Braid Image
Metascore

Universal acclaim - based on 57 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 361 Ratings

  • Summary: [Xbox Live Arcade] Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where the player manipulates 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. Braid is a 2-D platform game where you can never die and never lose. Despite this, Braid is challengingâ??but the challenge is about solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to replay tricky jumps. 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. [Microsoft] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 57 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 57
  3. Negative: 0 out of 57
  1. 100
    A game that's every bit as original as Super Mario Galaxy and Portal, Braid is a short-lived gem.
  2. 100
    Braid is beautiful, entertaining and inspiring. It stretches both intellect and emotion, and these elements dovetail beautifully rather than chaffing against each other. Still wondering if games can be art? Here's your answer.
  3. Braid is a game cut from the same cloth as "BioShock" and "Portal," erasing videogame norms and reimagining the way we look at the medium. It does things with gaming that are usually reserved for novels and films, while also adding elements that would be impossible in any other form. It’s is a game that makes you think about your own life as much as it does about gaming.
  4. It's not perfect, but for every bad lock puzzle and oddly written narrative, the "a-ha" moment of solving a tricky puzzle makes up for it.

See all 57 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 10 out of 126
  1. nicks
    10
    The best 5 hours i have ever spent on a game! please, people, do NOT read a walk-through for this game as you will not enjoy it and it won�39;t justify the price tag. As for the story - i won't spoil it for you, but for those who don't get it, use your imagination and come to your own understanding of the story. Expand
  2. A 2D platformer that makes clever use of time control mechanics, such as rewinding and speeding up time, to create some well thought out puzzles. The subtle hints as to what is actually going on in terms of plot will also intrigue most players enough to have them looking on forums for other peoples thoughts. Expand
  3. LeahR
    7
    Braid is a clever, lovingly-crafted platform-puzzler that is by turns frustrating and transcendent. It suffers from an awkwardly over-intellectualized story and total lack of replay value after figuring out the "gotcha" mechanics and gimmicks of the puzzles, but is an enjoyable and refreshingly intelligent experience the first time through. Expand
  4. [Anonymous]
    4
    What starts out as "New" or "innovative" quickly becomes stale and mundane. Toss in a too high price tag and a little too much hype and this one just doesn't pan out. Expand

See all 126 User Reviews