. Also, if after seeing it you don't understand the movie and think it sucks, watch it again. With a pen and a piece of paper.

xkcd has a spoiler-free map. https://xkcd.com/657/

I tried that, but I can't read my hand writing anymore.

Did that. It still sucks and I wasted more hours now.

At least now you have a healthy appreciation of the problems involved in time travel.

agreed. Excellent movie, won an award at sundance. Trailer here for anyone who is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CC60HJvZRE

I'm sure 90% of people who frequent hacker news can identify with the characters in this film (ie, young startup guys)

Coincidentally, this writer has done several writeups on Primer and unraveling its twisted story-line.

http://qntm.org/primer

qntm loves his time travel.

Barely related, but I just thought I'd point out that the author writes, in my opinion, quite nice sci-fi too [1], ranging from short stories to a web serial.

[1] http://qntm.org/fiction

I first ran into qntm.org when someone reposted the story "The artifact was completely impenetrable to all forms of matter except living human flesh"[1] from the Oul's Egg section of Fine Structure. I couldn't leave the computer until I'd read everything on the site.

[1] http://qntm.org/impenetrable

Several web serials, as a matter of fact. Ed stories, Fine Structure, and Ra (his most recent). Sam's work is a bit unpolished and suffers heavily from a lack of planning (Ra's ending is a great demonstration of that as Sam himself said that it got away from him). But it's still some of the most amazing sci-fi I've read.

It's not particularly rare in SciFi either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Ships http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistborn_series

This RTS game does just that. http://www.achrongame.com/site/gameplay.php

The two sides have time travel where you can effectively go back and change your commands. It controls this by an energy bar where the amount of energy to perform an action increases the further back you go effectively putting a hard limit on how far you can go back.

One thing that got me was thinking what happened to loved ones when you redid time. While they are in some ways the same person, they are also vastly different. Say you had a child who was 10, and you went 12 years into the past. You could potentially not have the child, but even if you did, they would be a completely different child. What if you went 9.5 years back. The same DNA, but life experiences would be different. Either way, when you go back, you are effectively forever losing your 10 year old child. But, does that hold if you only go back 10 minutes or 10 hours?

> I'm hurrying because the good bit is next.

Braid gets some frankly disproportionate praise for its skeleton of a story conveyed by the "books" available between levels, but that final stage is fantastic, not only as the culmination of the buildup of mechanics throughout the game. Very few games ever manage to intertwine their gameplay and narrative so successfully.

Almost no one praises the books! In fact, that's the one caveat in most otherwise glowing reviews; that is a testament to the game design, that the only concrete narrative is the least effective narrative. However! - I think Blow was at least trying to do something that explains how stilted it seems, though I'm not entirely sure what. For example: it takes only a slightly charitable perspective to make a coherent story when the books are read in reverse order, and confirmation bias be damned, it seems intentional.

To me, the books wouldn't be that much of a problem. After all most games have some form of written or cineatic storytelling. But Blow's rants against traditional games makes it seem a bit hypocritical that he had to resort to (only) the books for his storytelling. I mean the ending combines story and mechanic and I wished there was something in the other levels that emphasized the content of the books.

There is though, I can't recall the specific buts I believe in world three the books talk about how the main character needs to be immune to the princesses' power (or charm, or something) and then the level introduces you to the items that aren't affected by time reversal.

If you enjoy puzzle games with unique "models" of play I'd really recommend giving Antichamber a try.

It's got no plot or multiple levels. You spend (almost) the entire game exploring a single level with the same consistent logic, and you progress by figuring out what that actually logic is.

It's really fun, but I got kind of lost since all the puzzles reset when you leave so I never had any idea whether I had completed a puzzle or not. Is there a good way to do that? The map helps a bit, but if there are four puzzles in a region and I know I haven't done one of them, I have a 3/4 chance of trying to solve one I've already solved. This is definitely a problem now that I haven't touched it in months but have most (but not quite all) of the game solved. And some of the problems are clear what to do but still take a long time to complete!

Yeah, it's not the best game at making clear what's expected of you. I'd say if you've managed to progress to a new room that you haven't been able to before, obtained an item, or at least learned something new (an actual lightbulb moment), then the puzzle is still unsolved.

I do have to say I had to look up the solutions to one or two puzzles when I played it.

I believe solving a puzzle always allows you to move to another "room" as defined by the map, which actually makes the map more helpful than you think...

Another good one is The Talos Principle. Fans of Portal will love it for its puzzles and similarly mysterious back story. And it has a time-travel feature (record / playback yourself) in some later levels as well.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Fg76c4Zfg, an interview with Jon Blow:

"I really value that click that happens in your head between when you see something and you don't quite understand it, and then when suddenly you do understand it, and that is a fundamental part of human existence in the world, is that kind of mental growth, that kind of expanding of one's sphere of understanding of the world."

Braid is a fantastic game and I can't wait for The Witness.

Author should check out Chronology. A much simpler version of Braid for iOS. Not nearly as challenging but provides time travel gameplay that is different and at times quite intriguing.

There was a web site game that dealt extensively with shadow selves solving puzzles that I ran into many years ago. For example, opening a door might involve ten selves all piling onto a button, while the eleventh ran through. Does anybody remember that? Have searched for it for a while unsuccessfully.

http://www.thegamehomepage.com/play/cursor-x-10/

I think that's the one. Thanks. (Got some other good alternatives too)

Also http://newgrounds.wikia.com/wiki/The_Company_of_Myself

Was it Chronotron? http://www.kongregate.com/games/scarybug/chronotron

Not a web game, but The Swapper has similar mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swapper

It was 5 x Man. http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman

Game Helpin' Squad explains Time Travel Understander:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fABGyVzVwI

"If you can't figure out what you're doing in the game, you're just not thinking in the right way."

Hah, he missed it.

Braid is about the history of the atomic bomb, and Tim is actually Oppenheimer trying to reach the princess (the atomic bomb)

When you find out how to climb that hidden ladder in the epilogue, you can catch the princess, and she explodes.

A throwaway reference, yes , but not what the game is "about".

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