We Love It's Guide to…
Guide Tim through painterly 2D worlds, rewinding and reshaping time to solve platform puzzles and pursue an abducted princess.
Released 10 Apr 2009
Rewind Failed Moves
Build Parallel Timelines
Freeze Select Objects
This is the original version of Braid from 2009, which may not work well on newer systems. For an updated version of the game with nicer graphics, more levels and a large amount of developer commentary, see Braid, Anniversary Edition.
Developed by Number None · Published by Number None
From a house in the city, Tim travels through a series of worlds in search of an abducted princess. Each world unfolds as a 2D platforming environment, where jumping and exploring are part of the route through its puzzles.
Time manipulation is central to solving those puzzles. You can rewind events, while other worlds introduce rules such as objects that resist rewinding, parallel realities, time linked to your position, and pockets of slowed time.
Search each world for puzzle pieces and fit them together to reveal more of the game. Solving every puzzle is not required to move forward, so you can continue through available worlds and return to a challenge later.
Players often praise how the time-manipulation rules turn platforming into inventive, thought-provoking puzzles, and several describe the challenge as satisfying when a solution clicks. The painterly art and music are also recurring highlights, while some players find the puzzles overly difficult or obscure and the story hard to interpret.
This is the original version of Braid from 2009, which may not work well on newer systems. For an updated version of the game with nicer graphics, more levels and a large amount of developer commentary, see Braid, Anniversary Edition.
Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where you can manipulate the flow of time in strange and unusual ways. From a house in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an abducted princess. In each world, you have a different power to affect the way time behaves, and it is time's strangeness that creates the puzzles. The time behaviors include: the ability to rewind, objects that are immune to being rewound, time that is tied to space, parallel realities, time dilation, and perhaps more.
Braid treats your time and attention as precious; there is no filler in this game. Every puzzle shows you something new and interesting about the game world.
Key features:
Newly added Steam Cloud support
Save your in-progress game to the cloud, then play where you left off from on any Steam connected computer.
Forgiving yet challenging gameplay:
Braid is a 2-D platform game where you can never die and never lose. Despite this, Braid is challenging — but the challenge is about solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to replay tricky jumps.
Rich puzzle environment:
Travel through a series of worlds searching for puzzle pieces, then solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes, setting up pockets of dilated time. The gameplay feels fresh and new; the puzzles are meant to inspire new ways of thinking.
Aesthetic design:
A painterly art style and lush, organic soundtrack complement the unique gameplay.
Nonlinear story:
A nonlinear fiction links the various worlds and provides real-world metaphors for your time manipulations; in turn, your time manipulations are projections of the real-world themes into playful "what-if" universes where consequences can be explored.
Nonlinear 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.
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 12 |
| Age ratings |
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| Controller support | Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
| Demo | View demo on Steam |
| Content notices |
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| Metacritic | 90/100 View on Metacritic |
| Website | Official website |
